Happy October!

Hey crafters! Anyone planning on celebrating Socktoberfest this year?

There's a mystery sock KAL (and how can any of us resist a mystery?!) as well as choose your own sock knitting.

I'm still on the fence a bit, given that I did the gift sock knitting I had planned with my Hello Althea's.

I also have to admit, while my knitting to do list is nowhere near as frightening as heb's, I am making slow progress on the items that are there.

The gifty Melody continues apace, but it grows slowly. I'm hoping this yarn (a single ply merino) will grow quite a bit once soaking and blocking time comes, but the single ply makes me more nervous about breakages as well, so I don't want to plan on pulling it too much.

I have a couple of other projects, half on and half off the needles...

But my sister has made some demands that I very much want to fulfill....

(A note:  No one demands knitting from me, except for my demanding sister!  I partly blame this on the fact that most of my close family are in places where knitting is really more of a quaint hobby, and less something needed to actually stay warm, but still.  I wouldn't mind a couple of demands every now and then.) 

And then there are some of my selfish projects that have been languising all summer, including my someday Honeybee Stole and my former Henley Perfected that I've determined should become a Coraline.

Basically, I am full of indecisiveness!  It is a happy kind though, I openly admit.  What to knit next is a pretty awesome question to ask oneself.  (And the answer might be: the iPod cover I promised my iPod if it started working again!)

so much for doing well on deadlines

As my blog-silence may have suggested, I haven't really had a lot of time to knit this summer. Between the move-that-lasted-forever, the job-that-did-not-slow-down-during-the-summer, and many lovely trips and visitors, I had a hard time fitting knitting in. So when I take stock of my progress on summer knit goals, the picture isn't pretty. In fact, it's downright pathetic. I can't think of a time when I made less progress on a set of self-imposed goals. Here's the (limited) progress that I made:

I'm 11 rows away from finishing my end-of-August goal:I wish I could say that I'm as devoted to this project as Wamps was to her version, which clocked in at 150 rows. But I've decided that mine will be lovely at just around 100.

My save-my-sanity cowl grew, almost without me thinking about it:
It's still a-ways from being finished, but maybe that's for the best.

During the last weekend in August, an unusually long (since moving to the Beat, that is) spell on public transit produced this baby hat:
This wasn't one of my knitting goals, but since it's the closest I came to a FO this summer (only have two ends to sew in!) I'm including it anyway. It's the Umbilical Cord hat in Sheep Feet, Royalty colorway. Having rushed out the door without writing down the pattern, I counted on CH's memory to get me the right number of stitches. Luckily, that was a safe bet. What was not as lucky was how I felt about this yarn once it was knit up. In the skein, I thought it was beautiful, but I think the brown is much too dominant in the final knit. (EW, enter your massive protest here. I don't care. You can't see it in person, so you don't know how overwhelming the brown is.) However, the yarn was the product of my first-ever trip to Webs (which was also EW's first-ever trip to Webs). It is a miraculous place.

Also, I took Labor Day weekend off from everything, and that helped me to jump start some fall knitting.

This lovely is all finished except for the finishing: The yarn knit up just like I imagined, and I learned why so many people love one particular classic knit. You'll have to wait for details until it's gifted, though.

And I'm about halfway through another knit using these colors:This knit reminds me why Blue Sky Dyed Cotton is still high on my list of favorite yarns. All but the green were purchased during my second-ever trip to Webs.

Finally, today was the Coventry Farmer's Market's Fiber Fest. I actually went back to get the most amazing cod in the world, but I couldn't resist a little local yarn:It's the Painted Sheep's Shimmer Yarn in Merlot. It's a superwash merino/tencel blend and I think that I know just the knit for it.

What are you all working on this fall?

Met a Swift, Fell in Love

I was wandering through an estate sale the other day and had decided I really had no room to store anything, and then I found this:

A swift! For less than $60 (quite a bit less)!! An opportunity not to be missed. I had planned to like, polish it, or something, but then I set it up and used it pretty immediately. I did need to add some ~fishing line, but it works like a beauty. Of course, without a ball winder, it doesn't really make winding yarn any faster, BUT, I can set it down and go off and live my life in between bouts of winding, so there's that.

In other news, working on a little something with my TPK Foliage yarn that I won in my first KAL, way back in January. (Good times!) Sometimes, plucky yarn has this marvelous glowy quality, and this is one of those times. Yay, knitting fun!

A little time to breathe

Hello my lovely knitting and sewing and crocheting friends! I finally got to give this shawl to it's owner, so I can brag with some photos!





Super simple pattern, called Melody's Shawl, that creates an incredibly diverse set of end products depending on the yarn and needle sized used. This shawl was made with Posh yarn, a lace weight blend of silk and merino wool, which was super fine and super lovely to knit with!

However, the super fine-ness of it did mean I had to knit forever and ever. I can't even remember how much television watching and bus riding accompanied the making of this shawl, but it was not insignificant. Thankfully, the simplicity of the pattern was made for these kinds of activities, and were perfect during a summer in which I dearly needed distractions.


I took this picture at a point when I thought I was nearly done and then realized I had only knit about half of what I had planned!


And this shows my first serious blocking job! I used all of my block mats, and then had to pull them apart to stretch the shawl out to be as wide and long as I wanted. I might have tried to make it a bit larger, actually, but this table was the largest cat and baby-free flat surface that I had available to me, so that was the size I ended up with.

I'm going to try and post a bit more often than I did in the last two months, but how's about an update in crafty news from others? Someone should definitely find a ribbon hanging and refurbish it to hang in glory in their new condo.

Arlington County Fair

My Metro vest was a Reserve Grand Champion at the fair.

You've seen all these projects before, but here they are with their ribbons from the fair. I haven't knit much at all since I finished the vest with the south side knitters gave me at New Year's, but I gathered up my entries for the fair. I knew the vest would be a contender, but I never expected a grand champion ribbon. It's a first for me. For those not familiar with county fair protocols, Each department (in this case Art Needlework) is divided into Sections (in this case Knitting) and then each Section is divided into Classes (for example, sleeveless sweaters or vests, pullovers, scarves, hats, baby sets, etc) In addition all the participants are divided into Divisions (pre-K, 6-12, teens, adults). For each class there are potentially three ribbons - blue for first, red for second, white for third place. The blue ribbons from all the classes compete for Champion (first place) and Reserve Champion (second place) in the Section. Then all the eChampions compete for Grand Champion (first place) and Reserve Grand Champion (second place) in the Department. So my metro vest beat out not only all but one item in the knitting, but the crocheted items, quilts, sewn dresses, hooked rugs, needlepoint, embroidery, etc. That would be more impressive if there really were multiple entries in all those categories. I can remember when the fair was really competitive, but this year there really weren't all that many exhibitors. The judges always reserve the right not to award all the ribbons, so my sweater ascended up the competition even though it was only the Reserve Champion in knitting (the pink rosette ribbon in the picture) The Grand Champion was a lovely knitted lace shawl. I entered the Jitterbug cabled sleeveless sweater almost as an afterthought and it won a blue ribbon. (I entered it in the pullover category because you can only enter one item per class, and I entered the other vest in the sleeveless sweater category. ) I entered the scarf in the "exhibitor's choice" class, a catch all for items that don't clearly fit in other classes. I entered it together with the hat I designed and a short narrow scarf to show how the hand-dyed yarn produced three entirely different designs with the same stitch in different widths (fractals), and the set won a red ribbon (2nd place). The judge wrote nice comments on the back of the entry tags: "Gorgeous color and design work, beautiful stitching, woven ends need to be clipped" and 'wonderful cable pattern and beautiful use of fine multi-colored yarn. Reminded us of a Monet garden" for the south side vest and "Great stitches and use of multi-color yarn" for the scarf/hat set.

I encourage all you young knitters to seek out your local county fair and enter your knitting and other crafts. It's fun and gratifying, but not nearly as satisfying as when there was real competition. I'm afraid my old competitors have died off or gone blind and too arthritic to enter the fair, and the creative new generation of knitters isn't aware of the fair tradition. (Or maybe with blogs and websites satisfy the need to share and make the fair tradition totally unnecessary. ) Once again, as a bleeding edge boomer, I'm caught between two models, a bridge between generations. My grandfather was a professional fair manager - in the first decade of the 20th century he was manager of the Van Wert (Ohio) County Fair, and later was the full time manager for the North Carolina State Fair and then the Ohio State Fair. So I'm his direct descendent, but I'm also a contributor to this blog and Ravelry. Have you all seen a butter cow?

Last year when my job was less stressful I knit up a storm. Since January I've been sucked back into the mainstream implementing the Recovery Act/Economic Stimulus programs at my agency and I find I have no creative energy at all. I've tried three times to start a new project and keep coming up empty. Hopefully the economy will recover and so will my knitting, soon.

Though warm feet are not appealing at the moment...

Socks = done!

These were great! I loved knitting with the yarn (plucky merino superwash fingering), and though I didn't work on them consistently, when I did they felt like they knit up fairly quickly. Kirsten Kapur's patterns are great, and this one was nice and clear and had a chart that I only had to use at the beginning and then for the lacey leaves at the top of the sock.

What socks to knit next??

new favorite knit cafe

So the espresso machine won't be installed until later this afternoon, and the walls still need some decorations, but I've got a new favorite place to knit. Which is good, because the knitting that you see on the chair is about all the progress I've made toward my summer knit list. (Yes, that does mean that I've already blown past one deadline. They were self-imposed, okay?)

I may have claimed this chair, but there's another one waiting whenever any of you want to come visit.(There's more seating across the room, so multiple of you can visit at once!)