Happy Thanksgiving

Working on the Kauni is like eating potato chips or something; once you get going on the colors changing, you want to keep going to see how they'll resolve themselves.  This is the front steek and left hand side front, hence the pattern weirdness.

In other news, we went to Hilton Head.  It was amazing.

Kauni jacket snaps

Funny, usually I feel like my pictures don't do the yarn justice in terms of intensity of color.  Not so with Kauni.  I started the edging with two balls, then swapped to the other 2 balls to get a nice divide of body/edging.  I plan to do the same on the cowl neck and sleeves, probably not the same placement though.
I hemmed and hawed forever about where to start the balls relative to one another.  Has anyone else worked with this stuff and have any smart ideas?  I'd love to hear if there's some collective wisdom on how to use this stuff.  First I thought of keeping the rainbows close, but then I feared that one-color-off matching would give long patches of yellow and orange, blue and green, which I knew I didn't want.  Muddy, you know?  But starting across-spectrum (red - green, yellow - purple) seemed scarily loud.  Obviously, "in for a penny" thinking won here and I went with cross spectrum patterning.  Here it is again.  It's, well, cheerful, as Elsie would say.

it's been a while

So, a couple things:

I got feedback on the Daisy Mittens - they could be smaller.  True, I was probably overcompensating for making most things freakishly small because I'm kind of small.   I'll do another pair (I send test stuff to my mom to put into a craft's cooperative since down here I have little or no use for mittens and things) or maybe another design.  I have a book full of them, I just need to put them down on paper.

I started my Kauni.  Not much to take pictures of yet, but soon.  It's sort of rough feeling, but it will make a lovely, cuttable steek, methinks.  I need to finish some things, my knitting basket looks like, well nothing poetic springs to mind, so how about a horrible mess?

Finally, it's finals season where I work.  Stressed out law students, not pretty.  I've spent my day:

• helping people use staplers; sometimes with a multi-person audience (no, really, I'm not kidding)
  
• explaining print server problems which aren't actually problems
  
• calling Facilities to have someone fish our most popular study room key out of the elevator shaft (someone dropped in there over the weekend)
• handing out Advil
  

Weekend stuff

Finished the first sock, not sure if I like the three needle bind off for the ending of the sock, seems like it would be lumpy and uncomfortable if you wore these with any kind of shoe, so I might take it out and graft it later.
But we also have this crepe myrtle by the house, I've never seen it so colorful and cool looking - not only are the leaves changing, but they're changing in this pretty patterns and the older fruits make patterns and have their own colors as well.  I think I might need to dye some "fall crepe myrtle" yarn and make something leafy out of it.

Nutkin aka sanity saver socks

I like my job, I have great coworkers, for the most part, work is a non-issue for me.
Then I go to conferences and want a do over on my career because I feel like it's TOTALLY STUPID AND LAME.
The solution?
Knit socks during you conference, of course!  Here I am using up some of my spaced dyed Bare from last spring.  They're stripy-er than I'd like, but I've flirted with a.) overdying them when I'm done or b.) getting over myself and enjoying their cheerfulness.

Ech.

Our house has a mild upper respiratory infection.  Coughing, itchy eyes, headache.  Tomorrow I have a conference, but can't really get excited about any of my knitting to bring along.  The Rolfe (below) or the pink.  I'm having this weird craving to knit socks.  I hate knitting socks, what's up?  Must be a low grade fever.

Cat in the Hat scarf

So, when I was a kid, the book The Cat in the Hat really bothered me.  The chaos, the mess, the lack of calming parents . . . . but most of all, the fact that he turned all that snow pink.  Just seemed wrong to me.  Growing to adulthood has taught me not to hate pink.
So here's my CitH scarf - light on beads (I used both size 6 and 8 here) and using doubled Alpaca Cloud on size 3 needles.  Now honestly, I've always found pure alpaca to be a pain to knit with -- too slick, no resilience, too easy to drop stitches.  This isn't so bad, but the doubling does mean you need to watch what you're doing.  But it's kind of pretty I guess, it's an accessory scarf: the kind you wear inside with an outfit rather than something you wind around the neck for warmth.  I can see doing it in green or red for the holidays, very quick and not hard as a gift or something.

So maybe something smaller

I sort of got de-stashed on by a coworker (yay, thanks!) and I was thinking, maybe work these up paired and just do a scarf, keep the beading at the ends, maybe do a gradual creep up the body of the scarf (I"m not describing this well, more beads towards the ends which won't be on the neck and will show and gradiate them up to there being none up by the neck part).  A basic lace pattern scarf takes 300-500 yards and I have 440 if I work these together,
Whaddya think?

Happy Halloween

Halloween sure is more fun with a kid.
We went Trick orTreating in the rain, it was fun.  We have a boatload of candy (hello holiday season of weight gain!).  Here's how Grover Underwood looked:

Got some knitting done on Putnam's but fingering weight is slow and so nothing new to photograph.  I'm trying to show some discipline and finish a few things before embarking on some more new things.  Such a magpie!

Happy All Saints Day!