OMG - I actually finished something!

Holy craziness! I have an FO to show off!!! I snapped a few pics of the finished Log Cabin bag as it dries. This morning was my first venture into felting, yippee.

It's all felted and fuzzy and I can't wait until it's dry. Had to get it done this morning so it would be dry in time to take with me tomorrow to show everyone at SnB. And I think I might have enough yarn left over to make another, slightly smaller, version. How cool is that?

Yesterday I started a new sock. I know, how long has it been since I did that? Couldn't help myself. The yarn (Stone Barn Fibers "Adrianna" from the Loopy Ewe) has been calling to me all week. I"m knitting it up into the "Temptation Top-Down Socks" by Wendy Johnson. Can't wait to get to the heel. It's done in a way I've never seen before.

Saturday was Derby Day. Lots of food and friends packed into the house (it rained all day) for the most exiting 2 minutes in sports. I still can't believe the favorite won. Just shows that I shouldn't ever bet on things because I like the underdogs and would lose all my money. Here's a shot of the famous burgoo:And the more famous Derby pie, before baking:

After baking:

So delicious. I was really good at snapping shots of the food and was trying so hard to talk to everyone that I didn't get out my camera to snap shots of all the people enjoying everything. Sigh. Maybe next year.

This morning, my nephews made a visit to the neighborhood. Mr. Mason is getting so big.

I took the Tomten over to show, and Elliott insisted on modelling for me.
Now, I just have to get the zipper I bought yesterday sewn in, and it's done. How crazy would that be? For me to finish 2 things in one week? Crazy.

Happy May

I actually have knitting things to show today. Nothing finished of course, but I'm getting there. Looking back on my trepidation about the log cabin bag, I'm a fool. I mean, I know that Kate is a good knitter and pattern designer, why wouldn't I trust the pattern? You would think that I would have learned to just go with it. But I haven't. Anyway, went to KotS on Tuesday morning and Kate said I was doing everything correctly, so I continued. And by the end of the night (SnB was Tuesday as well) this is what I had:

So cool. I loves it. Notice the difference in the two sides. Totally brilliant. Haven't had a chance to sit down and do the handle (which is all that's left on this bad boy before felting). Maybe Sunday. Onto something else. This is how far I am on the Clapotis. Loving this alot. Doesn't it just remind you of the crocuses and it's all springy and stuff. here's a close up of the stitch pattern.Gots to love intentionally dropped stitches. They're so liberating. Moving on. I started spinning the "Wrightwood" superwash merino I got a little while ago on etsy. It's my Earth spinning for Project Spectrum. It's very cool. I love the tweediness. In the department of no picture knitting, I finished the I-cord edging on the tomten for Elliott (finally) and just need to get a zipper and it's done. Voila. It's seriously high in the cuteness factor. Will photo when the zipper is in and I have a model to do it justice. Now that it's May, I've decided that my sock hiatus is over. I actually knit on a sock yesterday! For the first time in a month. Need to get the gift Noro socks done so I can start other ones without guilt.

In non-knitting news. there's not much to report. The baseball team has been rained out or away most of the week. They beat US twice, I just don't have any details. The JV game the other day, of which I saw about an inning due to LAX being home at the same time, ended badly. Really badly. 25-8 badly. Ouch. The LAX team won that day. Softball beat Hawken yesterday. Had another track meet Tuesday. Boring. I had to rush down to the finish line because someone was "hurt." Right. The girl in question landed funny in the high jump and bruised her elbow. Definitely a medical emergency.

Other than that, it's busy around home. Gearing up for the big Derby Day party tomorrow. Should probably go clean something now.

Just another Thursday

Yeah, that about sums it up. Nothing very exciting to report. One more day of Spring Break practices -yay. That means training room moving day on Monday! Sad that I'm excited about the prospect of more work at work.

So here's some updates (because I know you're all on the edge of your seats waiting for them). This is the completed Jeweled Step sock. For the record, it was done on Sunday at 8:30 pm, I have a witness, and that means that I got my sock done in time.
I'm not in any hurry to cast on the second one. I'll finish the one I'm working on for this week (no pics because it's for a gift). So maybe come Sunday or Monday, I'll start it.

This is the status of the Tomten. It's almost finished. Unbelievable. All I need to do is an applied I-cord edge (which I need to learn how to do), and sew in the zipper. And it's done. Yippee!
If you don't think this is the cutest sweater, your cute index is way off. When I get pics of it on Elliott, I'll post one of the hood, because it's my favorite part. Adorable.

For anyone who's wondering... I have bought yarn. I broke the Lenten "fast" on Tuesday, by going to KotS before work. I needed more yarn for the Tomten, and picked up the yarn to do Kate's Log Cabin blanket. Which I started yesterday.
I'm loving it. It's gonna be so great - there are 5 colors on each side of the central block, in different shades of blue and green. And when it's done, it gets felted and looks amazing.

And finally, the evil silk cap is completely spun up.At Meagan's yesterday, she finished attenuating it and started spinning it for me while I helped her through a tricksy bit in her knitting. Gotta love swapping projects for help. Here it is.
It'll eventually get plied with something. Don't know what, but eventually I will.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! Hope nobody is sick on jelly beans yet. I have been chastised for neglecting the blog, so today I will make up for it with a nice extra long post. And to my beloved family - you don't need to read much more because it's all about knitting and spinning and I know that you are not interested.

I do not yet have a sock for this week. I know, it's Sunday and I don't have a sock. How is that possible? Well, the Knitting Fates were against me this week. I think I may have angered them with my flaunting of the fact that I'm ahead on my sock count to date. So they threw their heads back and laughed at me. And still are. Here is the first Jeweled Step sock.

It's pretty right? The yarn is very gorgeous (Seacoast Handpainted in "Ambergris") and great to work with. I chose this pattern from the New Pathways book because it matched the gauge I got (see, I even swatched and still the Knitting Fates decided to screw with me). So I cast on for this sock last Friday night. Yeah - it was that long ago. And things were going well, until I looked at it and looked at the picture in the book, and re-read the directions, and said, "Crap, I did this wrong." And proceeded to rip out the arch expansion. And then, just to make sure I was clear, I re-read the directions and said, "Crap, I was doing it close to right, I didn't need to rip. Oh well, this time it'll be perfect." And re-knit.

Saturday, I continued re-knitting and almost finished the arch expansion without any trouble. Didn't work on the sock on Sunday (went to see Brigid's Cross at the East Side Irish American club with friends - yay for Guinness!), and then picked the sock back up on Monday evening at Meagan's house. Knit the heel, and got the part about the wing stitches, and realized I had skipped a step and forgot to add some stitches. Boo.

Tuesday at work, I ripped back and fixed the problem. And re-worked the heel and turned it and everything, and decided to try the sock on. Crap. The arch expansion triangle thingy is supposed to go up the side of the foot (the name of the sock architecture is after all, Sidestream), and instead, it was smack dab center of my foot. Hmmm. Hmmm. So I put aside for the trip out to SnB. Then I pulled out the book and started reading line by line to figure out where I went wrong. Yeah, forgot to move the markers after I added the stitches and so therefore worked the heel in the wrong place. So, it was time to rip, again. I spent the first hour and a half at SnB ripping and reconfiguring the stitches so that they would all be in the correct place. And somehow I was a stitch short. How it happened I don't know. But I fudged it and added one, I was not about to rip and redo again.

So on Wednesday, I re-knit the heel. Again. And started to turn the heel. And about a third of the way through, I look down at my lovely sock, and realize I've dropped a stitch. Way back 5 rows ago, in the part of the heel that's already been turned. Which means that there is no way to fix it without... you guessed it, ripping. Yay!

So I said to myself, because the Knitting Fates are seriously messing with me this week, instead of just ripping back to the mistake, I'm ripping back to fix the number of stitches correctly and it will be perfect and they can stop laughing. So I did. And when I ripped back, put the markers and the stitches in their correct original position, I counted. And had the correct number of stitches. WTF?!? Like I said, they're seriously messing with me at this point. Trying to cause insanity from knitting.

So, on Thursday I sat down with the sock. And re-worked the hell (that's 4 times now, if you're counting) and moved on. Got to the leg, and re-read the instructions for the patterned bit, and realized that I had been soing it wrong the whole time, that the first time I had done it, way back before ripping at all, it had been right. So, in my attempts to not take scissors to the sock, I put it down, and walked away. And did other things. So it remains incomplete. We'll get there eventually, I'm just so sick of it I can't stand to knit on it.

Alright, enough with the saga of the sock. Onto happier things. I did manage to work on some other stuff this week - just to maintain my sanity. This is Elliott's Tomten - about to start the second ball and start the part with the armpit holes and what not. Yay.

And this is the first of the Fuzzy Feet pattern. Just what I needed to get my sock mojo back - or so I thought. I finished it in less than 3 hours. Yay fun. I just need to do the other one so they can be felted and become the slippers they're meant to be. More about that later, when the time comes.

And Friday, I started another sock. Well, I ripped out the sock the Noro yarn had been, and am re-knitting it in the Spiral Eyelet pattern, and am liking it much more. No pics because I'm thinking this will be a gift pair of socks. But it's really pretty so far.

And now onto spinning. On Monday, at Meagan's, I managed to finish spinning up the spindle kit wool. Here it is. So pretty, I love love love it. I don' care what the family or non-knitting friends say, I like spinning, you cannot buy this at a store, and even if I had a man, I would still knit and spin, so enough with the comments already.

And here's the "Erin" wool that it will be plied with, when I finish spinning the Erin. I can't wait.

And for the record, I kept my Lenten sacrifice, I did not buy one single bit of yarn the whole of Lent. And the major bingeing has to wait a week, because Knitting on the Square is closed this week for the Maple Festival (but, on the bright side, the week after, everything in the store is on sale!). But, this did come in the mail last week.

It's the first of my Hill Country Yarn Sock Club skeins. I paid for my membership way back in Decmber, so this does not count against the Lent thing. It's their DK weight yarn in "Lilacs". It's so soft and pretty. Can't wait to finish the socks in progress so I can make these.

Alright, I think that's it for me. Thanks to those of you who made it through. I'll have to start posting more often to avoid such long and tedious posts. Happy Easter again!

Snow Day Boredom

Almost all of NE Ohio got a snow day today. Why? Let's see, the 1/2 inch of ice last night might have something to do with it, not to mention the continuing precipitation that occurre dthrough the night that accumulated a few inches of snow, or maybe it was because of the power outages or the amount of spin outs that took place in the early morning hours. Maybe.

So that meant no work today, and no staff meeting. Which gave me an excuse not to leave the house. Which is, normally, fine by me. But today, I'm feeling restless and bored. Not wanting to knit or blog or scrap or anything. Hmmmm. Perplexing. So, after a few hours on the computer (there's really only so much time I can spend on Ravelry, and I spent more time today than ever before) I decided that I needed to do something. So I looked at my current WIP's:

(That's the Merino Lace socks, the Mystic Waters shawl, and a Tomten for Elliott.) And I felt completely uninspired. I was feeling like I could work on the shawl, but really didn't want to have to think and focus as much as it requires, so I thought and I thought and I thought.

And then it hit me... start a new project. What? Like I don't have enough already? I've come to the conclusion that the reason I'm not wanting to work on the sock is because it's boring. I love the color, and the pattern and think they work great together, but the pattern isn't enough to keep me interested. I will finish it this week, of course, but not today.

Now comes the dilemma - what new project can I start that will be entertaining enough, and come from the yarn I have in my possession? Why, another pair of socks of course. I decided that I needed some very gorgeous handpainted yarn to stave off these snow day blues. So I cast on for the Spiraling Coriolis from the New Pathways book, in my Zen String "Mount Monadnock" yarn. No pics because I'm only a few inches into the toe, and it's not that exciting yet.

So it's been a while since my last post, let's get up to speed. Went to see "The Other Boleyn Girl" this weekend with a bunch of pals from SnB and mom. It was good - I feel for it like I feel for the Harry Potter movies, they're good but the book has so much more. Such is the limitation of the movie medium. Have spent several mornings with a new knitting buddy, Meagan, from SnB and am having a lot of fun with her. She's even tempting me into spinning, we'll see how it goes. And I got my haircut yesterday. I don't like it. So don't expect any shots of my that include my head any time soon. And that's about it. My brother and nephews came over on Sunday before the movie and I leave you with some shots from our photo shoot.