Good luck and bad luck and a Happy New Year!

The good luck, 2 FOs and a clean closet:)
A hat for me:

(I'll post a modeled shot when Jake gets home and can take it. . . the hat is even cuter on!)
A dishcloth for swapping:

The closet: (this may not seem that impressive, but there have been the remnants of our move into this house since December of last year still in boxes, which are now recycled - very exciting to be box free and a great way to start the year! This also may not really look like a closet, but it's under our staircase so the coat hanging portion is not in the photo! And yes, our dogs really DO have that many treats!!)

The bad luck, I can't read a pattern very well :( I've had Sizzle on my 'must knit' list for quite some time. I bought the yarn with Birthday gift money. I downloaded the pattern last night and was all set to swatch when I re-looked at the yarn requirements. I thought I read the yarn requirements right. . and technically I did. . .. for the wrong size! I bought 6 balls, which is 576 yards. Plenty for the XS. . but I need to knit a S, which requires 650 yards and thus an additional ball. Crap! So now comes decision time. Buy another ball and deal with the dye lot mismatch by alternating rows on the back piece? Squeeze my not-so-large chest into a smaller size? Pick a new yarn altogether? Shorten the top to save yarn? Squeezing probably isn't the best option, I'm one inch smaller than the size S, so 3 inches bigger that the XS. Even though the top is knit in stockinette, I don't think that will look too attractive! I'd like to shorten the top. . . it's shoulder to bottom length is 22", which on me hits below my hips. I'd like it more 18" or 19", but even doing that, I don't know how much yardage that will save me. GRRR! What would you do? Any guesses on how to calculate the yardage savings by shaving 3 inches from the bottom? I'm really really REALLY excited to knit this, but I want it to fit when I'm done!!

Feeling the Noro love (sort of)

So I try to play with yarns that catch my eye, not necessarily what seemingly everyone in the knitting universe is working with. I am a little gun shy after a few experiences with Lorna's laces. Everyone else seems to love it, but I think it's pretty in a skein but I've never seen a colorway that knits up pretty (in my opinion, of course!). Anyhow, I've been curious about Noro. I found a skein on eBay for $4 so I got it and finally had inspiration to knit this hat for my friend Karen (yes, I just got on a hat kick. . .love the immediacy of getting a FO after having so much Christmas knitting that was no so quick!) I have to say. . . I may be a convert. In the ball, the colors look very odd all together, but it knits together so amazingly beautifully! Check it out (this is Silk Garden color #3). Gorgeous, right? I definitely see more Noro in my future!!

The only problem is that I didn't do a swatch (of course) and I got 4 inches of the hat and I definitely don't have enough yarn to finish, so I checked gauge and I am too tight. So, now I'll need to rip out and hopefully Size 8s will give me gauge since I don't have 7 DPNs or a circ either small or big enough to use :( I hate magic loop though, so I'm kind of glad I don't have a long circ :) Worst case with 8s I think I can take a few stitches out and still make it the right size.

And, please don't ask, I have NOT finished mom's bag. . . just enjoying a diversion from it :)

Fixing vs Frogging

While I consider myself a 'verging on advanced' intermediate knitter, I suck at fixing errors. Anything besides a basic dropped stitch/wrong stitch/wrong slanting decrease, I typically resort to frogging. I was working on my hat tonight, and started decreasing for the crown too soon. Once I tried it on again and realized this, I had to rip back an inch or so to where the increases started. No biggie. . .until I picked up all my stitches again and was one stitch short. I found the pattern repeat where the stitch was missing without a problem. Given there was no hanging loop, I was smart enough to realize I was missing a YO. Should be an easy fix, right? So I pick up a YO and knit around. When I knit the next pattern row on top of my 'fix' it suddenly didn't look right. No problem, I think, I'll just drop down and move the YO to the other side of the stitch. After I did that, the pattern still didn't look right. OK, I can still fix it, I'll just drop two stitches down the two rows and move the YO again. You can see where this is going, right?

I spent about 2 hours, all in all dropping the entire pattern repeat of 7 stitches trying to make it 8 stitches and it never looked right. Big bummer :( So I had to rip all the way back to the last place I could see all the right stitches, about 1.5 inches. I started to knitting again (undaunted, can you believe it?!?! but I really like the pattern!) and then it hit me. . . . I realized that where the pattern repeat landed straddled where I had started my decreasing. . . . DOH! I wasn't missing a stitch, it had been legitimately decreased and I just needed to tink back that one pattern repeat and I would have been good to go. . . . Knitting irony is much funnier when it happens to someone else. . . . so go ahead. . . have a good chuckle at my expense!

Sniffles and snot

Ugh. . . I am sick. It started yesterday afternoon. Sleeping last night was accomplished only by stuffing tissues in my nose to keep me from constantly blowing (sorry, I'm sure you could do without that visual image). I'm the annoying kind of sick where I'm not achy, just full of snot. So I've been on the couch all day. Around 1pm, I couldn't knit one more row on the Via Diagonale without stabbing my eyes out with the needles, so I cast on a few new projects ;)

I was going to use a pattern from the dishcloth book Tuulia sent me, but I brought down size 8s to knit it on and the pattern called for 50 stitches, which would have been GINORMOUS. Yes, I could modify the pattern to less stitches, or I could have walked my butt back upstairs to get smaller needles, but as I mentioned, I'm sick, and moving off the couch for any reason other than getting more Kleenex must be avoided. Instead, I used a late Christmas gift. (last night Jake gave me Nancy Wiseman's Knitters Book of Finishing Techniques and also More Sensational Knitted Socks) The latter I had borrowed for so long from Jessica that I was having withdrawl after I gave it back to her, so it was a nice surprise Jake had bought it. Anyway, I am using the Grapevine pattern from the sock book to make a dishcloth, because I need some quick satisfaction.

I also cast on for a hat for me, Dizzy. I had enough leftover Malabrigo (thank you, new scale!) from Jake's hat to use for this. I finished the ribbing and then got to the 'decrease evenly'. Grrrr. . .. the pattern is only one size, why would the not give you the pattern to decrease 8 of 98 stitches?!?! I am in no mood for math, but I stumbled on this website that kept the hat from going back to whence it came. I really like the pattern, though I'm unsure how WARM it will keep me with all those holes. Oh Well, it's never THAT cold in Virginia, and I can look cute wearing it, right?!

I hope I feel better tomorrow. I have the house to myself all weekend. . .no Jake, no dogs. . . . I want to enjoy it! (Though if I'm sick, I will have to work on my Scavenger Hunt Swap categories & questionnaire, so maybe not so bad!).

Hope you're feeling better than me and have much excitement planned for Monday night! I'll post pictures when I am not too lazy to move from the couch to take them!

Finally, some knitting!

So I hope you all had a great Christmas!! We had a wonderfully relaxing holiday. I got many wonderful gifts, I'll just share with you the knitting ones :)

The Knitters Book of Yarn and the scale and knitting counter are from Jake. I am SO excited and have been busily weighing all my leftovers to see what I can make with them. The Arctic Lace book and the Qiviut kit are from Anna in Alaska. I was very, very excited to get this (and I hear Anna was very excited to find it for me!). The yarn in the kit is bulky, which is very interesting, as I've only seen Qiviut in lace weight. It will certainly make a darn toasty hat!! Finally, the stitch markers are from my friend Karen. They are both glass and fimo beads from Zecca.

I have some other knitting gifts coming down from NY and MI, but not for a bit yet :) I do know one of them, though, is a subscription to Interweave Knits! Yay!

So, aside from Christmas gifts and cooking, I finally got to knitting. I finished Tricia's scarf. I like the thinner version better than the one I knit for me. I haven't talked to her yet, though, to see if she liked it. I also finished Deb's socks, but had to wrap the box and it was too cloudy to get a photo. I totally love both the Felici yarn and the pattern. I kinda want to knit a pair for me :) The last gift project is my mom's bag, which I have about 6 of 9 inches knit. I will head to the fabric store this weekend to pick out the lining and hopefully will be done with the knitting to sew it in next weekend. Finally, I 'surprised' Jake with his hat for Christmas. He knew he was getting a hat. . . eventually (the first one went to David because it was too big for Jake). I cast it on and finished it the same day. .. gotta love super chunky yarn. I love how it turned out and he seems happy with it and is glad to have it before heading up to cold and snowy New York tomorrow!

So, not long before I can start projects for me again! I'm horribly indecisive and am unsure what to do next, which probably means I'll cast on for like 6 projects all in one week. I need to restart Lelah, I want to get started on Sizzle, I am dying to try the BSJ, and I do need to knit that before Addi outgrows it :) I also really want to do something lace. And I ordered some chunky Malabrigo today to make myself a hat for going back to Michigan. And Jake wants a pair of slippers, but I don't have any felting wool I want to use, so I'll have to make a trip to get some. I see a busy January ahead :)

I've also been doing a bit of sewing (gasp - do you believe it!!) I made some Christmas gift bags to hold the knitted dishcloths I made for some family. The fabric was originally intended for making a tree skirt, but then I found some really obnoxious fabric for that,
so I was left with 6 yards of Christmas fabric with no use. I like how the bags turned out. I wish I could have figured out how to embed the tie inside it, but I was also in a hurry to finish them, so. . . .maybe next time :) I got a new iron for Christmas so now I really am all set for getting going on the sewing (and I have some awesome fabric for making a few new couch pillows!).

On a 'what were they thinking?' note. . . I have a self cleaning oven (it's quite old). I have built in wall ovens. I had a monkey bread issue in my oven that resulted in lots of brown sugar on the bottom, so I dug out the owners manual to figure out how to clean. Only to learn the 'self cleaning' oven is only the top oven. The bottom oven must be cleaned by hand. . . but not with any of the Easy oven cleaners. . . because those can't be used in a self clean oven. . . I'm so not into the work it is going to take to clean it, so I have my oven on 500 degrees right now, hoping if I leave it on all day it will clean just like a self cleaner :) On a knitting 'what were they thinking', if you own the Winter 2004/05 Vogue Knitting International, please turn to page 78. Seriously?!?! Mitre Square Pants??!?! Possibly the worst knitted item I've ever seen. Of course, I had to go look on Ravelry to see if anyone knit it, but no FOs to chuckle at :) (I got a slew of old knitting magazines from a girl in my knitting group and have been looking through them for some inspiration!)

So I think that's all I've been up to! I hope you have a safe and happy New Year (in case I don't post again before January!!)

ps- Apologies for the blurry pictures. Something funky is going on getting my pix off Flickr because these aren't compressed, so I have no idea why they come fuzzy on blogger but are not on Flickr. .

Christmas Wishes & a Meme

It's 1pm on Christmas Eve. I have 6 dozen sugar cookies to bake and decorate. I have a ham that needs baking. I have a few presents left to wrap and two knitted gifts that need to be finished. So what am I doing? Avoiding it all by blogging :) It's a reward, really. . . I've done a lot so far today! The sauerkraut is cooked (I'm polish, it's not Christmas without sauerkraut!). The potatoes are cut up an in a pot of water on the stove. Jake's surprise knitted hat is finished, wrapped and under the tree. The kitchen compost was taken to the pile. The cheesecake is baked and the cranberries are jelling (sorry, you can opener types. . . I make cranberries fresh).

I don't have any fun pictures to share yet (well I do have one, but my computer is broken and I'm waiting for DHL to deliver my replacement today so I'm using Jake's) but I did finish and ship the Imagiknit scarf and a hat for Jake. Rather than knits, I share this meme, taken from Becca.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Wrapping paper, for sure. I enjoy wrapping gifts and I love buying all the paper the day after Christmas at 50% off :) I am picky about how many boxes are wrapped with each paper to ensure even distribution of color and pattern under the tree (can you say control freak??).

2. Real or artificial tree? Real. Definitely real, though the convenience of an artificial (no stringing lights!) may win out one of these days!

3. When do you put up the tree? No specific time, I try to have it up in early December, but not so early that I think it will die by Christmas!

4. When do you take the tree down? Normally we keep up the tree until Three Kings, though last year it came down sooner because the poor tree had past it's usefulness and there were more needles on the ground than the tree.

5. Do you like eggnog? I don't like to drink eggnog, but I have a fantastic eggnog creme brulee!

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Hmm, does it have to be as a child? I don't have a strong recollection of an awesome childhood gift. I did get a TV for my room when I was 12 or 13. But 2 years ago my mom gave me the 'Rockette Experience'. It was seriously one of the few gifts that almost made me cry. I always wanted to be a Rockette, but genetics prevented it (I am 5'1", minimum height is 5'7"). Going to Radio City and learning a routine was totally awesome!

7. Do you have a nativity scene? No. I did when I lived in Vermont, but it didn't make the move. We couldn't put it up if we did, anyway, because the dogs would never leave it alone.

8. Hardest person to buy for? Jake. He's ridiculously picky but gives you NO ideas to go on!

9. Worst Christmas present ever received? Not necessarily worst, but most thoughtless was when my step-mom bought me a panini press from my dad. I had given my dad the Williams-Sonoma link to the one I wanted, so this should have been easy, but she gave me a cheaper one instead. And not like $50 cheaper. . . $10 cheaper. . . really?!?!

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail. . . . email totally doesn't count!

11. Favorite Christmas movie? It's a Wonderful Life. I cry every time the whole town starts coming into the living room.

12. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Sometime in December, but if I see something in the middle of July, I'll get it and store it away (and I only forget those like 30% of the time!)

13. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? No. I don't feel bad returning gifts :)

14. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Christmas sugar cookies.

15. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Colored. I'm not into the fancy all one light/all one color ornament trees. I like a hodgepodge :)

16. Favorite Christmas song? O Come All Ye Faithful (the Latin version of it though!) Preferably sung by Bing Crosby.

17. Travel or stay home? Stay home, though this year that means no immediate family, which is kind of weird.

18. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen. Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen. . . but do you recall. . . the most famous reindeer of all? Why yes, I do. . , it's Rudolph, thank you Bing Crosby :) (I have a freakish obsession with all Christmas songs and own a good 20 CDs of Christmas compilations. . . how could I not know all the reindeer?)

19. Star on the top of the tree? Yes, I prefer a lit one, but last year we bought a cool wood & metal one that resides atop the tree now.

20. Open presents on Eve or Morning? One present on Christmas Eve, everything else has to wait until Christmas morning, after Breakfast.

21. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? The internal debate of which friends make the gift cut-off. And the awkwardness of getting a gift from someone you did not get one for!

22. Best thing about this time of the year? Driving around at night and seeing all the Christmas trees lit up in windows. I like seeing outdoor decorations, too, but just seeing the lights on a tree makes me happy!

I hope everyone has a safe and very merry Christmas!!

No knitting, but some finishing

So I finally got around to blocking all my endpapers. (not sure why the photo is blurry. .. . must be from compressing it down from 4 MB) Blocking really did settle down and even out the floats, so the pattern looks much more even. I'm very pleased with my first (well, first 3!) attempts at color work. The turquoise pair went out to Anna today. My pair are now living in my coat pocket and the final pair will go to their giftee as soon as her scarf is dry from it's blocking.

Deb's socks & mom's bag are coming along, as well.

On an unrelated note, I'm going back to school!! No, really! I've toyed around with the idea for a while now. At first I was just going to audit some classes, but I decided to actually apply to the Associates degree program. I'm not going back full time, just one class for now in the evening. What am I studying, you ask? Interior Design! Fun, right?! I'm pretty excited. Since I've gotten back into knitting and doing house projects and sewing, I'm discovering this is something I really think I'd like, and also that I'd be good at. So I'm off to the community college tomorrow to officially enroll. Yay!

No knitting, but pretty yarn!

So I'm in the knitting black hole on mom's bag. . . lots of knitting, little visible progress. I have 3 or so inches to go. While I haven't been knitting much, I do have yarn goodness to share :) Remember Carrie's 1st Blogiversary contest where I won a skein of Socks that Rock? It came this week, colorway is Christmas Rock! (image from BMFA website, not my own photography :) I can't wait to knit with it!! Carrie also sent me a super cute Christmas stitch marker. I've got a bunch of fun yarn now, and it will be quite the decision to decide what to cast on with when Christmas is over!

I also participated in a swap on swap-bot. . .It's color themed and this month was grey. My spoiler was Angie and she sent me two skeins of Fearless Fiber lace weight in the Miracle colorway. This picture is from the shop, but doesn't do it justice.
It's positively gorgeous! She also included a Lantern Moon sweater keyring. It's way cute, though Jake has threatened to leave me if I actually put it on my keyring (I have a bit of a bulky keyring. . . car FOB, house alarm FOB, a few other trinkets. . . . only 2 actual keys on it). Since he always gets handed the keys to put in his pocket when I'm somewhere that I don't want to carry a purse, he feels he gets a say :) We shall see who wins. . . .

¿Habla español?

OK, You don't have to speak Spanish to enjoy this stuff. We randomly found it while grocery shopping last night and we were looking for something 'not so bad' for us in the Ice Cream aisle (we were trying to avoid buying Ben & Jerry's!). OH MY GOSH. . . .. This stuff is AMAZING!! You HAVE HAVE HAVE to try it. We tried the pomegranate & blueberry, but there was a raspberry and a margarita flavor, too. It's not totally fat free, but it's WAAAY better than most other options.

And if you are saying to yourself "Wow, not much knitting content these days, Carly". . . .. you're right, and that is because not much knitting is happening!! Darn Holidays! They are too busy!!!

But never mind that. . .. .go stalk your grocery store for Hola Fruta!

Feeling like Santa

Despite the nearly 80 degree temperature today, I felt a little like Santa. Today I dropped off my charity gifts! I've always wanted to adopt a family, but even for a single mom and a child you have to have a decent budget to really do it 'right'. I was really excited this year when I found out that one of the domestic violence shelters locally has not only families but also single women from their shelters with no other family. My budget could handle a single person. I had a great time shopping for my adoptee. She was a 50 year old lady. .. her wish list was mostly things for a house rather than herself. I was able to get her an outfit that I think was super cute and a CD player/radio for her, I didn't just want to get 'needs' and wanted some fun stuff. I got some house stuff, too. . .. yay for Macy's having a great sale so my budget went pretty far. I do tend to get sappy at the Holiday's and sort of get back to remembering how lucky I am to have my education and my job and Jake. . . . so I really liked being able to 'pay it forward' to someone who found herself in a pretty bad situation but had the courage to leave and start over.

So if you read this, maybe just think about being able to give to a local charity, or Toys for Tots or whatever you can. There is always someone who will be grateful for you caring.