Sweater Imaginings

The knitting is still strangely monogamous around here lately.  I am working almost exclusively on my Mona Lisa -- Dragon Rider socks, which I do not have a new photo of because the last photo I took was of sock one and now I find myself in the awkward spot of being in almost the exact same place on sock two.  So a progress photo would be pointless.

Despite my monogamy I can feel second sock syndrome nipping at my heels, so I am letting myself develop notions of a new garment.  Yesterday I pulled out two sweaters' worth to see if they had decided what they would like to grow up to be.

The wound yarn above is actually purple -- a skein of Madelinetosh lace weight that I bought on our honeymoon last August.  I had originally bought it for a Geodesic Cardigan, but now I think I would rather knit Stephanie Japel's Nevis Cardigan.  And then I started toying with the idea of striping in the Malabrigo lace, but yellow and purple is too ECU for this region so maybe adding in the green as well and doing large thick stripes that start after the bust?  Or maybe I have watched too many episodes of Pretty Little Liars and Aria is beginning to rub off on me.

I also have these skeins of Cakewalk Yarns that I bought at the beginning of the season specifically for a summer cardi.  This has clearly made up its mind that it wants to be Drifting by Cecily Glowik MacDonald..  I just need to make up my mind that I want to swatch and that I think I could rock this look.

And that I don't think giant striped lace weight is the way to go.

To see more works in progress, probably past the theoretical stage, check out the gang over at Tami's Amis!

Recording with Espresso

I am back from my little brother's graduation and chat a bit about how fast socks seem to knit up as well as how crazy my tv watching habits have become and thoughts on upcoming knitting projects.

Helpful Links:

Shur'tugal by Alice Yu

Desert Vista Dyeworks

Pressed Leaves Beret by Alana Dakos

Cephalapod Yarns

Lollipop Yarns

Vanilla Latte Socks by Virginia Rose-Jeanes

Bow and Arrow Hat by Andrea Babb

FO: Hippie Traveler

Happy Friday everyone.  I have managed to pull my sodden self back together and am comforting myself with the notion that my ikkle brother may be bigger than me now, but he still has to go through freshman year and all the amusement that entails for his big sister.  But before I became a blubbering mess I did manage a small knitting feat and turned in this hooded vest for Charms homework in the Harry Potter Knit and Crochet House Cup.

The Havasu Hoodie by Par Oiseau was in Knitscene Summer 2012, but somehow I missed it at the very back of the issue.  It is a reverse stockinette hoodie knit in pieces and then joined together for the hood.  I knit mine out of some old Lion Brand Fisherman's Worsted I had in the stash.  I had bought two skeins several years ago but had not done more than the occasional scrappy worsted project and it needed a better outlet.

You may have noticed a slight error in my version of the pattern.  And by slight I mean AN ENTIRE PIECE IS BACKWARDS! *Ahem* Yes.  It seems that when I joined the back to the two fronts I joined the back with the stockinette side facing, but the fronts with the reverse stockinette side facing, and proceeded to knit the hood as written.  I did not realize this until I was finishing up the seams two days and a new season of Arrested Development later.  So I left it, which could have been one of the better mistakes I have made.  This white yarn shows all the mistakes I made in my tension as I carted these pieces around with me and the knit side is much more forgiving than the purl side.

My loving husband is often the one behind the lense helping me to take photos of my knitwear.  For this hoodie I styled it in a sort of lost explorer with a little bit of fashion sense (not too much, we were working off of my closet).  The twist came when a thunderstorm rolled in while we were in the nature park and we tried to get "just a few more" pictures.  I don't think I have ever seen him run so fast, though he claims he was just keeping up with me.  Out of deference to him I will probably be picking much tamer photo locations for a while.

To see more FOs, hopefully photographed with less chance of immolation, check out the gang over at Tami's Amis!

Geektastic Thursday: In the Spirit of D-Day

Today is one of the most special of Geektastic Thursdays because today is my brother Josiah's high school graduation.

My brother is probably the most awesome of us all.  Where I was a total nerd in high school reading and studying myself into a stupor while trying to keep well rounded extracurriculars, he started a rock band that has done well enough to make it out of the garage and into the local indie concert circuit.  That's right.  My brother has groupies.  And you know what ladies?  He still has perfect attendance.

But while he might be a rock star now he will always be my kid brother.  I don't care that he has been able to pick me up since I left for college.  That really was not that long ago.  He really cannot be this grown up.  I refuse to admit it.

I refuse to admit that the baby brother I wanted so badly for my birthday is now eighteen and oh so much taller than me.  I refuse to admit that the kid who would get me in trouble while babysitting has a brain that I cannot even begin to comprehend.  I refuse because sometimes it feels I barely know him.  It's like I blinked and he was suddenly all grown up.

When I sat down to write this I could not get past the blinking cursor.  There are so many ways to describe my brother and so many reasons to love him and be very very proud, but one truly encompasses them all -- he is knitworthy.  For Christmas in 2009 I knit everyone in my family a hat.  Josiah wore his so much it fell apart.  So for his birthday I knit him another, and then some mitts, and another hat.  Essentially, the knit wear never goes unloved.  It gets slept in.  It is worn to rock concerts.  It is worn to school and becomes a uniform violation.  That, my friends, is true knitting love.  And what better expresses the character of a person than the love they have for their knitted gifts? 

So I hope you all have a happy Thursday.  Me?  I'll be applying more waterproof mascara than anyone knew existed and hiding behind my stripey sock.  Pay no attention to that streaky puddle of knitting in the corner.  Happy graduation, Josiah!

Adventures in Morbid Knitting

Remember how I confessed that I have started watching Hemlock Grove?  Well I think that it has begun to infect my subconscious.  Because I am participating in Harry Potter Knit and Crochet House Cup I cast on a second project at the beginning of the month so that I would at least have two on the go that I could hopefully turn in for classes.  My Camp Loopy socks and the hat that I have given the rather forbidding name of Woodland Grave Beret.

I know, I know.  I have serious issues.  But before you get all up in arms that I am clearly demonstrating all of the early warning signs of a knitting serial killer, let me at least try to explain.  So this hat that I am knitting is Alana Dakos' Pressed Leaves Beret from her book Botanical Knits.  I actually bought this yarn specifically for this project while at Stitches South from Cephalopod Yarns.  The woman who sold it to me was really awesome and in the course of conversation she told me that she actually sometimes calls this their Dexter colorway (it's really Candy Kingdom) because it can look a bit like blood spatter in the skein. 

Now I only watched one season of Dexter and I figured out the big twist early enough for it to annoy me into not watching another season, but I can appreciate the reference and I knew I would have to take this project in a bit of a morbid direction.  And so to knit it while watching a trashy show marketed to teens but which contains the most gruesome "change" I have ever seen (seriously, I was yelling at Cogsworth not to watch and he was looking at me all "Dude, I'm a guinea pig. Like I care"), seemed like the perfect tribute to an awesome yarn and what is turning out to be a very well written pattern.

To see other, far less morbid works in progress, check out Tami's Amis!

A Loopy Start

There is an up side to putting yourself under house arrest.  Aside from driving my husband crazy and getting cabin fever, I got quite a bit of knitting done on my Camp Loopy project yesterday.

I think these may be the tallest socks I have ever knitted.  I like a short leg to my socks, but the challenge requires the use of at least 375 yards of yarn, so I want to be sure that my socks meet these requirements.  Plus this Desert Vista Dyeworks is stunning and I want to use as much of it as possible.  For this challenge I pulled out Alice Yu's Socktopus.  Shur'tugal is a free download on Ravelry, but it is also included in the book, which makes it the perfect choice for an afternoon spent watching Hemlock Grove on the kindle because I can just flip through my book rather than just have to pause to constantly to check that I'm still following the pattern. (Side note:  Why am I addicted to this show?  Can anyone save me?  It's not even that good! And they just keep reusing the same dead body just with different pieces in different locations.  How is that ok?).   I love how intuitive without being completely memorizable this pattern is.  Not quite a read while I knit pattern, but it is a nice change after the swaths of reverse stockinette of my hooded vest and the long purl back rows of the shawl.

Is anyone else doing Camp Loopy?  Did you do a marathon cast on day?

Off-Roading It

I have told you before about how I really am not all that fond of running.  About how I would rather find many other things to do, including swimming, but that this is the one thing I've been instructed to do to help to stabilize my back.  There are no back twists in running that could cause me to be stuck at a funny angle for the rest of my life.  There is no arm movement in running that would pull my shoulder and render me unable to lift anything.  There is no sudden sidewise dance step in running that would scare my pelvis into rebelling against its carefully established alignment.  In other words, other exercise is ok, but running is the thing.  So yesterday as I faced the disgusting heat we have been having I decided to change up my route a bit and took a fork in the path after about a mile onto a nature trail.

Something to keep in mind about me -- I don't wear glasses when I run.  I'm not blind without them, but I am nearsighted, which makes my vision very limited.  So I guess it should come as no surprise that between dodging cobwebs (should have been my first clue), trying to figure out if the dog who was clearly not supposed to be off leash was friend or foe, and realizing I had not eaten in about eight hours, I missed this very clear sign.

It seems I ended up in an old river bed because I suddenly found myself stopped dead surrounded by moss, dead ended by a little lagoon.  It was very calm and peaceful until what I'm pretty sure was a snake went into the water by my foot and I bolted back the way I came.

I made it back to the trail and found my way almost back to the path without incident until suddenly an evil root decided that I had grown too confident in myself and determined to put an end to that.  It rose up out of the ground in my path and tripped me, causing me to fall hard on my knee before sinking back into the ground with a rumbling chuckle.  I tried to resume running but it just hurt too much so I walked instead and called my mother who kept me entertained with tales of home until I could make it the mile or so back to my couch where I could put up my leg and ice it.

I had another long run planned for today, but I don't think I can risk it.  Instead I think I will take advantage of this golden opportunity and work on my Camp Loopy project.  Tragic, I know.