Long Knitting Weekend

With all the travel and time off for Thanksgiving, I got a bit of knitting done.



Pattern: plain... Melanie's Birthday Socks 2010
Yarn: Fleece Artist Merino Sock Special Seconds

Started: 10/31/10
Finished: 11/27/10

My sister and I have a tradition... each year I knit her socks for her birthday. She usually gets them around Thanksgiving, since her birthday is earlier in November and that's when I end up seeing her. She likes plain socks, so I knew hers could be my bus knitting for a bit.

Back in September or so, I asked her to pick yarn for her birthday socks, and she chose this one. It's really interesting yarn I got a while back from a Rut Bustin' sock swap on the knittyboard. I was a little sad to give away the socks from this yarn, but then again one really can't say much when the yarn has been sitting in stash since 2007.

Other than a few extra knots (it was a mill end, after all) the yarn was lovely! I still have quite a bit left, as the original skein was more like 1.5 skeins, so I might try to combine it with some other blackish leftovers and make socks for me. :D

How Knitting Saved My Toes

On Tuesday I had a snow day, and finished these:



Pattern: Garnish by me!
Yarn: Dream In Color Smooshy in Deep Seaflower
Started: 11/7/10
Finished: 11/23/10

On Monday morning I awoke to find snow outside. Snow before Thanksgiving in Seattle is extremely unusual, but I had seen a few flakes on Sunday, so it wasn't a total surprise. I bundled up in my heavy-duty coat (bought before my study abroad in Norway), my handknit wool socks, my hat, my scarf, and my mittens, Pretty Thing was also in my bag... and I went to work. I had to wait for the bus for a very long time, but it was otherwise uneventful.



The way home, however, was not. To make a long story short, after a freezing 2.5 hour wait at the bus stop (I was much warmer than my non-knitting counterparts), I finally caught a bus which took me most of the way home. Since the next bus was nowhere in sight I ended up walking almost 3 miles home through the snow. And I don't think I've ever been more glad to be a knitter. By the time I got home I was freezing, but not half as freezing as I would have been without the knitwear!

Jera, again

Yarn: Stricken Smitten Smitten Merino Twist in Rune

My pattern Jera was in Knitcircus in the Fall 2010 issue. Now that the winter issue is live, it's available for sale on Ravelry.



Yarn: Three Fates Yarns Eponymous in Olivia

My fabulous photographer Louise and I had a little photo shoot earlier this week. Then my fabulous layout-designer MJ made me a cute logo and a layout and then stayed on Skype chatting with me as I tweaked it into its final shape. Over the next while I'll convert my older patterns to the new fancy layout.



More knitting to come soon. :)

The End of a Story

Pattern: Pretty Thing by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
Yarn: Handspun 100% angora from New Hampshire Sheep & Wool
Started: 8/7/10
Finished: 11/11/10

When I lived in Boston, I went to a lot of sheep and wool festivals. Back in 2006 I won a skein of handspun Angora at the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool. The 4H always had a raffle, and my friends and I would buy tickets and go about placing them randomly in the boxes of things that looked pretty cool. I can't remember anyone else winning something, but I could be wrong. A little while later this came in the mail:



And then it sat in my stash. See, it's not sock weight (nor would one probably want to make socks with handspun 100% angora!) I alternated between forgetting it existed and wondering what I would ever make with it... and then I saw Pretty Thing. What a perfect project for a small skein of cloudlike yarn!

So in August I started it. It sat (and sat). I am not very good at knitting things that aren't socks, especially when they're for me and have no deadline. But I took it with my on my Port Townsend trip and worked on it a bit at the coffee shop there.



Recently it's been getting cold, and I've been wanting to finish something for that sense of accomplishment. Wednesday night I was chatting with MJ on Skype for several hours and managed to make it most of the way through. With only a few more rows left, I finished it yesterday. I wore it today and it is as fluffy and cozy as I ever hoped. :)