November recap

So how's my November craft list looking?

• Finish DNA


• Finish Grandfather Gloves


• Finish those damn sleeves, if not the front too, for Pinup Queen


• CLEAN OUT STASH (in progress)


• Make/felt Deb's turtle


• Roger's socks


• Start Mom's Secret Present


• Swatch for/start Rosedale?


• At least START Michael's afghan

Dismal. Good thing I have a week between finals and Christmas.

So here's the plan:

• I feel like watching a movie tonight, and I bet I can finish Mom's Thing during the watching.


• Scarf Swap scarf gets this weekend, I can get a bunch done on the bus to Portland


• Two more small gifts: turtle and socks. Those can be worked on the rest of this week and into next week


• Finals week into the next week: Kelly's sweater


• Finish my socks whenever there's time in between

I'm probably not going to get to the cloche hat I wanted to make myself before my trip. If I do, yay, if not, no big deal.

*blink*

Whoa. How could I let my knitting blog stagnate for 11 days? I'm disappointed in myself.

No worries, though, the knitting didn't stagnate. No pics, but progress reports:

Pinup Queen: I got through the sleeve increases, so now it's straight knitting for another 4 inches before the cap shaping. The end is in sight!

Grandfather Gloves: A finger and a half, a thumb, and many ends to go, then I'm done. (And they can be added to the upcoming blocking party, since they're slightly disproportionate.)

Mom's Thing: Going as smoothly as it always has.

Crazy Kroy Toe-Up: The toe is TEH POINTY! Should have figure-8-ed a few more stitches. I've turned the heel (picking up a double-wrapped purl stitch is a pain) and knit a bit of ankle, now for the ribbing and I'll have a pretty pink pointy-toed ankle sock. I like my socks short, what can I say?

Michael's Afghan: FINALLY started it. Found a different pattern, cast onto my Denises, and I've learned that Denises make ANY cheap-ass yarn bearable. Red Heart--smooth as silk. Homespun--no splitting with those needle tips! *worships needles*

So I had a bit of a bout with insomnia last night. Now, take a geek, add yarn and needles, and give her an idea that seems really good at 1 am, and what do you get?

Wool-Ease knit in stockinette on size 4 straight needles (to see how tight the fabric gets) with no purling involved. The knitting backwards thing isn't all that hard. I'm not going to stop purling any time soon, but I get pretty decently tensioned stockinette with this method. Found it was easier to wrap the yarn "backwards" on the backwards rows (easier to pull the yarn through that way) and then knit TBL on the regular knit rows. Sort of a bastard child of combined knitting?

And a new button over there...the Non-Yarn-Buying-Agreement. Saw it referenced on Donna's blog, who had a link to Margene's blog...you know, I think the link chain goes on, but that's where I've seen it. WONDERFUL idea. I've been on a major yarn binge lately, and it needs to stop. In fact, the destashing must continue. So I'm going to post some stuff on eBay tonight as soon as I take some pictures, and probably put some more stuff up on my destashing page. My financial situation needs it. February 1? I can certainly make it until then. *starts shaking from withdrawal* Yeah, ignore that. I can make it until then.

Finally--pictures!

Yeah, finally found my camera cable. It was on my desk....whodathunk? Since when do I put things somewhere that makes sense?

First, the DNA scarf. As I was taking this picture, it was crying to be blocked. Seriously crying. Can you really blame it? (Pay no attention to the unmade bed. I was cold tonight, so I've been under the covers while I do my homework and knit.)


And here's the fuzzy purple scarf I'm giving to my advisor's daughter for Christmas:

One ball of Sirdar Funky Fur. The first project I've made with my new set of Denises! LURVE the Denise needles. Mmmm.

Anyway. Tonight I caved and started something that ISN'T a present for someone else.

Isn't that the ugliest figure-8 toe you've ever seen? Actually, considering it's my first one EVER, it's pretty damn good. Using my one random set of Crystal Palace bamboo DPNs and quite disliking them, to tell the truth. They just kept sliding out at the beginning. We seem to be coming to terms with each other though, and I'm hoping by the time the socks are done we'll be on good terms, not just terms. Yarn is Kroy Socks in Fancy Free (which translates to Holy Crap Pink, so if they don't come out well I won't be too disappointed.) Wendy's generic toe-up pattern, which means this sock will also involve my first ever short row heel! Whoo...all the new stuff at once...can you handle it?

BTW, bought SnB Nation yesterday, pretty much sight-unseen. The pics are SO MUCH better than the SnB blog makes them out to be, and there are so many things in there that I want to make. For some reason though, I thought the chapter on adapting patterns was supposed to have instructions on how to resize patterns. *shrug* I can figure it out on my own, I suppose. I'm thinking the newsboy hat is in my future.....

It's finished!

Yep...I finished the DNA scarf. Sadly, I went to bed Sunday night rather than doing that last repeat. Did half of it before class last night, did the other half and *2* of the seed stitch rows after class and before falling asleep, and finished the seed stitch frantically before going to catch the bus to get to work today. Hence, no pics yet, I didn't have time! It still needs to be blocked too...I think I'm going to have to have a blocking party during finals week, because I have 3 gift scarves that need it. But, woo! I finished something!

My next FO will most likely be the Grandfather Gloves. I'm almost to the part where you separate off the thumb gusset on Glove #2, and after that it's easy knitting until the fingers, and then fiddly pain-in-the-ass knitting for the fingers. Maybe someday I'll experiment with using double knitting for the fingers of gloves...but not on a gift. The words "experiment" and "gift" do not belong in the same sentence.

So close, yet so far.....

It's almost midnight on a school night. I have one--ONE!--more repeat left on the DNA scarf. Part of me is saying, "yo, idiot, 9:00 classes are bad enough without not getting enough sleep." But the other part of me--the Bad Ass Knitter part of me--is telling me what a travesty it is to stop when I'm SO CLOSE to the end. Sort of like stopping at mile 25 of a marathon and saying, "Nope, I'm done, go on without me." What do I do?

Got a FO that didn't even make it on the WIP list, it went so fast. Made a fuzzy scarf for my advisor's 4-year-old daughter out of Sirdar Funky Fur. If I have enough time between everything else I have to do before Christmas, I want to make her a pair of mittens and use the rest of the Funky Fur to trim the wristbands. I know when I was 4 it was all about the matching sets of stuff. (Course, that was 21 years ago...4-year-olds might have changed since then.) Pictures when I find the USB cable for my digital camera. Yay for disorganization!

x-posted to Livejournal's knitting community

I was updating my sidebar on my blog, and realized that I still have a number of gifts to make for Christmas....has anyone started a Gift-Along? If not, anyone interested?

So I was waiting to post until I had time to take pictures of STUFF, but alas, I'm away from my camera (well, and my stuff), so you'll have to use your imagination.

First, my SP was none other than the lovely and talented Christina of La Principessa Knits. I got the last package on Thursday. It contained a green and gold-ish zippy case, 2 bags of candy, Chibi needles (I love me some Chibi needles!), and a Schenmayer (holy crap, I mangled the spelling) book of accessory patterns. I'm eyeing the Fair Isle earflap hat (oh, what the heck, Fair Isle might work better with yarn that ISN'T Red Heart--advice: always try new stuff with wool, because it is forgiving). Thank you Christina!

I decided it was cold enough to pull out the scarves, so I'm wearing one of the many eyelash scarves I made over the spring/summer. So soft, but I don't think I can bring myself to knit another one ever again. Endless garter stitch...ugh. Anyone want 3 random balls of Crystal Palace Splash? (I have mink, orangeade, and I think tide pool.) At least they go fast, because I have that yellow ball that I'm hoping will spontaneously become a scarf without me having to actually knit it, but the practical side of me is reminding me that things like that just don't happen.

WIP update:

Pinup Queen: I'm slowly but surely getting through the sleeves. They're supposed to be 18 1/2 inches before starting the caps, and they're at about 11 inches right now. Whoa, that means I'm *over* halfway through this sweater! I brought them with me to work on during my 3 hours on campus after class tonight.

DNA scarf: I've done 1.5/5 remaining repeats. So, 3.5 to go. Maybe this week. Honest! (I know, I know, I say that a lot.)

Grandfather Gloves: Haven't touched them in about a week. The instructions are mostly okay for doing the left glove, but there are points where it says "reverse". Which means I have to read through it very carefully and translate into small, easy words for myself. Those are also in my bag to work on tonight.

Mom's Whatever-It-Is: Such easy, mindless, yet absolutely beautiful knitting. And that's all I have to say about that.

Oooh, maybe I'll get to start a new project this week!

I'm a real knitter now.

I dreamed of yarn last night.

More specifically, Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk. The dark red color. Made into an insanely long, rather narrow stockinette stitch scarf (the rolling was an actual design feature), with fringe on the ends, and a beret to match. Wonder how many balls of yarn it would take. (If anyone has any insight on this let me know, because I hear WNW has a really good price on it.) *mentally pets yarn* Ooh....

Okay, back to reality.

Nah, right now I like yarnland better. *continues to mentally pet yarn*

If anyone needs me, I'll be dreaming....

The Big Reveal™

So.....I didn't want to do this until tomorrow, when she's supposed to receive the last package, but since my secret pal is apparently a detective as well as a radio DJ, today is the day. As she already figured out, I gave to Lara aka Vibegrrl. Lara, you were a pleasure to give to and I enjoyed stalking reading your blog :-) Hope you enjoy the last package!

My SP hasn't revealed herself yet, at least not totally. I received an e-mail from her Friday saying she still had one more package to mail (which I should receive today, except I'm fairly sure NO ONE in my building got any mail today, strangely enough) and would reveal herself then. I got a small package from her last....Wednesday I think?....with a grow-your-own-paper-flowers tree thingie and a lip balm decorated with all this Zen/Japanese-type art. I'm waiting to take pictures until I grow the tree, and I haven't had a chance to do that yet. Thank you SP (I at least know her name is Christina)!

Went to the LYS today to avoid any mention of politics in the Outside World and picked up a couple skeins of this new Noro yarn called Kujaku. It's wool wrapped in a polyester thread, and at intervals the thread completely wraps around the wool for about an inch. It's interesting. I experimental-knit some up on the bus on the way home, and I found I like it best in stockinette and in, oddly enough, purse stitch. Next up: I'll see how it felts.

Joining the bandwagon

Just like Natalie and Kris, I figured I might as well list my November Knitting Goals.

• Finish DNA


• Finish Grandfather Gloves (These first two, hopefully this week)


• Finish those damn sleeves, if not the front too, for Pinup Queen


• CLEAN OUT STASH


• Make/felt Deb's turtle


• Roger's socks


• Start Mom's Secret Present


• Swatch for/start Rosedale?


• At least START Michael's afghan

And for December:

• Figure out something for Russ


• Make myself some socks


• Make sure I didn't forget anyone on my knitting list


• Finish Mom's Secret Present


• Make cloche hat that matches Windy City Scarf before going to England


• Block everything

There, it's all listed out, and I hopefully will get some of this done! It actually looks reasonably manageable....but then I have to add school to the equation. Putting Ruffles on hold for a bit. Christmas is a little more important right now.