A Trip to Texas

Recently I took a trip to visit my brother in Texas-and by recently I mean in January.  One of my goals besides visiting my brother and his girlfriend in their new house was to procure some souvenir yarn.  Thanks to the efforts Mr. Turbo, we found an awesome little shop in Austin called Gauge Knits.  I was so busy chatting with the ladies and enjoying my time there that I forgot to snap a picture of actual shop.  So follow the link and see what it looks like.  If I lived in Austin, this store would definitely be my LYS.

Once the staff knew that I was after a couple of memorable skeins they were helpful enough to steer me in the the right direction.  I picked up one skein of each of the below.

Photo property of Madelinetosh.

Madelinetosh  One of the employee’s at Gauge Knits told me that Madelinetosh yarn is made in Texas, so not only is it from Texas (because I purchased it there), it’s made in Texas.  I picked colorway 'Oak' in Tosh light dk. This colorway is a vibrant green wrapped in a fuzzy black overcoat. I have plans for Nemi (rav Link). 

Photo property of TURBOchic Knits.

White Bear Fibers This yarn is by Texan dyer Doug Upchurch. I picked colorway 'Golden Buddha' in Northern Silk Sock.  The silk in the this yarn just begged to be complimented by some beadwork, so I cast on Kernel (rav link).  I love this yarn and the pattern is beautiful, but I'm craving more beads.  So this project may get frogged in favor of something more satisfying.

Rick socks

The last time you saw these socks I had barely made any progress.

Not much has changed.

Probably because I've been two-timing Rick with Kai-Mei.

Ahhh, soothing 3x3 rib.

Lace Scarf

There is a little project that has been hanging around on my needles since April, which I've never blogged about mainly because it's in a holding pattern.

For any of this to make sense, you should know that floating around in my brain is this mental image of myself when I'm all put together.  I can see myself were my hair is styled and I accessorize.  I look like I just walked of the page of a fashion magazine and my wallet and closet are big enough to handle my style.  It's always fall in my head.  I wear a lot of layers.  So I took my wardrobe into my own hands and cast on my only skein of lace weight....

I got this far before screwing up.

Click for detail

It's a far cry from the finished product (rav), but I am hoping that the new cold weather will inspire my inner fashionista to knit it up.

Sock Blanket Saturday

My friend Amy gave me a skein of trekking to wind for her and in return her let me knit up a square for my sock blanket.  I've never knit with trekking before, so it was fun.  

 

This particular yarn is Trekking hand art in colorway  'Karibik,' #503 for those of you who want to know.  At quite a normal blend (75% wool & 25% nylon) for fingering yarn, it knitted up to a 4.25 x 4.25 square which is a pretty normal size.  Still there was something about it that feel like a skinnier than normal yarn.  That's not a complaint, just an observation.

I haven't posted a group picture of my squares in a while, so here you go-straight from my bed this morning before Mr. Turbo realized I was awake and handed Lil Turbo over to me.

I love my knitted color wheel.

Sock Blanket Saturday

I purchased two 50 gram balls of stroll multi.  One you read about glanced at a picture of last week and the other you'll play Where's Waldo with in the following photo.  They call the colorway "sunset multi,"  I like to think of if more as "pine blonde."

I think the one thing that this square confirms to me, besides the fact that I will never be a professional photographer, is that I will never be a designer.  I've like to say that I'm as chic as they get, but my track record just provides too much evidence to the contrary.  I will be forever doomed to knit camouflage.  OH well, at least everything will match.

Baby Booties

As it would happen, an old high school friend is pregnant with a baby girl and she dislikes the color pink, which means that I could use the Stroll Multi leftovers to knit her up a present. 

Even the family dog approves.

 These booties are based on a couple patterns found in 50 Baby Booties to Knit, by Zoe Mellor.  I primarily used her "Daisy Lace Bootee" pattern.  However, I determined early on that these absolutely had to be ribbed cuff.  Anything else is useless, I know from experience.  So that's mod one.

I had fun purchasing more ribbon for my ribbon stash.  How do I not have any off-white gros grain ribbon?!  Ribbon curling technique found here and here.

 The pansy multi booties have my second mod.  I wasn't real impressed with the daisy lace pattern on the first pair, so I looked through my vogue stitchionary (vol 1) to find a new foot pattern to show off the color changes in the yarn.

and their machine washable.

Using up leftovers, destashing and an awesome gift all at once?! Score!

Sock Blanket Saturday

Amy and I recently made a joint purchase from kn!tp!icks online.  I picked up a couple of cheap variegated

yarns in their stoll multi line and stoll tonal lines.  I'll be covering them one at a time, just to drag out the blogging foder.  ;)  This one is the "pansy multi" colorway. 

It knits up pretty much how you'd expect a 75% superwash merino and 25% nylon skein of yarn to knit up.  It's nice, but not niiice-if you know what I mean.  However, I am happy about other attributes.   Such as the fact that it's just $3.99 for a 50 gram ball.  I didn't plan on making any socks out of this stuff (too rough), so I didn't want a whole lot of leftovers.  I also really like the color.  I like that it's mainly dark purple with just a speckling of light purple, and though you can't see it in the above photo, an additional dark red purple. 

Now I just have to figure out what to knit with the remaining 40 grams to clear it out of the stash.

Sock Blanket Saturday

I feel like these Saturday posts are getting a like dull.  I mean what else can you say about a  4 inch by 4 inch garter stitch square?  Especially one that looks a lot like my April 2nd Rowan 4ply.

Anywho, today's square is a cotton/bamboo blend with a lost tag, so I can't tell you who made it.  This combo gives it a lovely fluid drape and makes it lighter weight than my other squares.  These two factors put it on my I-don't-hate-you-completely cotton list.  However, It's eight strands make it a touch on the splitty side.  My kn!tp!cks needles didn't have a sharp enough point for this ply, but my addi lace needles weren't in the right size.  If you had them I'd recommend you break them out for this yarn.  That is if you can figure out the brand...

On my monitor it looks like a hot pink, but it's more magenta in real life.
 

Sock Blanket Saturday

My friend, Amy, has traded me some new colors of sock yarn.  (She seems to have a lot of pink yarn as well.)  She has been most generous to me.  She let me knit with this electric Ms. Babs yarn before she finished the second sock, which has given me a few more Sock Blanket Saturdays.  Thank you Amy.

You can't see it from the monitor, but this yarn is eye popping pink.  Acid dye pink.  And slippery, sproingy wonderful to knit with.  I believe that this particular sock yarn is part bamboo, hence the slippery bit.  As always I love knitting with Ms. Babs yarn.  It's never treated me wrongly.  What about y'all?  Have a yarn that just floats your boat every time you knit with it in every breed, weight or color you use?

Mustang Sally

The sock sabbatical I have been on since the beginning of April is over.  I finally cast on my Kitchen Sink Dyeworks cashmere blend for a pair of socks.

I've been drooling over the Rick socks in Cookie A's Sock Innovation since the book came out in 2009.   I wanted to perfect yarn to knit it, which I found last October at SAFF.   However,  I had other socks on the needles at the time and didn't want to cheat on them with any new socks.

Sock Blanket Saturday

I recently signed up for a group BlankieMania on Ravelry.  They often do lots of swaps for blanket yarns.  I thought I'd get in on this, but often they offer 5 grams mini skeins.  The problem with this is that my lightest square is 7grams and the heaviest is an astonishing 14 grams!  (All squares weighed after knitting.)  And it makes me wonder if my 4x4 squares are so much larger than everyone else's?

Purple CCH             3/8 oz;     9 g
Aubergine Rowan    1/4 oz;     7 g
Snapdragon              5/8 oz;    8 g
Hot pink Louet         1/2 oz;    14 g
Light Pink Louet       1/2 oz;    13 g
Deuce's Pink            1/4 oz;    9 g
Pink Lemonade        1/4 oz;    8 g
Scarlett Rite             1/4 oz;    7 g
French Marigold       3/8 oz;    10 g
Autumn Oak            1/4 oz;    8 g
Hunter's Orange       1/4 oz;    8 g
Squash Blossom       3/8 oz;    10 g
Lemonade                1/4 oz;    8 g
Buttery Peeps          1/4 oz;    8 g
Lime                        1/4 oz;    8 g
Green Veggies         1/4 oz;    9 g
Green Apple            3/8 oz;    9 g
River Rock              1/4 oz;    8 g
Teal CCH                1/4 oz;    10 g
Aqua KSD              1/4 oz;    9 g
Blue home dye         1/4 oz;    8 g
Light Blue Louet      1/2 oz;    13 g
Blue Striped             1/4 oz;    9 g
Dragon Fly              1/4 oz;    8 g

Sock Blanket Saturday

This Saturday's post is a double since I forgot to post last weekend.  After all the rain that has been coming to us a weekend with gorgeous weather meant we were out in it!  There have been pretty days here and there scattered about tempting us, but an entire weekend of nice weather?  *sing it with me now*  WoNdEr~FuL! 

I dug through the stash of washable sock-weight yarns and came up with the leftovers from this (rav) still unused project (but now seamed).  Yea, I'm getting a little low on yarn for squares....

These are so stiff.  I knitted a sport weight yarn on size US 1/1.25mm needles.  The last time I knit with this yarn I used a size US 4/3.5mm.  They are solid.  They have no drape.  You could used these babies to protect a 4"x4.25" square of your body during a nuclear attack and nothing would get through.  

I'm not really worried about it though, because I don't see it affecting the overall blanket.

WIP Wednesday

Finishing up my last sweater has left me craving for more sweater knits.  I've been lusting over Strikkefrenzy's Garden Pesto (rav) a Drops pattern.  I picked out colors and bought yarns and well-It all kind of fell apart from there.  Begin the long hard search for a pattern in the right gauge.

Nothing seemed quite right.  Every pattern I found was too "geometrical" or too "Nordic-y"or not the right gauge again.

So get this I was so enamored by this pattern that I swatched just to see if I could rework all the math and get the sweater I adored. Crazy right?

The front.

The back.

The read area is what would actually be the yoke of the sweater and the rest would be grey.  I'm still loving this pattern.  I think I will go overboard and try to regauge an entire Drops Design just to use this yarn.  What y'all think?  I'm crazy right?

Maya returns!

Good news!  The Hubby heard meowing in the kitchen when he returned home from work. 

So he began to call out for Maya.  The weird thing was when he opened the door and called for her outside, he couldn't hear her anymore.  Being the intelligent Man he was he laid down ear to the floor and call for her again. 

This time he heard her plan as day.  She was under the house.  The very place I looked last Friday when she went missing. 

Guess she needed 5 days without food or water and a lighting storm last night to convince her to come back in.

We're glad she's back.

Maya on the clothes pile like she never left.

Maya Impersonates Snoopy

These were the last pictures I took of Maya.  She likes to hang out up on the mantle (above my side of the bed) and oversee her domain.

 

I'm posting this for no other reason than it tickles me to remember stupid things about her.

Zip ties in photos

Your winding up some yarn like normal and this happens.

(Just in case you weren't sure it's supposed to look like this:)

So I did this.

Sock Blanket Saturday

We interrupt this Sock Blanket Saturday for A Missing Cat Alert.  My cat Maya escaped the premises yesterday morning.  We are looking as best we can for her.  Neighbors are on high alert, I left my phone number with the mailman and I've called the humane society.  She is microchipped, so I am hoping someone will catch her and get her scanned at a vet's or shelter and we can be contacted.


She was an indoor cat with all the amenities a cat could want.  I got her another cat when I moved into my first apartment, so that she wouldn't be alone all day while I was  in class.

I was sure they would get along famously...

 
Regardless, she's been so happy since Nigel died. It was like she loathed his existence or something.

This was the closest they were ever captured on film.

And I let her rule my lap time.  It's not like I tortured her or anything.

Really she was just assisting with a photo shoot.  I wasn't really bagging her up.

I spent quality time with her ensuring necessary attitude adjustments when necessary.

We put put the best cat food around and picked up anything she might try to snack on so that she never ingested anything toxic.

And we gave her regular baths to help with hygiene.

I really don't know why she was so desperate to get outside.

Stash Resuscitation

It occurred to me after finishing my sweater and socks left me with nothing on my needles.  (Well, nothing that I can make progress on.  The sock blanket requires me to knit more socks and PoPo's sweater requires me to buy more yarn.)  I quickly remedied that with some stash busting.  At first I thought that I might take the plunge with another sweater and pull out one of my two Kuni graduated yarns to work on one of the gorgeous fair isle pieces in my rav que.  But simplicity was calling my name and I grabbed my only lace wight yarn in the entire stash.  Please don't laugh about the irony of simple lace you'll jinx me.

Dragonfly Fibers 'Dragon Lace' in Holly Berry.  870yds/4oz

I purchased this at SAFF two years ago at the same time I purchased the yarn for Tree Duo.  It seemed fitting to continue clearing out the event's yarn with the mojo I got by finishing a project with it.  Believe it or not, I am actually knitting the project I had in mind when I bought this yarn the Myrtle Leaf Shawl with willow border (rav link) from Victorian Lace Today. 

Though it's turning out considerably small than intended.  Oh well, no big loss.  I'm not into shawls anyway, and am suited for a scarf.

And speaking of socks

I finally kicked it into gear and finished up the Socks That Never End (rav link).  I'm totally blaming FO fumes from Tree Duo.

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before, but I purposefully picked this pattern of socks because it was out of my comfort zone-you know, with all the purling.  I don't recommended it for those who feel feint as the thought of purling. 

I know that I have big feet.  I'm okay with that.  I've knitted up socks for my big feet before.  I wanted to end the pattern in a particular spot, so I ended up making these socks a touch too big.

All in all, I feel kinda 'Meh' about these socks.  I'm not real happy with them, but they don't have anything wrong with them either-other than the massive amounts of purling.  These socks have taken their toll on me and I may just take a brief sock sabbatical.

Starting the week with a finish-

I am happy to say that Tree Duo (rav link) is done!  It's actually a rather quick knit regardless of what the time frame on my ravelry account says.  I'm going to tell you that I drug it out, because it's such a great knit.  But y'all know me well enough to interpret that correcting as-I am lazy so it took three times as long as it really should have.

Still, I love this knit.  I was happy to do it again the second time.  Unlike some socks I know...

This was knit up with the yarn I bought two years ago at SAFF.  It took 99% of both skeins.

 I'm glad I got two and didn't double up the yarn like one of the ideas I was throwing around.  Can you imagine?  YIKES!

Better FO shots to come!