Well, what do you know...

...the blog isn't quite abandoned. Everything, knitting included, has taken a back seat to the biggest project I have ever undertaken. Here are a couple hints:



















Yep, it's a baby! The furry children Chili the dog and Brrp the cat (formerly Muffin Top) have a sister!She's feisty! Isn't she just the most perfect baby ever?!!?

While I was pregnant, all my creative energy seemed to be utterly sapped, went into making the baby, I suppose. The two items above are two of the three handknits I was able to finish for my own child. Classic case of the cobbler's children having no shoes. Luckily, some of her "fiber aunties" stepped up.

Now that she's here, knitting (and cooking and eating and showering and so on) are utterly secondary to her (lack of) schedule. I've been working on another mostly stockinette baby hat for several weeks now with SLOOOW progress and haven't even started the socks I want to make for my rock star of an obstetrician.

So, the question is, how much does the baby take over the blog?

Hitting the sock wall?

Noro - I have a love-hate relationship with that brand of yarn. Love the way they do color; lots of other yarns try and even come close, but Noro's amazing colorways are still unequalled. Hate their tendency to leave a lot of vegetable matter in the yarn and how many skeins are chock full of knots, often resulting in abrupt color transitions. So I approached the skein of Silk Garden Sock with a mix of hope and trepidation, took it home anyway and split the skein.

Noro - fickle-hearted Noro! Everything started out so promisingly. As I split the skein in half, I didn't find a single knot in the entire skein! And hardly any VM either! Almost too good to be true - could this really be Noro? I cast on for waffle weave socks, having seen someone else's wonderful results with that yarn/pattern combination. In retrospect, she might have been using Kureyon Sock though. My attempt at them with Silk Garden Sock was a bust - wrong gauge when knit comfortably, nightmare to knit on needles small enough to make gauge. My second attempt was with a herringbone pattern, which was unsatisfying for a different reason - too much effort for no real visual impact. The plain cuff ribbing looked nicer that the herringbone zigzags.

Noro, oh, Noro, is that all you aspire to be - a plain pair of ribbed socks? Maybe you'll reconsider while you cool your heels in the sock yarn stash for now. I think I'll go work on something else right now.


[P.S. Kitty looks like she's here to stay. She's made herself quite at home, and we're calling her Muffin Top. She's a bit of a pudge.]

Pretty

Hats - almost as much fun as socks. Here's the latest, and quite lovely, I think.

Pattern: Selbu Modern
Yarn: Koigu Premium Merino
Needles: US2 and US0

Koigu's colors, especially the Painter's Palette blends, are just stunning. I have a bunch in my stash, two skeins per color, bought with the intention of making them into socks. Well, in the meantime, it's just not my favorite sock yarn anymore, mostly because without any nylon it doesn't wear quite as well. So, what to do with it? This hat is one solution.

Small needle projects are fun when you want a lot of knitting in a nice portable package. I cast on for this in anticipation of some quality waiting room time at my annual appointment with the ob/gyn; the last few years, I've had some seriously long waits because of someone else going into labor. Since I was prepared for that, of course I got to go right in this time. The small needles only bugged me at the very end, as in the very last two decrease rounds, working with one color on each hand on double points. That was a major pain in the a**.

I'm old school; I like my double points and just haven't found the love for magic loop. But I did have an epiphany on those last two hateful rounds: working on double points while carrying yarn on the right hand sucks. I normally knit continental (yarn on the left hand), but the second color has to go somewhere. Every time I made a stitch with the right hand yarn, I had to let go of the right hand needle to "throw" the yarn around the stitch. A minor annoyance when there are a bunch of other stitches still on it to hold it in place; a nightmare when there are just a few, and the needle wants to slip away or twist in the breeze or otherwise generally misbehave. So, yes, I now see where "double point desperation" might come from, especially if you knit English.

[Kitty is still here. I think Egg is in love, despite his allergies. We agreed though that I should post signs in the neighborhood today, because it is bad karma to steal someone's pet.]

A new addition (maybe)

Look what showed up at the kitchen door this morning! We're evaluating each other for compatibility.

Right now she's hanging out on Egg's desk while he doing the taxes. I think she's working her kitty magic on him. The dog is super excited; he likes cats. Kitty is less enthusiastic about him but surprisingly tolerant. She's only had to slap him twice so far.

Oh, look, more socks

Socks are the knitting equivalent of comfort food for me. If I just need to knit on something, a simple pair of ribbed socks fits the bill. I can work on them without having to concentrate too much, other than paying a little attention while doing the heel. It's knitting on autopilot. Looking at my output for the last few months, I've been on autopilot a lot.

So it was with this latest pair. I meant to reverse the twist of the cable on the second sock, but because I was knitting on autopilot, I didn't remember that detail until I was halfway to the heel. Oh, well...

Autopilot Socks
Pattern: none
Yarn: Trekking XXL
Needles: US2 for cuff, US0 for the rest

Hat weather

Another cold front, another hat.

Pattern: Le Slouch (Wendy Bernard's Knit and Tonic blog)
Yarn: Plymouth Yarn's Baby Alpaca Brush in color 500 (black), ca. 160yds.
Needles: US7 and US8
Mods: Smaller gauge so I cast on a few more stitches, minor modifications to the crown shaping

Nothing says Sunday like a little attempted phone fraud

The phone rang today, and when I checked the caller ID, it showed our name listing and number. Eyebrows raised, I answered. On the other end was a recorded female voice saying that our account had been locked because of potentially fraudulent activity identified by Central State Bank's fraud prevention department. It then gave the option of pressing 1 to unlock the account or pressing 2 to hear the recording again. Not sure that I heard it right the first time, especially the bank's name, I pressed 2. It played the same message. By now I had Egg listening in too, and he went ahead and pressed 1 to "unlock the account". When the recording asked that we enter our account number, we hung up, suspicions confirmed: phone phishing attempt.

I want to disinfect my phone now.

(That generic bank name was a nice touch. I googled it and found lots of banks with that as the base of their names, usually Central State Bank of Someplace.)

More alpaca fun

Now I can be all matchy-matchy with my Thistledown Alpacas accessories! (Anyone who knows me knows that I do not have the gene for accessorizing, btw.) I'm so happy with this beret that I violated the rule about only wearing one hand-knit item at a time last night and wore it with the cowl from the same yarn (see previous post). I know the cables get lost in the heathery tones of the yarn, and I knew they would before I started knitting, and I don't care! Knitting with this yarn is such a tactile pleasure, so I wanted to do something with it that would require much handling.

Pattern: Cabled Tam (Vogue Knitting, Holiday 2008)
Yarn: Thistledown Alpacas DK
Needles: US6 (4mm) and US4 (3.5mm)
Mods: only did four of the five pattern repeats

TV wasteland = fun with alpaca

How can there be ABSOLUTELY NOTHING worth watching on a Saturday night on any of the bazillion channels we get? DVD player and a hank of alpaca yarn to the rescue!

The yarn is a sport-weight alpaca from Thistledown Alpacas that I bought last year at Maryland Sheep & Wool. Lovely, just lovely, about 120 yards of softness. There's a lot of texture in there. The pattern is the New New Shale Cowl, only mine is about 5 inches shorter than the pattern instructions call for because 1) I only wanted to use one skein, and 2) I thought a full-length one might be a little heavy in this yarn. This is Alabama, after all. It's not heavily blocked; I just steamed it some to get teh YOs to open up a little.

I have two more hanks of this yarn, and I'm thinking maybe fingerless mitts, or maybe a hat...

See the Monkey!

The Monkey sock must be well on its way to becoming a classic by now. Cookie A hit it out of the park with this one!

Pattern: Monkey socks (Knitty, Winter 2006)
Needles: US2 for cuff, US0 for body
Yarn: Zitron Trekking XXL in colorway 100

The word from my LYS is that this colorway has been discontinued. I suppose you either love it ot hate it (I love it, Egg hates it, but then he's not wearing them, is he?).

Lia over at The Knitting Defective has challenged herself to knit 52 (!!!) pairs of socks this year. You go, Girl! I think I'm aiming for a pair a month. So these are my January socks; now what to do for February...

Crawling back into the light

A bout of the winter blues has been an unwelcome visitor over the last few weeks, but despite not getting it together to post anything, I haven't been entirely unproductive. Happily, the re-purposing of the Portland Tweed from the unfortunate hooded scarf into a sweater was in my humble opinion entirely successful:

TAH-DAH! Something I will actually wear (and already have)!

Pattern: Climbing Vines Pullover (Interweave Knits, Winter 2008)
Yarn: Portland Tweed by Classic Elite (bought at Sheep To Shawl in Montevallo)
Needles: US7s for the body, US6s for the ribbing
Modifications:

• Worked body in the round until the armholes,
• Simplified the armhole shaping,
• Picked up the sleeves at the shoulder and worked in the round to the cuff,
• Added a small gusset in the armpit (I HATE sweaters that bind),
• Made the neckline a little higher and the overall length a little longer

Santa Claus also had something on back order for me, which finally arrived. At last year's Maryland Sheep & Wool, I bought two hanks of Delly's Delights Twist of Heaven Alpaca DK, all they had left. I had no specific plan for it, but I couldn't leave without it. The name is perfect; it is unbelievably soft and lush, possibly the softest alpaca yarn I've found so far. And the color! A strand of chocolaty brown and one of a soft gunmetal grey (there's an oxymoron for you!) This close-up kinda captures it.

Anyway, at some point I decided that two hanks weren't enough, and two more arrived last week. Yards and yards of the most perfect alpaca yarn ever! And because I think it's so perfect, I'm utterly intimidated picking out just the right project for it. I mean, how can I even contemplate sullying something so wonderful with a mediocre project? So the search goes on for just the right thing...