Snow Day!

DSCN5284

Originally uploaded by spacekittyknits.

I finished M’s scarf just in time for the snowpocalypose to hit the eastern seaboard and the Philadelphia area. She was very cozy.

This is Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s “One Row” scarf, knit in Malabrigo worsted in “Amoroso.” I used two skeins. I tried to also make M some Fetchings to go along, but I didn’t have enough yarn for both. Either I got a gigantically long scarf, or a shortish scarf + mittens. M chose gigantor scarf.

There’s a dude skiing outside my window.

JFC

It’s been six and a half million years since I was here. Dinosaurs literally walked the earth last time I posted. Okay.

Last time you saw me, I was at Rhinebeck in October. What.

November
I wrote a novel: ongoing! Original goal of National Novel Writing Month is 50,000 words in 30 days. I have 90,000 now, after 3 months. It’s almost done. Sort of.

I finished Juno for my grandmother for Christmas.

10/21/09-11/13/09, Juno Regina in JL Yarn Vinca. Pink! Lauretta loved it. Blocked it on my shiny new blocking wires which were a fabulous birthday gift from my mum. <3

I finished my Clover socks.

Clover by Kate Blackburn, fun to knit, in my handdyed in a “gradient” that was actually just kind of mostly purple. Brand! New! Picture! I blame my lightless dorm room partly for why I don’t blog. Pictures are crap. Blah.

December
Socks for granddaddy:

“No one has ever paid such attention to my feet!” Dec 10-20, 2009. Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in “China Blue.”

Clapotis for mom:
no picture! Sadpants.
Clapotis by Kate Gilbert, in BMFA Mediumweight “Tanzanite”: October 26-December 21, 2009. Purple! Shiny. Excellent.

Also in December was Finals Week and a personal ass-kicking, as well as winter break. I went home and promptly spent every day sleeping, writing, internetting, eating at weird hours, running occasionally in the mornings, and knitting. I ignored Daegmund the whole time and felt bad. Oh well. Made many plans. Spent time with friends. Enjoyed myself!

In January, I finished some Christmas presents, such as Dad’s gloves and Disco the hedgehog:

gloves by DROPS, 12/22/09-1/14/10, KnitPicks Gloss.

Hello terrible dorm picture! This was for Sarah. Smith by Ysolda Teague, with Cascade 220 and Berocco alpaca and fluff. 12/24/09-1/21/10.

The Whirlpool socks from my personal sock club got started and finished…

December 2, 2009 – January 3, 2010. Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in “Lakeview,” plus beads!!!!!!!!

ALSO, my pride and joy of the month:

The motherfucking DNA hat.

LOL. omg. So excellent. I had to knit it three times because it was too small EVERY TIME. Fuck you colorwork. Whatever.

Anyway. In the end, successful. January 1-19, 2010, Cascade 220, no pattern, just the chart on my Ravelry page (above).

Finished winter break with a whole lot more of the same, and came back to school. Had an impromptu “airing of the stash” all over my bed.

Not bad, eh? Still not buying more yarn. I just need to not.

Oh, also forgot, new fun incarnation of the sock yarn blanket!

This one is the Ten Stitch Blanket that I saw Erin knitting and waaaaaaaaannntteddd. So I ripped out the squares and went to town.

I started two new pairs of socks, also. My shitty shitty photography does not do these two justice, because they are both SUPER AWESOME.

The first (started at home) is York and Lancaster by the Lisa Grossman (the Tsock Tsarina). I bought the kit at Rhinebeck, and I adore it. Except that it has colorwork and pattern and is WAY TOO HARD to work on while also taking notes in Organic Chem and Biology of Macromolecules. FUCK. I love these. They are not getting worked on. ;_;

Also, Viper Pilots, still super awesome, still too hard to work on and take notes. Wah! I want them. Yarn is Neota Designs Zephyr in “Mountain Majesty” or something. Estes Park.

AAAAAANNNDDDD finally, what I actually HAVE been working on because it was easy enough:
One Row Scarf and Fetchings for Mary in Malabrigo “Amoroso.” No picture because I can’t get my camera to acknowledge a) light or b) saturation, so fuck it. Whatever. It’s very red.

and technically I’m still working on my Bayerische socks, but remember when we talked about things being too hard to work on while note-taking? These are too brain-consuming to even work on while doing fuck-all else. What.

THE END

Welcome to February. See you guys in May, probably.

Or for Ravelympics, which at this point I’m participating in with my goal being KNIT ANYTHING EVER.

Oh. Hai.

Radio silence for the win.

So, that happened. School’s been kicking my ass for 3+ months now. Awesome! I’m taking two lab sciences and a difficult math class, plus an anthro class, so basically I spend all my time doing work.

Except for in the month of November, when I spent all my time doing work so I could spend a few hours writing a novel between 11pm and 1am every day. I love my novel. No seriously. But I had to put it down until exams are over (December 18 please arrive soon).

But! Here’s what I’m really here for. I went to pick up my mail today and had a package. Not expecting any mail, I was surprised. When I was handed the package, I squished it a bit, confused, muttering, “This squishes like yarn.” (Quietly.)

(there was candy too, but I eated it)

I just wanted to send a giant thank you to Mandy. It’s been a rough week, and it’s going to keep being rough, but Mandy sent me two skeins of Peace Fleece in a yummy moss green and two patterns: Dinosaurs and Big Teddy with Overalls. Seriously. Thank you so much.

School has made me lose my mind for anything that isn’t Organic Chem or Genetics or Flux Integrals.

Thank you Mandy. Thank you so much.

LOL I just checked my Ravelry, and of course now I remember where this is from. MANDY! You rock hardcore. Thank you. I was all “mystery package yarn?!?!??!?!?” for a few hours today. Hah.

Oh, and I’ve knit some stuff. Or whatever.

Rhinebeck 2009

I finally got to go!

Okay, first apologies for my extralong unplanned hiatus. This year has been outrageously busy; I barely have time to knit, let alone talk about it. Unf.

So, Rhinebeck. Last spring I missed the Maryland S&W for the spring festival here at school, so this year when fall break and Rhinebeck lined up, I was determined to go!

The Highlights
I finished my FLS in the car at a rest stop in New York on my way down from Vermont from visiting a friend. Sewed on the buttons in a parking lot!

Classy, no?

Animals!

Meeting up with old friends and making new friends!

The Ravelry party, no doubt.

So many knitters taking over!


(LOL)

Went back the second day for more animals and to purchase the yarn I’d fondled the day before.

Then I ran into Jody, go figure!

Too much fun.

So there’s my finished February Lady, as well as my Quincy and Esperanza hat and scarf set. Malabrigo. Awesome. I really love the Quincy (by Jared Flood) construction; it makes me feel incredibly intelligent as a knitter.

I’ve got my Christmas gifts in the works now… hopefully I can get them finished in time. Most of my knitting these days takes place in class because I don’t have time outside of class (!!!). Also, starting November 1st I’ll be working on another novel for NaNoWriMo, so that’ll be a giant time suck. I need to invent more hours in the day. Eep!

My Rhinebeck Sweater…

is under way! Squee!

I’m finally knitting the February Lady Sweater, as planned. I’m knitting it in the Brooks Farm Four Play wool/silk blend that I tried to knit a sweater out of this spring, but failed. It’s knitting up beautifully now, and I’m psyched. I’m going to go visit my friend at Middlebury the week before, and then drive down to the festival and camp out in my car. =D It lines up perfectly with my fall break!

Okay, crap, I didn’t mean to leave this alone for two months, but many things happened since you last saw me!

So, since I last posted, I finished work and went on vacation, and then got back from vacation and went to school, and have been educating myself for four weeks. I have since struggled valiantly to keep up with my Google Reader, but right now, five whole weeks after getting home, I am still ~175 posts behind.

Before I left, I finished the Charade socks.

Start: May 26, 2009
End: July 31, 2009
Pattern: Charade
Yarn: Crash Into Ewe Merino Sock, in “Lady Sings the Blues”
Needles: US 2

Next were the Anastasia socks, which I started before we left as a new selection from my personal sock club.

Start: August 1, 2009
End: August 19, 2009
Pattern: Anastasia Socks
Yarn: Jojoland Melody
Needles: US 2

These were fun, and simple. I knit them all over the country!

I knit another pair while on vacation, and started another pair when I came up to school, but I haven’t taken pictures of them yet. Ack!

I’ve started to rethink my sock yarn blanket, too. I know, I’ve been working on the original since like, 2007, but I think this method might work better. It means I can use up every little scrap ever, and always be working on one piece, and not have to think about shaping too much.

It’s the Ten Stitch Blanket, inspired for me by Erin. I love the look of the mitered squares of the original blanket, but I think I’m going to like working on this one even better.

So, so far I’m just knitting what’s there, and I’ll see how quickly it grows, and how excellent it looks. So far so good.

Unf. October is almost here. I love October! Maybe we’ll get our regular I LOVE OCTOBER post on 10/1/09, but no promises. I have no goddamn time to do anything except problem sets and knit in class.

non-video post

I was going to do a video post for simplicity’s sake, but it was too difficult. Go figure.

Charade socks are coming along– I’m past the heel turn by now, and have finished the gussets. Yesterday at work I separated them from one another and I am working them one at a time. Not that this is particularly logical, given that the repeat is so short row-wise, but they seem to go faster. Also one sock was less unwieldy than two yesterday when I was knitting AT WORK because it was SO SLOW, so there.

Sock yarn blanket has 1.5 new squares: the green one, and the teal one. I love this blanket. That is all.

Last, I’m about 12 or 13 rows from the bind-off of this shawl, but it’s SO BIG by now that each row takes me 45 minutes. Plus nupps. It’s lovely, though, and the only thing I’m worried about is the liiiiiiittle tiny ball of yarn that exists now. Hopefully it can carry me through.

Bayerische socks are abandoned, because they’re hard! There’s no convenient time or place to work on them. Bah. Qiviut cowl is coming along, slowly but surely. It’s about 3/4 of the way done.

Today, I’m working at the LYS, and may have convinced one of the ladies from real!work to come in and learn how to knit. Hooray!

The Mossy Cobblestone

So I’ve done some work on my WIPs for June, and I’ll talk about them later, but I wanted to record the Mossy Cobblestone Pullover I knit for my dad.

In April or so, WEBS was having a sale, and a spark of inspiration came to me! I would knit my dad a sweater for Christmas! I even had a pattern chosen! Perfect!

So I bought the yarn, and it showed up, and I gazed at it. I bought the Cobblestone pattern. I put them together and admired them. I pulled out my favorite bamboo size 8 circulars, ready to knit.

Then I started knitting. There was no reason to wait; sweaters take a long time… maybe I’ll finish it by his birthday (in September).

I started it on May 2nd, and actually plowed through this fabulous pattern, this fabulous sweater, in under a month. It was awesome. I loved knitting it. The garter stitch is all squishy, and the pattern was entertaining, but simple. I could knit it in class, etc, but it was never boring.

I love this picture, because I was so excited to be almost done with it! I finished the sweater on May 31st, before Father’s day, even, so I folded it up and set it on my chair and let my cat shed on it.

A sweater in June, my dad joked when he received it, how appropriate! But I knew he loved it. He went to Oregon in the last two weeks, and took the sweater with him. It was chilly there!

Adorable.

A successful sweater, I think. Squishy! I’d knit it again, but I’m happy. Now I have to think of something else to knit my dad for his birthday.

WIP Wrestling: Round 1

I wanted to get this posted earlier today, July being the month of wrestling, but we went out and watched Public Enemies with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale instead. It had to be done.

This month’s agenda: get my WIPs under control. Okay, so no, I haven’t gone mad and cast on 39526407 new projects, but I’m feeling like they’re stalled and I want new things. The best solution, apparently? Work on my current projects like crazy! Maybe sticking to them and blogging and committing will make everything work out smoothly.

First up: The Lace Ribbon Scarf.

Status: 25% completed.
Weight Class: Lightweight (fingering).
Category: Headspin.
Final goal: 5 feet in length (unless I run out of yarn or want to die).
Plan of attack: Knit on this during lunch every day until completed.
Other notes: A shop sample for Lovelyarns to help them sell weird cotton/nylon sock yarn that won’t sell. Yay! Ripped out a fugly project to make this one. It’s already a bit beat, right?

Next in the ring: The Aeolian Shawl.

Status: ~75% completed.
Weight Class: Featherweight (lace)
Category: Backslide.
Final Goal: Uh, a shawl?
Plan of attack: Work on this at home, while watching Supernatural and being antisocial.
Other notes: It’s getting there! Each row goes smoothly, but it’s been hot, so I don’t want to take it to work and knit on it in the sun. Bleh.

Third to fight: Bayerische.

Status: ~25% completed.
Weight Class: Lightweight (sock).
Category: Leglock.
Final Goal: At least past the heels, if nothing else.
Plan of attack: Once the scarf is finished, these will come with me to work.
Other notes: They’re too complicated (manually) to work on while watching TV, so audiobooks at lunch will be the perfect time. These have languished too damn long to be left alone anymore. I will knit them! (Although no promises to finish, because they are complicated).

Fourth in line: Charade.

Status: 23% completed.
Weight Class: Lightweight (sock).
Category: Leglock.
Final Goal: One complete pair of socks.
Plan of attack: I might take them apart and knit them one at a time. That would get the progress to show faster… but then they might end up different lengths. No real plan yet.
Other notes: Faster work than Bayerische, naturally, but no less imposing.

Fifth on the needles: The Garter Stitch Mobius Cowl.

Status: ~50% completed.
Weight Class: Featherweight (lace).
Category: Headbutt.
Final Goal: One mobius cowl of coziness.
Plan of attack: Take this with me when going places that need my concentration to be elsewhere (SHIT I should have taken it to the movie tonight. Good job, Double Vandal).
Other notes: Simple, soothing, but hot as fuck.

Last, but not forgotten: The Sock Yarn Blanket.

Status: ~22% finished.
Weight Class: Lightweight (sock).
Category: Armbreaker.
Final Goal: Who cares?
Plan of attack: Work on this at all.
Other notes: I just need to show this one a little love again. I love working on it, and now that the base row is completely established, I no longer need to work individual squares. This is both good and bad: good, because I feel like real progress is happening; bad, because now it’s not quite as portable.

Onward! Expect regular updates. I will.

dyed roving

After lunch yesterday I pulled out the dye supplies and three of my ten (10!!!!) bumps of roving, and started playing. I got these bumps recently, mailed back from Still River Mill, where I sent the fiber I was gifted LAST summer to be processed. It came back in fabulous form, 14 lbs of fiber, and is sitting on the porch now, waiting to be explored.

I dyed three “colorways,” one in each bump. The first one was reminiscent of the first yarn I dyed and sold called “Sea Turtles.”

It was green and turquoise and yellow, and came together beautifully. I soaked the bump first, whole, in a pot of water and vinegar. Then I put it back onto the plastic bag it was wrapped in, and poured the dye over it, in thirds. The dye stuck in the bump for the most part, but also soaked through and out the bottom. The plastic bag caught that.

Then I pushed the air out of the bag and tied it closed, and rolled it around the patio, getting the dye all over the bump. Then I microwaved it in the bag for ten minutes, rinsed it out, and unwound it very carefully so I could hang it up to dry.

Once they were dry, I wound them up into 4 oz balls (or as near as possible). They’re so fun and squishy and colorful!

I experimented with different ways to dye and cook, and I’m still working on the best way to do it.

This one, “Seahorses,” ended up with a lot of white left in the middle, so I had to redye it, and now i have two similar-but-not-the-same colorways.

“Octopus” on the other hand dyed all the way through, for the most part, and was pretty consistent across the whole bump.

I like the little flashes of teal in among the pink/purple.

All of the big, 4oz ones, will be for sale. I’m going to do some sample spinning with the few 1oz pieces, but keep an eye out! I’ll photograph all the new bumps soon (it’s raining now) and either put them up on the SpaceCat etsy store, or through Ravelry, or maybe even at my LYS. I’ll let you know!

blog fail

Darn it.  I was going to try to blog twice every month until December when my 101 in 1001 ends, but I failed for May.  Once I finished my exams, I went home and started work right away, and didn’t have a lot of time to knit, let alone blog.  So, that fell through.  Hopefully I can manage at least two posts in June.

Anyway, today’s about a good a day to blog as any. My sister is graduating from high school today! Hopefully I’ll put pictures at the end of this post, when I get to publishing it.

Okay, what’s happened since the last time I was here? I finished my Flamingo Thuja socks for the PW, and gave them to him last week. I didn’t get a picture of them on his feet, but here they are in their enormity.

They took me a shockingly short amount of time for such large socks. April 19th to April 30th, and done. The yarn is Dream in Color Smooshy in “Flamingo Pie,” and I knit them on US 2s.

Then I finished my mom’s Princess Sweater from Christmas. My sister dropped the ball on knitting the second sleeve, so I finished it, blocked all the pieces, and sewed it up. Finally. It fits great.

Started (again) January 14th, finished May 25th. The pattern is the “Sidelines Top” from the fall 2008 IK. Yarn is Cascade 220 Superwash, and we used US 8 and 9 to knit it.

That same day I sucked it up and crocheted the edging onto my Ballet Camisole, finishing that too. I don’t love it, but it’s not terrible, and I’m letting it sit for a while before I try wearing it again.

At the same time, however, I’m looking at other things I could do with that yarn instead of this top. I haven’t had a lot of luck lately with sweaters etc for me. Started this one April 13th, finished May 25. Yarn is Valley Yarns Southwick, which is a bamboo/cotton blend, and lovely to touch. Knit it on US 6s.

The last thing I finished recently was the Mossy Cobblestone Pullover, but I can’t show you that quite yet.

Okay, heading off to work now… sorry for the lame post, but I’ll do better this month! Pictures of S graduating forthcoming. Also a WIP post! Or several!