FO Friday -- Free Yarn Edition

Okay, so I'm kinda cheating.  I don't actually have an FO to share with you all today, but (But!) I don't think you'll mind...

So, Stitches West was awesome this year (as always), and my trip to California was a blast.  I got to hang out with some of my favorite people, shop at my favorite grocery store, and eat my favorite tacos.  It doesn't get much better than that.

On Thursday night, we got our times muddled for the market preview, and showed up about an hour before it closed.  Despite a brief panic attack, we were able to get nearly all of our shopping done before the market closed.  Apparently, we're just very efficient. 

On Saturday, we took a class called "Switch to Continental".  The instructor was quite a character and there was quite a lot of eye-rolling going on, but by the time we left, I could purl in continental style.  I'm hoping to switch back and forth between Continental and English between projects for the sake of good ergonomics.  Plus which, it just looks kinda cool.

You know what's crazy?  I completely forgot to pull my camera from my bag at any point while we were at Stitches.  Sorry about that.  I did remember to take pictures of our field trip to the San Francisco Zoo, though! 

 

Oh, and the other thing I remembered to do while I was there was to buy some gorgeous yarn for y'all:

This is Alpenglow Yarn Sockerino in the English Lavender colorway.  It's just a tiny bit more muted than it looks in this picture, and it is awesome!  It's made in the US from 100% organic merino, and you all should consider yourselves very lucky that I have such epic self control that I didn't squirrel it away for myself when I got home.  If you'd like it to go home with *you*, just leave a comment on this entry between now and let's say 8pm (US Mountain Time) on March 14.  I'll use the trusty ol' random number generator and announce the winner in next week's FO Friday post.  Fair enough?  Oh, and leave a way for me to contact you in case you're the Winner!  

While you're waiting for my big announcement, go check out all the awesome entries over at FO Friday and Fiber Arts Friday.  Then go have a fantastic weekend!

Work In Progress Wednesday v.134

Hey guys!  I made it back from my California vacation/Stitches West trip just fine last week.  I had an amazing time as usual, and have been busy, busy, busy since I got home.  I didn't forget about you though, you'll have to come back on Friday for a trip recap and so you can enter to win the pretty, pretty yarn I bought for you.  It'll be worth the click, I promise.

For now, you'll have to settle for getting up to speed on the projects I've been working on lately.  I think I mentioned it, but a few weeks ago I brought my Peerie Flooers Mittens out of deep hibernation and started working on them again.  I love, love, love these, but I've learned something about myself:  I hate doing 2-handed colorwork on dpns.  It's ridiculously slow going for me, and also awkward and fiddly.  If I'm ever going to make all the fabulous colorwork mittens in my queue, I'm going to have to brush up on my magic looping.  Maybe that will be easier?

Anyway, mitten #1 is chugging along (No, really.  It is.) rather nicely...

I have high hopes to finish it this week, but we'll see if they materialize.

In other news, I started a Hermione's Everyday Sock to knit up on the plane and during down time on vacation.  I absolutely love the yarn, but it's a little bit fuzzy so the stitch definition isn't great.  I think I'm okay with it though.  It's such a pretty color, and sooo soft.

And yep.  This is me practicing my magic looping.  So far so good, but I'd be farther along on the sock if I had any clue how to work a heel on two needles.  I think I've got some youtube time in my near future.  It can't be that hard, right?

That's what's going on around these parts this Wednesday.  I'm still working on the Austin Hoodie, but haven't made any progress to speak of lately so you'll see it again when it's bigger.  Until then, go check out all the lovely projects on the needles and hooks over at WIPW.  See you Friday!

Stitches West 2012 -- and a giveaway!

Well, that was fun!  But first, a bit of back story...  About a thousand years ago, when I lived in northern Caifornia, and our company was publishing a knitting book for kids, my friend BB and I learned to knit  by testing instructions for it.  Excited about our new-found hobby, we went to a knitting show that had rolled into town called Stitches West.  Talk about sensory overload!  I remember looking around with my mouth hanging open and whispering to BB, "What's she doing???" She was knitting a sock.  On dpns.  Ha!  We walked around for a bit, bought a bit of stuff that I never used and left. 

Flash forward 10 or so years and we're both pretty obsessed knitters, only now she lives in New Hampshire, and I live in Colorado, and we both knit a whole lotta socks.  Since Stitches fell on my birthday this year, I suggested we meet out there, see all our old friends and do Stitches v.2.  Remarkably, she agreed! 

So last weekend, we met out on the coast and got to see all our old coworkers, and eat our way across the bay area.  It was bliss.  On Thursday night, we headed for the Market Preview, where folks who're signed up for at least one class get exclusive admission to the market vendors before the doors are opened to the public.  We were not alone (but we are in this pic, see if you can spot my red Angostura!)


(photo from the Stitches West Flickr set)

While we were there, we stopped by the Cascade Yarns booth, and since we were both wearing sweaters knit with Cascade, they took our picture and it popped up on their Facebook page today.  Too funny!

 We did some serious damage at all the zillions of vendors, and still made it out in time for a late dinner.  The market preview by itself is worth the price of a class, IMHO.  It was so nice to shop without having to fight big crowds! 

On Friday morning, we showed up bright and early for a class taught by Cookie A, which was also pretty awesome.  We learned all about reading cable charts intuitively, without having to consult the symbol key all the tine.  It was very cool, and Cookie was a fabulous teacher. 

A little more shopping after class, then we spent the rest of the weekend catching up with old friends and squishing our new yarn.  It was, all in all, a fabulous vacation.

Wanna see what I got?  I hope so, because you're gonna have to wade through all of it to get to the giveaway at the end of the post!

First up was 5 skeins of Malabrigo Merino Worsted in the blue graphite colorway.  It's such a pretty dark blue gray, a bit more navy than in this picture.

I found this at the Carolina Homespun booth, where they went waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of their way for me and then gave me a screaming deal on all of it. 

And other than that, the yarn shopping was pretty much all Madtosh all the time for me.  Since I'm pretty much a cheapskate when I buy yarn, and since it was my birthday, I gave myself an unlimited yarn budget for the weekend.  Throwing caution to the wind resulted in this:

It's Tosh Vintage in Mica, which I bought to knit Skelf. 

And also this: 

Tosh sock in Calligraphy.  I bought a skein of this stuff at Loopy Ewe last month, and then decided I really needed enough to make an Austin Hoodie out of it.  That, my friends is a LOT of teensy stitches in a sweater, but I think it will be worth it.

Finally, I got another screaming deal:

2 skeins of Mini Mochi in colorway #307.  Catchy name, no?  Anyway, I love the first Mini Mochi socks I knit, so I decided another pair would be a good idea, especially for half price.

I had to break up all that yarn buying with some books, just for the sake of variety, and so came home with these:

We were even able to get our books signed by Alana Dakos, who was incredibly nice.  I'm dying to knit at least 3 of these sweaters, and all of the patterns are pretty awesome.

And this, because we all know about how much I <3 Ysolda...

I even got an awesome knitting-y birthday present while I was out there.  BB made me the prettiest project bag...

It's even lined!

That's all I bought for me this trip (not too bad since I wasn't on a budget!), but I had to buy a skein for you guys to share a little of the Stitches love!  Here it is:

That's right, more Madeline Tosh.  This is Tosh Merino Light, a fingering weight, in the Dahlia colorway, and here's what you have to do to make it yours:  Leave a comment on this post before 8 am MST on Saturday, March 10.  Easy peasy.  I'll ship it anywhere you are if you're the winner. 

Okay, one more thing:  When I got home, I got to open my birthday present from Mr. Right.  A new camera!  Which takes pretty pictures, including some of the birthday cake he baked me all by himself:

And a gratuitous shot of last night's epic sunset.  Pretty spectacular birthday, all in all!

FO Friday -- Scrub a Dub Edition

Wow, it's been aaaaaaages since I got to take part in an FO Friday!  And now that Tink is opening all of her swap gifts, I have a little bit of a back up of FOs to Friday about.  Which is pretty awesome if you ask me.

This week...  Wash cloths!  One of the gifts I stuck in the box was spa-related:  a bar of pomegranate scented soap from a local soap maker (soapsmith?), and 2 knitted wash cloths.  I've had my eye on the Summer in Asheville pattern for ages, so I decided to dive in with a skein of Knit Picks Dishie in the pomegranate (total coincidence, honest) colorway.  I didn't look at the pattern much before diving in, becaue hey... it's a wash cloth.  Right?  Yeah, not so much.

It's also a 2-sided lace pattern which required a lot more concentration than I bargained for.  So we had a few false starts.  But in the end, we had a pretty, purple-y (much more wine-colored than this washed out picture) wash cloth, so yay.

Next up was Exfoliate!  A Dalek wash cloth, for all those Dr. Who fans out there.  I'd seen somewhere a reference Tink made to Dr. Who, so I figured it was a good bet.  Also, it looked easy.  Once again... not so much.  The pattern was easy enough, but all those stupid bobbles were enough to make my head spin.  Turns out they're not so fun to knit.  Who knew?

All in all, though, it turned out pretty well.  This one's also in Dishie, this time in the Flamingo colorway.  Just as an aside about the yarn... Awesome.  I'm not a fan of knitting with cotton, but this stuff is amazing.  It's really soft, the colors are great, and the price is comparable to the stuff you'd find at a big box craft store.  I'm glad I like it so much, because I accidentally ordered 5 skeins when I bought it.  Oops.

Pretty though, no?  I'm planning on knitting a small army of dish cloths for us, since the green Snoopy cloth sees tons of use in the kitchen. I'm sure I'll get right on that any minute now.  No, really.

In other news, and in case you missed it on Wednesday, there will be a Stitches West recap up at some point this weekend, complete with a few bad photos, a review of the epic pile-o-purchases (I had FUN!), and a giveaway of a skein of Madeline Tosh that I picked out just for you guys.  Because I love you.  So come back and enter, okay?   For now, go check out all the other FO fabulousness happening at Tami's blog today (ETA: and Fiber Arts Friday, too!).  There's tons of it!                                                                                                                                      

Work in Progress Wednesday v.82

Happy leap year y'all!  Didja miss me?  I'm freshly returned from Stitches West and all the craziness that let up to it, and super happy to be home and getting back to WIPW this week.

Stitches was great.  Calfornia was great.  Seeing my all my awesome girlfriends (and remembering that I have lots of awesome girlfriends) was super great.  It was all so fantastic that it will get its own post this weekend, and you'll want to check it out because there's a giveaway involved.  I won't say what it is, but it might be yarn, and it might or might not involve the words Tosh and/or Madeline (not necessarily in that order).  Because I love you guys!  So don't forget to come back and get all entered and whatnot.  Okay?

You may remember this pre-trip picture of my nicely caked yarn for my next project, Narragansett...

And all of you were kind enough not to point out how I was a complete idiot to think I'd be knitting through 3 skeins of yarn on a 5-day vacation.  Thanks for that, but you would've been sooo right.  I toted all 3 of those yarn cakes out to California and back, and managed to knit just under half of one of them.  So much for wishful thinking, right?  Anyway, here's how it's looking now:

This is a top-down sweater, so what you're seeing is the boat neck and the beginnings of the raglan increases for the sleeves.  I'm loving working with this yarn, but I'm a bit worried that it's so squishy the sweater might not hold its shape.  It's feeling very loosey goosey at the moment, even though I'm knitting just a smidge tighter than gauge.

I've also been following a modification that someone used for smaller eyelets on either side of the raglans, and I'm a bit on the fence about how it's working out.  I really like the idea of having smaller holes, but I'm not sure it's working out too well.

This picture is as close as I can get to illustrating my point with bad light and a jet-lagged brain,    I may soldier on a bit longer, we'll see.  This is a fun and pretty zippy knit, so undoing a bit of it won't be too much of a disaster if it goes that way.

In other news, Tink over at Master of a Thousand Things FINALLY received her swap package from me!  I'm a little bummed that it took so long, but so glad she's finally got her hands on her goodies and really excited that I can finally spill all my secrets.  She's blogging about her gifts now, and has opened all of her hand knit gifts in her first two days so I can finally give them their time in the FO Friday spotlight.  Woot!

I can't decide if the opening or the watching of the opening is more fun.  I'm a smidge overly happy about both, I think.  Anyway, after you stop by Tink's blog, go check out the rest of the (zillion) WIPW entries.  They're totally worth the trip.

See you Friday!

The Blog Hub Swap -- Day 7

It was inevitable, I suppose, that I would eventually come to the end of the giant, shiny, prettily wrapped gifts that have been piled on my counter for the last week.  And what a week it's been!

But before I go getting all nostalgic on you, we have time for one more present.  The Grand Finale.  One of the requirements for this swap was that we include 100 grams of yarn for our swapee, so I've purposely saved the yarn-shaped package for last.  And here it is:

It almost seems a shame to open it, but let's be honest:  The anticipation is killing me.  So off comes the wrapper, and inside...

This! It's a skein of Posh Yarns Sylvia 4-ply, 50% merino and 50% silk.  It's exactly the color of the ocean in a thunderstorm, and it is, I kid you not, the single softest thing I have ever touched.  Ever.  I am absolutely awestruck at it.  Wow.

Chrissy's note (and a peek at Ravlery) tell me that this is a tough yarn to get your hands on, and I can absolutely believe it.  It's by far the nicest skein of yarn I've ever had, and you're talking to a girl who just picked up her first skein of Wollmeise. 

It seems only fitting to arrive at this lovely skein on the day that I'm dipping my toe into the Stitches West marketplace for the first time.  I'm hoping to bring home lots of new friends for this little skein, and maybe a few who are worthy of its company (But probably not.  Seriously.  This yarn.).

I can't tell you how much fun this swap has been, and if you were on the fence this year, I wholeheartedly encourage you to jump in next time.  It's been all kinds of awesome.  It's also a ridiculous amount of work, and so I want to shout out a special thanks to Chrissy at Stitched Together who has spoiled me rotten over the last week.  The amount of time, energy and thought that went into this package is staggering, and I appreciated every last second of it.  Thank you, Chrissy!  You are indeed the Wonder Woman of Swaps.  I hope you had as much fun as I did.

And with that, I'm officially beginning my vacation.  If something exciting happens, I'll pop in with a quick post while I'm away, but otherwise, I'll catch up with y'all next Wednesday when we get back into the regular groove around here.

Hope everyone has a spectacular weekend!

The Blog Hub Swap -- Day 6

Day 6 of The Blog Hub Swap meets Work in Progress Wednesday -- it's a knit blogger's perfect storm!  Let's get to it then, shall we?

Today's beautiful parcel looked like this before I ripped the paper to shreds daintily removed the contents of the package.  And inside, as we've all come to expect was such a fun surprise!  It's this.

A very shiny, very British, very be-flagged pencil case.  Love!  It even has *gasp* multiple compartments, and a bright yellow zipper.

You may not know, though clearly Chrissy does, that I'm a super stationery geek.  I get abnormally excited about pens and pencils and papers and organizing.  It makes me all swoony just writing about it.  Even better?  Inside my new pencil case, were 3 super amazing pens!

They're Frixion eraseable gel pens.  Eraseable gel pens? So cool!  And I have black, blue and hot pink.  Woot!

Only one day left -- I can't believe it's amost over.  One more shiny package, then all that remains is for me to pace around impatiently waiting for my package to reach its destination so I can live vicariously through my person's week-o-pressies.

As for the Work in Progress Wednesday portion of today's festivities, I have some shocking news.  I have absolutely. nothing. going. on.  I don't think this has ever happened before, and frankly it's weirding me out.  After much frantic knitting, the Duckie Socks are done, done, DONE!  And so cute.  You'll have to take my word for it until I get back from vacation and can get a proper FO Friday post together.  For now, suffice to say I love them and will try not to wear them out before I can get pictures.  Fingers crossed on that front.

The Mittens of Doom are still firmly in time out.  And so all I have to show you is this:

It's the first three skeins of Shepherd's Wool, fresh off the ball winder and swift so I can swatch for Narragansett, which I desperately wanted to finish in time for Stitches West, but since I leave tonight, I don't think we're quite going to make it.  I'll get a couple of hours of good knitting time on the plane, but there's only so much distance between Denver and San Jose, and somehow it doesn't seem to be enough to pull off a whole sweater.  It will sure be fun to try, though.

Even though I'll be heading off into the wild blue yonder tonight, I have one more day of Blog Hub Swap to share with you, and I think it's going to be an extra exciting one, so be sure to check back in for the grand finale tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I promise to come back with lots of new yarn and goodies and pictures and stories next week, and might even check in once or twice while I'm away.

Cheers!

Work in Progress Wednesday v.79

Okay, contrary to what you're about to see, I've really been knitting my face off for the last week or so.  Promise.  It's just that there's not much I can actually show you.

Exhibit A:  I knitted a cute thing (which I can't show off on FO Friday this week either), for my partner in the Blog Hub Swap.  It's cute(as previously stated), but it's secret.  So you only get a teensy bit of a teaser photo:

Exhibit B:  I'm knitting another cute thing for the same swap partner as we speak.  And again, you get only the sneakiest of peeks:

Elsewhere, I finished up Duckie Sock #1 during the first part of the Super Bowl on Sunday.  I like football, so it was tough to divide my attention but it was worth it to finish up the sock.  I love it.  At lunch today, I got #2 rolling so, you guessed it... there's not much to look at:

I'm hoping to get this finished in the next few days so I can wear them to Stitches West, which is only about 2 weeks away!  Whee!

And then we have mitten.  Sigh.  I brought the mitten out and took it to knit night in order to have some sort of visible progress to show off today.  I completely ignored the no-complicated-colorwork-at-knit night rule and boy did it bite me in the backside.  Allow me to demonstrate:

I got the thumb hole closed up and finished the next set of flower stems.  It wasn't until I started the next round of petals that I realized I'd managed to shift one of the flower stems and now I have to frog all. the. way. back. AGAIN.  For those of you keeping track at home, this is the 4th major frogging for this single mitten, which I started just before THANKSGIVING.  I am feeling lots of things right now, but thankful about this mitten isn't among them.  I'm going to put it into time out for a bit and get some knitting successes (and a moderately-sized attitude adjustment) under my belt before trying to move forward on these any more.

I have one more Cute Swap Thing to start -- and finish -- in the next week, so stay tuned for another picture that I can't quite show you.  Isn't this fun?  It's like those picture puzzles on the back of kids magazines.  Can you guess what they are from the mysterious photos?  Feel free to record your guesses in the comments, and all will be revealed next month.

Meanwhile, go check out actual pictures for for-reals progress from loads of other crafty types over at WIPW.  It's pretty much the most fun you'll find on a Wednesday...

Work in Progress Wednesday v.74

Happy 2012, y'all!

You'd think that being on vacation I'd have found lots of time to knit over the last week, but umm... not so much.  I did manage a bit of it, though:

Lorna Suzanne is up to the start of the collar now, and I'm a little bit stuck.  I want to make sure that I understand the next step of the pattern before I go any farther, so I'm taking a pause to message the designer (who's a total rock star, by the way), to double check before I muck something up.  Good idea, no?  Anyway, here's how it looks now, a bit bigger than last week, but not too different:



I'm just a couple of hours of knitting away from collar and button bands, so hoping to get back to it soon.  Still loving the pattern and the yarn, and now convinced that I'll have enough of the latter so I'll actually be able to complete the former.  Bonus!

While I've been pondering sweater yokes from afar, I've been making a mitten cuff:



And it's done!  I'm a bit wary of doing a knitted hem on the turned up cuff lining, since it's in the round and there are dpns involved.  I've written a tutorial on doing them flat, but this seems more fiddly.  I'll let you know how it goes.  Hopefully there will be some actual mitten attached to this by next week.

And now for the really exciting news:  I'm going to Stitches West!!!  I know.  I can't believe it either.  I've actually been once before when I lived right around the corner and had knitted a scarf or two.  We went and checked it out on a Saturday, and it was huge and overwhelming, but I didn't have any idea that it was any kind of big deal.  What a waste!

Anyway, it happens to fall on my birthday this year, and so my former co-worker, who's since moved to New Hampshire (Hi, BB!) is flying out and meeting me, and we're going to do it up right this time.  We're taking a class with Cookie A (sock mistress extraordinaire, as seen here and also there), and going to the market preview, and just generally planning to soak it all up.  I'm also giving myself carte blanche on yarn purchases while I'm there-- don't get too worried, it's nearly impossible for me to spend money so I don't expect to go too crazy.  But I can if I want!  Eep!  I'm SO excited!  Is anyone else planning on attending?  Let me know, it would be super fun to meet up. 

For more yarn-related joyful excitement, go check out all the rest of the WIPW entries.  I'll see you there!