Excess

I took Friday off as a mental health day, so I had a long weekend to enjoy! And enjoy it I did. Though I was very sad to hear over my Twitter feed that Knit Happens is closing its doors, I can't deny I squealed a bit when I heard that they would begin their closing sale on Friday. Friday, which I took off! And which the SO had also conveniently taken off! He was hoping we would be able to watch meteors at an ungodly hour on Thursday night/Friday morning, but his plans were foiled by rain, leaving him free to drive me to the sale.

We arrived before the store opened. There were several other knitters hovering outside the door. We joked about circling like vultures waiting for lions to leave a carcass. We were mostly polite when the doors opened, filing in with some degree of order. Stocks for some items that I was interested in were clearly low or depleted already (curses), but I still scored pretty big.



That, my friends, is 11 balls of S. Charles Tinka and 2 balls of Filatura di Crosa Superior - otherwise known as the ingredients for Leyfi.

I nearly plotzed. The Superior was 50% off and the Tinka was 60% off and this sweater, which I thought was far outside of my financial reach (Superior retails for $25.00/ball, bringing the tab to $50 before you even add in the Tinka), is now going to be MINE. MINE MINE MINE AHAHAHAHA.

Ahem. Sorry. Of course this world is not perfect, and I now face a sizing issue. I have enough yarn, according to the guidelines, to make the 40" size, plus a ball of Tinka to spare. However, this leaves me with no ease at all in the sweater. The next size up takes one ball of Tinka more than I have, and would give me 4 inches of ease, which seems like it might be too much. Rar. Right now I am leaning towards making the 40". Knowing me it's unlikely I will get exact gauge anyway, so maybe if I'm lucky my gauge issues will give me a little extra ease (but not too much).

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I also got this:



Schaefer Andrea, 100% silk, in colorway Barbara McClintock. I don't know what this will become. I'm thinking about Waves of Grain, maybe? I feel like it should be something corn/grain related (there are not, as it turns out, all that many corn-related lace designs). I can't help it - I'm a theme person. I'm kind of regretting not signing up for Bad Cat Designs Summer Swatch Me thingy, because this totally looks like corn growing on stalks to me.

Once again, though, I'm getting ahead of myself. I have a ton of projects to worry about before I get fussed about that.

Anyway. In addition to the above-mentioned yarn, I got a Euclan sampler pack. I have tried Kookabura wash and Soak wash, and Euclan is the only one I haven't tried yet. I also snagged an Addi Turbo lace needle. I want to try one of those babies out. I love my KP interchangeable needle set, but it's true that they aren't the sturdiest. If I like the Addi lace needles I may invest in an Addi interchangeable set. However, the lace interchangeables that they've come out with have shorter tips than usual to accommodate a 16" cable. I don't want shorter tips, I find them very uncomfortable to work with, so I'm absolutely waiting until they come out with full length tips. In the meantime, I'll try the one I bought and see how I like them.

Since I was in the area, I went to check out Fibre Space, since I had never been their before. OMG. So much love. I really wish they were easier to get to/closer to my home. I walked in and they had big signs that said LACE, WORSTED, FINGERING. I thought, FINALLY, a yarn shop that understands how I shop. I went straight for the lace area, and then straight to the sock yarn. I looked over all the other yarns, too, but it was so nice to be able to immediately see all the yarn in the weight I needed/wanted.

I bought this:



And this:



The top is Fiberphile in a colorway whose name I have totally forgotten, and the one on the bottom is Dragonfly Fiber Djinni in the awesome colorway "Reluctant Dragon." I am now on a mission to find the perfect dragon-themed sock to make with it. I squealed a little when I picked up this yarn because it uses the same yarn base as my beloved Casbah.

I also had a little falling down during the week and ordered yarn from Fiber Optic, so in addition to the yarn I bought on Friday, I came home to two skeins in my mailbox.





I regret nothing. (though I must observe from the last few pictures, I seem to be going through a green period)

I ordered gift yarn from KnitPicks to get a jump on the Christmas knitting (also some birthday knitting for which I am woefully behind) and that...did not arrive. Even though it should have. I'm going to have to call the post office because I am really annoyed that my packages are not coming. My package from Twilight Knits has also not arrived, and I'm really mad about it. I contacted her and she definitely mailed it, and she is very graciously sending me another skein, which I really appreciate since I don't hold her responsible for the failings of USPS. Either someone else is getting all my yarn deliveries, or someone at the post office is hoarding it for themselves. I am not amused. I know my address has been correct on all these packages, so I don't know what's going on.

In addition to all this yarn acquisition, I did actually do some knitting. All this shopping has induced some guilt over some of my UFO's, so I pulled a bunch of them out. I finished my Summer Flies Shawl since I was close to the end - although this took a great deal more time than I expected because of the ruffle. My love of ruffles will kill me one day. I adore ruffles on the finished project. I hate that the only way to get a ruffle is to rapidly increase from a reasonable number of stitches to an insane number of stitches (or the reverse - either way, you are knitting an insane number of stitches) and then knit stockinette until you want to die.





At least it was a worsted weight yarn. Cut it a little close with the yarn requirements on that one. The picot bind off took foreeeeever. These pictures are unblocked, since it was late when I finished.

I finished a swatch for the Simone sweater from French Girl Knits (shut up. it still counts as finishing if you started the swatch more than four months ago).



I didn't get guage. I was closest on the size 8 needle, but I may have to knit another swatch with a 9 to see if I can do better. Supatight Knitta strikes again.

I pulled out my featherweight cardigan and began binding off the collar. This project needs nothing but that bind off and sleeves to be finished. Shameful.



I'm a little worried my bind off is too tight, even though I'm using a needle something like three or four sizes up. I need to decide whether to keep going or undo what I've done (again - I started out with a needle only one or two sizes up) and try again with either a larger needle or a different bind-off technique. I wish I could remember what I did for the bottom edge, as that bind off is both beautiful and appropriately stretchy.

Not pictured is Veronique from French Girl Knits, which is also on my list of "just suck it up and finish it" projects. This one needs to be seamed before I continue, and I intended to block it and then seam it, since seaming unblocked edges seemed like a recipe for madness. However my hatred for blocking and my hatred for seaming have combined to sideline this project for months, which is really too bad because I really, really like the garment in the book. Therefore, I commit to you, blog, that before I post again, I shall block and seam this piece so that I may knit on. Once seamed, it will be knit in the round until I'm satisfied with the total length of it, and then it will need sleeves.

Both of these garments are knit in fine weight yarns - Veronique in Kidsilk Haze and the Featherweight cardigan in a laceweight (knit picks gloss lace, I think) so even though there isn't much left to be done on them, finishing these still represents kind of a lot of knitting. Boring knitting. Time to get some movies from Netflix.

Rollercoaster

It's been an emotional and chaotic week and change, but let's skip the personal drama in favor of a little knitting.

First up: 1 completed moody mansock.



Next, 1 featherweight cardigan in Knitpicks Shimmer Lilac Dream



1 Veronique circular shrug, only a couple of inches short from the decrease-and-cast-on section that creates the back ruffle and the sleeve holes.



And finally, one bane of my existence (you want to know another? spelling. I typed that word three times and I'm still not sure it's right). Sorry about all the hair in the photo, I put my hand up against my shoulder to model the shot (since laying my hand down on the arm of the couch had not produced very good shots) and didn't think to flip my long frizzing flowing locks out of the way (I love parentheses).



This is a twice-knit spiraluscious mitt. I keep screwing up the pattern. Saturday I knit almost to the point where it is in that picture, only to find that I had made a mistake one or two rows after starting the thumb gusset which was very obvious (see those diagonal lines that go across the back? kind of obvious when you get a yarnover in the middle of one) and I had to rip back and reknit. I made a similar mistake Sunday night, though I caught it sooner, and had to pull it out and fix it. And now? Now, my friends? Now it is TOO SMALL. I am royally irked, but I have pretty much accepted that I'm going to have to reknit on bigger needles. It is possible that my mom's hands are smaller than mine, but it's so tight on me that I wouldn't wear it, and if by some freak occurence her feet are smaller than mine but her hands are larger, I will have sent her some very pretty tourniquets. Sigh.

The yarn is Fly Designs Nymph, their merino/tencel blend, which I chose because I love my merino/tencel socks and because it is a nice soft but strong blend that can put up with a fair amount of abuse. I did, I admit, expect the color to be a little more saturated, but I don't know why because it looks just like the picture on the website. Anyway, it's still pretty.. But, this overdue mother's day gift is going to be even more overdue because I have to start over. SIGH. No, I didn't knit a swatch. Look at that thing. Why would I bother? I did actually try it on sooner and find that it was coming out a little tight, but the bottom of it is actually fine and it is only the part that goes over the hand that cuts off circulation. SIGH.

In other news, I took a class on coloring with Copics from Laura, and had a very educational and interesting time. I went home that night and practiced.




I think I need more practice. And more markers. And better paper.





Why didn't I crop that last picture better? I think I uploaded the wrong one. Anyway, I think it actually went pretty well for my first solo adventure. I'm particularly find of the rose, although I need to get a more intermediate color. The shading is rather dramatic as one of these was a 2 and one of them was a 7 (was it R32 and R37? or was it 22 and 27? or was it 29? I can't remember). Anyway, expect to see more Copic experiments in the future. I have a wedding shower to go to on Saturday and I have the perfect plan for a card for it, and one for the wedding.

I think my needles are on fire

SO MUCH KNITTING this weekend. Friday night, I knit on the moody mansock during my game time and I finished the first sock. Saturday morning, I sat down and finished my sweater. I even sewed the underarm seams and wove in the ends. That afternoon, I cast on for Veronique and by Sunday night I had around 8 inches completed. Monday, the SO and I went for a drive down Skyline and had dinner in our favorite restaurant from when we were in college before heading back. I took the panda socks and the three-scarf ruana, figuring I would knit on the panda socks until it got dark and then knit on the ruana, which I don't need to see. Unnecessary! We got back just before 8 p.m. and it wasn't dark yet. I finished off the sock before I went to bed that night.

It felt really good to get some longstanding projects off the needles. The panda socks took me almost two months to knit for no good reason except that I was loaded down with other projects and some neuron in my brain refused to fire, so I never got the pattern memorized. I needed the pattern for the start of every round for some reason; once I got started on the round I was fine, but I couldn't seem to remember how to begin each round. Very annoying, but not the fault of the pattern at all. Just me.

Now that my #1 needles are free (or, at least they will be when I kitchener the toe tonight, I saved that for a more clear-headed moment) I really need to get a move on on the mitts for my mom that were supposed to be done ages ago.

The sweater is, as I feared, really too big for me. I'm sorry, I meant to say, the sweater has a lot of ease. Also, the sleeves are so long they come down to the first joint of my fingers at least. That's the only part that really bothers me, but there's no way to fix it unless I were to frog the entire yoke, and then frog and reknit most of the sleeves. I could just unravel them from the hem (or just cut them off, rejoin the yarn and knit down, I suppose) but...I'm fine with being done. It's still soft and comfy and I'll just wear it like it is. It does need to be blocked before it can really be shown in public, though, there is a discernable line where I started the yoke that I hope will come out in blocking. The part below the line is the stuff that had previously been blocked, and the stuff above the line has never been blocked, so it stands to reason that if I am lucky the line will even out with blocking.

But, now on to lighter and airier things. I'm knitting Veronique out of the discontinued Rowan Kidsilk Night in colorway Oberon, which is sort of a smokey grey with a touch of blue. The metallic thread in the yarn is a little rough running between my fingers - I wrap my yarn around my first three fingers so it runs between my ring finger and my pinky, so the metalic bit scratches right along that little soft inside area of my finger. But, it's not too bad, I'm okay with it. This garment has been a thousand times less frustrating than the Moonlight Sonata stole, leading me to believe that I did in fact make a poor choice for the yarn on that one, and I'm right to give up on it. In simple stockinette, the yarn is much easier to work with. I'm not saying I wouldn't use it to knit lace - I just wouldn't use it to knit lace that requires stitch manipulation more complicated than your basic decreases (it was the funky increase used in the midnight sonata shawl that really got me).

I've also given up on the Water Turtles Shawl. I don't like it. I like both the pattern and the yarn just fine, but I don't like them together. So that project is going to the frog pond.

And just like that, I'm back down to a manageable number of projects.

And...just like that, I'm really tempted to start more. I've been waiting for Pink Lemon Knits to come out with her new pattern, and she finally has: Flamenco. I have two skeins of the same yarn she used in a different colorway that have been sitting in the stash since the early days of my knitting career. I do kind of love the color she used, though - one of the lifelong issues I struggle with is that the colors I love to knit are not necessarily, or do not entirely encompass, the colors that look good on me. I'm not a big fan of bright colors, but I do look really good in red. I have compromised in the past by looking at yarns in the burgundy type range, but the two skeins of Suri Blue that I have are in Ruby, which is by no means a subdued red. It's perfect for the theme though. A flaming red flamenco flourish!

But, I will hold off as long as I can, to keep the guilt of unfinished projects from watering down the pleasure of a new one. I know that there are no knitting police, but I have tried it both ways, and I really think that it's better to live with the anticipation than to try and do too much at once.

Since I have no knitting pictures to display all of my projects this week, I will leave you with a picture from our drive yesterday instead: