I'm it

I have been tagged by Marisa from One By One with the Knitting Meme:

Do you knit using the English or Continental Method?
I use the Continental method. It's the way I learned and I have no idea how to knit the English way.

Who taught you how?
A coworker taught me. She started a knitting group at work and got me going. I was so excited to find a "cheap" hobby. Photography is my other hobby of choice. Little did I know that knitting is not cheap :-)

What was your first FO?
A garter stitch scarf. Of course I had to make it harder than necessary. It was knit with green and charcoal grey wool (dk weight) on size 6 needles. And I wanted it really wide. So it was about 70 stitches wide. It took me forever to finish it.

Favorite Pattern Source?
I love books, magazines, and the internet. Ann Budd's Handy book of sweater patterns coupled with a good stitch book are great for so many sweaters. Vogue Knitting and Interweave Knits are my favorite knitting magazines. And Knitty is an awesome online source for patterns.

Favorite Needles?
I love Addi Turbos for circulars and Lantern Moon or Crystal palace for straight.

Nicest thing you've ever knit?
Probably my "under the Hoodie" sweater. It's knit in Rowan Kid Classic and is just heaven to wear. Although I'm proud of a lot of the scarves and purses I've made as gifts.

Most hated project?
I have a fine gauge ribbed scarf that has been on needles for about a year and a half. It's turning out to be a great scarf... It's just painfully boring to knit. 60 stitches wide 2x2 rib on size 7 needles. I should really just finish it.

Who are you going to pass this on to?
Roxanne and Cyndi

Yummy... but oops

I need to stay away from the Knitters Review Forum. They are always talking about awesome yarn and it makes me want some. So here is what I ordered this morning.

The main color is the burgandy with stripes in the other 3 colors:


And for good measure... a scarf for my boyfriend in:


The sweater yarn is their wool and the scarf is the merino. So I cracked after a week of no yarn... resetting my counter now and going to try to be stronger. I think I'm truly a yarn junkie :-)

SO MUCH YARN!

I was at Stitches West for 5 hours today... 5 hours of yarn shopping!

Wow!

I only bought hand dyed and hand spun yarns... nothing I could get in a yarn store. I even got some cashmere for a scarf. I came home with a large bag of gorgeous yarn. Now I think it time to really stop buying any more yarn for some time... I'm going to shoot for 6 months. So wish me luck!

oops

I need to learn to stay away from ebay. This is the Rowanspun Aran I picked up today :-) It's a great color and the price was awesome... and no shipping fee. So I'm going to just re-set my counter to 0 and start fresh on Moday (after Stitches). Then I will have to be strong... as I've run out of space for my yarn.

TTFN

Stitches West

I've been so good... no yarn bought in the last 2 weeks. Of course Stitches West is happening this Weekend and I'm going. Maybe I should just re-set my counter now. I completely plan on buying yarn. Last year Tess yarns had a booth and I really want some of their Angora/Merino Yarn. It looks like they now have a Cashmere yarn as well... yikes! Their colors are amazing. Last year I got some of their superwash merino in "frog kisses" a verigated green. Very nice stuff.

So in other knitting... I'm done with the back, front and about 1/3 of the sleeves for my Ribby:



I just hope it's not too small. My swatch guage expanded after washing so I am knitting according to that guage. Wish me luck with the blocking :-) I'm also plodding along on my Ruffle and Here & there Cable scarves. I'm close to finishing a bunch of projects... just have to stick with it. There are just so many projects I'm itching to start :-)

here & there, ruffle, tote

These 2 scarves are from Scarf Style. The pink one is the Here and There Cable scarf (fun pattern). The yarn is handpaindedyarn.com 100% merino and feels like butter. The multi color one is Ruffle in Noro Kureyon. I love the colors but the yarn itself isn't that nice. Hopefully it'll soften with washing:






This is a felted tote I finally finished up for my boyfriends mother:

Angora Rocks!

I just got my box of Angora in dark red. I really want to start a sweater with it RIGHT NOW. But I have 3 sweaters on needles at the moment :-) And my next project is a sweater for my dad that needs to be done by late April. Evil.

Well maybe once I finish one of the three on needles I can start this one and the one for my dad. Although the one for my dad will be a fun one. It's the Jessy Sweater from Stitch n Bitch Nation. It has flames on the sleeves!


So much to knit so little time

How Capricorn am I?

You are 80% Capricorn

How much do you match your zodiac sign?

When I'm bad...

So here is the peruvian highland wool I ordered today:







At least one of these combos will go into making another Ribby Cardi. But the other will probably be a pullover reglan. And now I have to re-set my no yarn counter.

gah!

Ribby Color Scheme

Here is the color for the body:

and arms:

but I may just make a solid one in the purple/brown color. Not sure yet. The yarn is Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran. It's awesome to work with. I feel better about having so much of it now :-)

oops couple more projects

This is a scarf made using Jo Sharp Silkroad Ultra in cream. The photo on the left shows the color better and the one on the right shows the cable better:

And this is the Wavy scarf from the current issue of knitty.com. The waves are more visible than the photo shows. But the verigated quality of the yarn makes it hard to photograph.

Angora!

I am so weak. I've been eying Elsebeth Lavold Angora to make a sweater for many months and I finally broke down. Webs carries it and gives a 25% discount if you spend over $120. So here is the color I picked Burgandy Red:

My justification is as follows... I was planning on picking up some yarn from Elann.com tomorrow as well as some of their Peruvial Wool and the total would be about as much as one sweater from Angora. So now I'll have one really nice sweater rather than 2 pretty nice ones :-)

And now I will officially start a "days since last yarn purchase" countdown on my side bar. Kinda like the days since last safety accident they have on construction sites in cartoons :-)

Wish me luck at staying strong!

Paint me happy

Photos finally. This is an irish hiking scarf I made for my brother for christmas (well it was a bit late):

and here is one of the MANY basic cable hats I made:
And here is the broken rib scarf I completed earlier this year using (gasp!) lion brand wool ease thick n quick:

I also started the cable cardigan form the holiday issue of Vogue Knitting (using cascade lana d'oro in burnt orange) . This is the first 5 inches or so of the back. 3x3 ribbing so far:

Hi Again

I'm nearing completion of a cabled scarf made from Jo Sharp Silkroad Ultra in cream. I bought some from elann.com when they had it. This yarn is really nice to work with... it's too bad that it's now discontinued. The cable is from 250 Creative Knitting Stitches. It's on the bottom left of page 84. Once you do a few repeats it gets easier to follow the chart. I should finish the scarf in the next couple days.

Sorry I am so lacking on photo's at the moment. I'm not home much right now and we are getting a new computer... so I haven't spent time getting the card reader (compact flash) to work on my current computer. Hopefully I'll have photos soon. I'd like to post an image of my completed wavy scarf... it turned out really well.

My hoodie is going pretty well except for a 6 inch setback. I'm using the Knitter's book of handy sweater patterns for this sweater but also using the hood style from the "under the hoodie" in my stitch n bitch book. I ended up picking up too many stitches on one side and not enough on the other... so I had to rip about 6 inches of the front. But I'm back on track now. So after the front is done I will have the sleeves and hood left :-) I'm hoping to get it done in the next week or two.

Hopefully next week I'll have some completed projects photographed and posted.

Whew

For the next few months I won't be posting as often as normal. I'm house sitting for a friend who lives in Palo Alto near my work. So lately I have had a 15 minute commute rather than an hour and 15 minute one. It's been great. So with all this extra time I have been staying at work training myself on the lighting software. So now I am actually at work for close to 13 hours a day and our firewall prevents me from posting on my blog.

But in more interesting knitting news...

I finished my wavy scarf but don't have photos yet. And after ripping out the tweed cable sweater again I decided to start on the hoodie sweater from The Yarn Girls Guide to Simple Knits instead. At 4 st per inch it's coming along nice and quickly. The back and a few inches of the front are done. I've been staying up way too late knitting lately. And today I started the Here and there Cables scarf from Scarf Style. The yarn I'm using is:



it's worsted weight merino from these guys. Actually the sweater I'm working on is also their yarn. But it's the 100% wool rather than merino. Both are lovely.

I'm off to run some errands. Have a great weekend.

sweater gone

I am knitting this sweater in the round but swatched flat... so after about 2 inches I noticed that my guage was more like 3.5 st per inch rather than the 4 it was supposed to be. The sweater has been frogged. I'm going to switch to size 8 needles and try again tomorrow. I have had real bad luck lately starting projects. I seem to start everything half a dozen times before I like it. The last 2 scarves I started were that way. So wish me luck with the sweater this time :-)

Finally a sweater

I started a sweater using this cable:



with some Berroco Uxbridge Tweed that I picked up from Elann.com awhile back in pumpkin spice:



I've been wanting to start on this sweater and swatched months ago... before the Christmas knitting madness. I feel a bit guilty as I'm not done with a baby blanket that I should really work on... but I'll get that done as well. Oh yeah... I have one more scarf to get done too. It'll all get done eventually :-)

And I finished my super chunky orange scarf. It's Wool Ease Thick and Quick in pumpkin (hmmm lots of pumpkin yarn at the moment):



I'm still without the ability to download pictures from my digital camera.... but the pattern stitch I used was the broken rib.

Cast on a multiple of 4 stitches +1 (I did 17 stitches, this yarn was bulky)
Row 1 K2 P2
Row 2 K2 P2

Someday I'll get a photo posted. This was my first time using craft store yarn... this stuff was actually really nice to work with. It's soft and cushy :-)

Having this week off has been great... I had so much time to knit and spend time with my boyfriend. Too bad I'm not independently wealthy... back to work Monday.

Artfibers

While we were in San Francisco the other day my boyfriend and I went to Artfibers. This is one of the coolest yarn shops I've ever been to. So I of course bought yarn for a couple scarves even though I could knit for a couple years withough using all the yarn I already have.

I got some Kyoto and Golden Chai.

The Kyoto is Superkid Mohair/ Spun Silk/ Extrafine Wool and is so soft I just can't wait to start someting with it. Here is a review of the yarn from knitters review.

And this is the color I got:


Golden Chai is 100% wild tussah silk and has a really nice shean to it. They don't have a photo of the color I got in Golden Chai. But it's a verigated dark pink, purple, and red. I started on the Wavy scarf from Knitty using this yarn. It's coming out really well... which is good because I started and ripped the scarf about 10 times trying to decide on a stitch pattern :-)

Now I'm going to watch a movie and work on my wavy scarf (It's for me!!!!)

That was fun

I made hats and purses for all of my cousins and Aunt's & Uncles. Everyone really seamed to like their gifts and the boys wore their cabled hats for most of the evening. I realized on the way home last night that I had forgotten to take photos of all the gifts I made... oops.

My cousin loved the poncho I made her and loved that the yarn was ecological wool so no chemical processing or dyes. She said she was never going to take it off :-)

So now I have a couple more purses and a couple baby sweaters that need to be done before the new year. Shouldn't be tough... I have this week off from work :-) And of course I'm going to start a sweater for me before the weather gets too warm.

My boyfriend and I are going into San Francisco (Union Square area) to do some post holiday sale shopping armed with some gift certificates. This is the best time of year to shop for clothes... the sales are awesome. We did the same last year and it looks like this is a new tradition for us :-)

Hope the holiday went well for everyone!

Almost Christmas

Wow I've been knitting A LOT lately (yes! even more than normal). So far I have 7 sophie purses, 4 basic cable hats, 2 felted backpacks, 1.8 ponchos, a felted tote, and 2.5 scarves for christmas gifts. Not too shabby considering I started in October :-)


Well it's getting down to the wire now... some people may be getting half finished projects for christmas this year. I'm knitting mostly for family... I think they'll be ok with the projects being done in January


And here is yet another project I want to make after the holidays Wavy