Newly dyed yarn

With child. Day off of many errands (2 dentist apts, school visit, DMV, clothes shopping, dump pick up) and I still dyed 5 skeins. New method; I mixed up pans of dye and dunked in the yarn. It still comes out tonal because the dye absorbs so quickly but you sort of batik it to get nice patches and blends. Its also much quicker and less equipment intensive.

And some knitting

So, Chroma - I was thinking of doing the Green Mountain Spinnery Stained Glass pullover in it. Here's a swatch of Upick and Fossil, but I was also thinking of Galapagos and Midwinter:

Fetching

Not a bad pattern:


I've really been fence sitting on this color and today in the car the spouse looked over and asked had I bought that color on purpose because "dude, I'd've sent that back".
It would never occur to me to send yarn back. I sent all kinds of things back - I'm learning to pride myself on being enough to have learned not to bury myself in crap I don't want. I can say no to all kinds of things, but send back yarn?

Done

Well it needs clasps, which are in the mail, but it's drying nicely.

Vest nearing completion

Okay, first thing to notice, see that tiny little scrap ball of yarn?  Yeah, I still have to pick up and knit the neck.  Planning fail.  I have the yarn, just not with me.
That said, I like it.  I used an idea from one of the Monday knitting folks and used a purl side roll rather than ribbbing for the arm holes, which I like a lot.  I also used short rows to shape the neck hole rather than taking stitches off and I think the finished product will be MUCH nicer this way.  I also constructed it in flat peices, but with the idea that it needed to be very 3 dimensional, so I built in a solid tab down the side, underneath the armhole (sort of armpit strip, if you want to be poetic) and I wanted the armholes to have more hole-ness to them, so I constructed insets for the shoulder seams, just short cable bits, and set them in (you can see them in this second picture).
So, I need to finish it, block it and find some clasps for the neck.  And take some daylight pictures, the neck is hard to see in these (hard to see too, when it's still a big mess and not all worked into place) .I hope everyone had a nice holiday -we did.  The cooking discovery of the weekend went to this corn bread chorizo stuffing.  Don't wait for next Thanksgiving, make it.  It can be dinner all on it's own.  Granted, it's crapload of chopping, but once you do that, it's pretty quick to make and be real, how can you go wrong with chorizo, cornbread, veggies and a stick of butter?????

I'm back

Sorry, life was crazy there for a while. Not that the holidays help with that sort of thing (neither does a family, or a job or any of those things).
Speaking of, I'm feeling more on top of Christmas than in a long time - and yes, I'm doing lots of knitting. This is for my mom - it's vest. I should make more vests, they're fast.



The problem with knitting presents is you really have to plan ahead. Like, so far ahead, it takes all damn year. And who wants to plan out their knitting life that far in advance?? Talk about killing all the fun.
But I was reminded of This today. So, if you need a gift for a crazy bibliophile, check it out.
I need to look at scarf patterns - going to try out Capra

Socks they're good for waiting

Like at the deli

When color pooling doesn't suck

Happy accident of needle size, gauge and pattern. Probably dye lot as well. Colors are much nicer, richer, in real life. This ball of Imagination seems to have little or no mohair, which is sad but it's pretty.

Done - stole

As modeled by my mother. Lined with blue velvet.
I so hate working on a time deadline. I'll do the sock too.

Fish

Finally getting a chance to take a decent picture of this stole and post it.  The center back panel will have 2 fish, facing opposite ways, when it's done.
I also got some feedback from folks who knit here at work.  The backing, it needs to be something soft, and dark, so like dark green or black velvet.
Sadly, you can bearly see the beads in these pictures.  Once it's done, I'll take pictures outside.

Yes, it looks like a "thnead"

And right now it's all wonky and uneven because its not blocked or backed and you can't see the beads, but it's getting there. I'm working both ends at once so I can make sure I get length and motif placement right. That's what I keep telling myself ...

Fall Back done

I really enjoyed this pattern, hope they work for the auction. I'm now back to working on the fish shawl for the first auction.

Die, Yuppie scum!

Something my dad was fond of saying, back in the day.
So, tonight, sitting in our new chairs, playing Scrabble on the IPad and watching the kids play soccer. I work on socks between turns. I had made the spouse a sandwich of prosciutto, mozzarella and basil for dinner which (when combined with all the other stuff mentioned above) inspired "when the hell did we turn into the yuppie scum of the new century?"
Here are the socks. I can still make nice socks even after selling my soul, I guess.

Yarn in my tub

Stroll Summer Blooms. I was trying to get natural light, not win a creepy blogging picture of the year award (the title of this post put me in mind of the SNL skit "---- in a box"). I want to start making socks with 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.

New things around the house

Okay, so I had that really loud space dyed Bare - hot pink, red, orange, brown and gold. Beautiful, but god-awful gaudy. What to do with 400 yards of it? The world's ugliest socks? A horrid hat? Mittens?
Tired of thinking small, I've embarked on a slip over - it's going to have a placket neck with clasps and vines going up on either side. I love the way the bright colors shine against the grey and black. And the kitty foot is cute, too.

And look, our porch is gone - for now at least. I should have a new and improved place to take bad snaps of my work by the long weekend.
I scraped and spray painted the metal tables and my index finger is still all tingly

Happy Mother's Day

I was told that for Mother's Day "Mom, I"m going to be nice to you and not sing all day." He did not keep that promise.

Anyhow, I took the excellent advice I got on a good use for my Imagination - a scarf! I think it will take 3 skeins not 2, but it's very pretty yarn. Much better use for it than socks. I kind of based it on a Cheryl Ober shawl.

And this is the house our son designed for us to all live in together. Note the whirlpool and 100 inch plasma TV in the bedroom (which we will all share).

Kauni

So in my travels I've gotten interested in the Kauni thing. I saw the Yarn Harlot's a year or so back and thought "oh that's cool" but didn't really get the yarn component.
So, what about his in Effektgarn EL? I'm not sure if that isn't too monochromatic. I also like the EB. Might wear better on me.
But I'd like to see it/touch it before committing. Has anyone used it? Stories?

Lined mittens are done . . . and

Okay, I'll post the pattern for these tomorrow. They're really, really simple to make. I decided to have fun with this pair and do some silly embroidered flowers on them. I won't include directions for repeating my extremely crappy embroidering - you can freehand your own if you like!

Okay, and for my next project, Entrelac socks. These are something I do every so often - they're a lot of work, and yes, again, I don't like making things that have to match, but since these are so colorful, you don't have to make them match and they cans still match.

I'm having a lot of fun with this bag of Gloss bare the small one and I dyed last spring.

Some recent dying

Kind of a pretty mess, isn't it? Maybe a little bright. The small one and I have been having fun with food color. I've arranged 4 of my favorites from our latest batch of dying below - one new twist, black food color. I had an inspiration a couple years ago, it was actually a quilt I saw in the catalog for Keepsake Quilting - I don't get the catalog anymore and I think I threw out all the old ones and I didn't keep any of my old copies, so I don't have a picture to share. Dumb -- it was lovely. But the quilt was a mullioned frame, black fabric around bali windows. I thought it would be cool to make a sweater like that using KOIGU. But that would cost $200.00. So maybe I can try with this stuff. I also like the blue/purple/black colorway for an Amy Rose redo.

And this is my stab at beaded knitting, take two. A scarf, I think. I'm thinking the green and teal should go on some gray lace weight I've stalled out on . . .