2008 Knitting

Well, it's time for the year-end summary, but first I have a couple new projects to blog about.

For the holiday gifts I gave these to my mom, these to my middle sister, and the socks from the previous entry to my little sister, as I mentioned. However, we had two other guests that got knitted gifts this year...

The honorary 4th daughter in our family got these "Zom-bees"



Yarn: Yarn Pirate in Killer Bees
Pattern: plain ol' socks
Started: 12/18/08
Finished: 12/24/08

And I whipped out a quick hat for another more spur of the moment guest:



Yarn: Wool Ease Thick & Quick
Pattern: an improvised hat
Started: 12/24/08
Finished: 12/25/08, in the wee hours

That provided a much-needed non-sock item for my end of the year count, which is as follows:

28 pairs of socks
2 hats
1 monkey
1 TP teepee

It was actually kind of a pitiful knitting year. :( Maybe I'll do better next year... I have a feeling it will depend on my ratio of knitter to non-knitter friends in Seattle.

Listening to: Bullet with Butterfly Wings ~ Smashing Pumpkins, #1 Crush ~ Garbage

May your days...

be Crazy & Bright!



Pattern: plain ol' socks
Yarn: Perchance to Knit in Primarily
Started: 12/14/08
Finished: 12/18/08

My little sister is getting socks - she knows because she picked out the yarn. And what a yarn she picked! I won it from The Loopy Ewe blog contest a while back, and it's always nice to knit with a new type of yarn.

The extra guest I mentioned earlier is my little sister's best friend, so I decided that both of them should get crazy socks. I'm currently turning the heels on the Zom-Bees! socks (Yarn Pirate in Killer Bees) for Cortnie.

Otherwise, I've pretty much just been at home - both because of the snow and I've had a sniffle. I'm feeling much better today, though. Too bad the snow had to get even worse now!

Listening to: New Moon ~ Cave In, Rusted Wheel ~ Silversun Pickups

I can knit pretty fast when I want to...

The Snail Marriage? socks are finished (as of Wednesday) and mailed to their recipient. In fact, she received them today!

This slightly blurry picture (no flash) shows the texture quite well.



Pattern: Monkey
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Cool
Started: 12/2/08
Finished: 12/10/08

Finished in 8 days, and I didn't even work on them full time. There was a day or so when they sat waiting for the verdict on the length of the leg. ;)

And now... back to the end of the gift knitting. I had an extra project sprung on me at the last minute in the form of an additional guest. I know the recipient will appreciate it and I'm happy to do it, but now I have a bit more knitting than I expected.

Listening to: Sorrow ~ Flyleaf, From Your Mouth ~ God Lives Underwater

Casting on some more...

So, as I said in the last post, that wasn't all of my casting on frenzy.

Freeing up those size 1 needles allowed me to rescue these little toes which had been hanging out on 2.5mm needles for a few months. (And that was after being the Reversi socks for Sock Madness which I just didn't like and ended up frogging) I started the toes intending to do the Jacobean socks while coming home from sock camp last April (I know, I know...) but since toe-up socks aren't my favorite and I needed my size 1s for much more pressing sock concerns... well they got neglected.



Now that the size one needles are free they're back in action using the Anastasia Socks pattern that I've been meaning to make for about forever. Overall a success... so far.

And of course getting the 2.5mm needles out of those toes allowed me to cast on for a much more important pair of socks!



My friend Rachel bought this yarn long ago and I promised to make her socks with it. And I tried, really I did! First I started the Canal du Midi pattern from Knitting On the Road, but I just hated knitting it so much I knew it would never get finished. The socks sat around for about a year until I frogged them, then I moved 3 times in 2 months and the yarn got misplaced. I found it and started one of the patterns from Knitting Vintage Socks, I honestly don't remember which one, but it also was not a winner.

So now it's been easily 2 or 3 years and Rachel is getting married in January and asked if I could pretty please make her the socks for her "something blue" and really, how could a friend deny a request like that? Especially since I've owed her these socks for years now and have made about 100 other pairs of socks in that time. I am really a bad friend. So I have started the Monkey pattern which is perfectly mindless and never fear, the socks are already much farther than when I took this picture a couple days ago.

And last, but certainly not least, I present Blurple Waves:



I thought up this project quite a while back as a solution to all my gorgeous 1 or 2 balls of worsted-ish weight yarns in blue and purple. I got many of them as gifts from the many secret pal swaps I participated in, and a girl can only use so many hats. Plus, as you may have noticed, I don't knit many hats. These are really beautiful yarns from Lorna's Laces Worsted to Colinette to yarns from little farms across the US - and they really deserve to be used.

So I came up with this idea... I could knit a blanket in a chevron pattern with all these yarns, since they are all blue and purple and go well together. I can knit up what I have and add to it when I get special gift balls of yarn, and if I start doing SP swaps again I can ask for yarn for it too. :) I had the forethought to buy the needles a few months ago so it was all ready to go, and after casting on 299 stitches (eek!) I'm off!

Casting On

I finished a rather large secret project and figured it was the cue to begin one of my phases of frenzied casting on. The truth is, I hate casting on. I'd much rather knit and knit and knit some more, so when I feel like casting on I like to run with it. And run with it I did...

We all know I've been waiting years for the Ribby Cardi, and I even swatched already, so I cast on and left it in the "yarn room" by my DVD watching chair. It's on a cone so I don't anticipate taking it anywhere. Instead I've surrounded it with all my knitting accoutrements and left it in a convenient place to grab while I'm watching Bones on DVD.



Of course that wasn't enough so on Saturday I headed over to the bead store, bought some beads, and started Ice Queen.



Ok, not that impressive yet, and I haven't even started the beading. But a provisional cast on of 156 stitches! I haven't worked with Kidsilk Haze before, and I'm not sure I'm a fan - I actually really don't like silk but it belonged to a friend who is allergic to mohair and was up for grabs. I figured I could use it to knit something for a gift and I had just seen the Ice Queen pattern... But it's kind of like knitting with fuzzy dental floss.

Of course, when starting lots of new projects it's important to finish older ones to free up needles.



Pattern: Gentleman's Shooting Stockings from Knitting Vintage Socks
Yarn: Universal Yarns Ditto
Needles: 2.25mm
Started: 11/12/08
Finished: 12/1/08

This is a nice relatively mindless textured pattern. The texture is much more visible in real life than in the picture. I modified the pattern for a 72 st cast on and no calf shaping (because of the shorter cuff) for a woman's L size.

So if I were sane that would be the end of it, but I'm not so I went on a mission into the garage to try to find that Christmas stocking I was knitting for my mom last year and finish it. The mission was unsuccessful - unfortunately I think I put it "somewhere safe". I have a tendency to do that with things and then forget where that safe place was. In fact, during the search for the stocking I found some great cherry print fabric I bought to make a sundress with and put "somewhere safe" over a year ago - I've been looking for it ever since.

But I think you've had enough for one night so we'll talk about the rest of my new projects another day.