Eye Candy Friday – Blue

I realized that while I happened to knit some blue stuff lately, I hadn’t done anything specifically for the blue phase of Project Spectrum.  Then I noticed that now that the leaves are off the tree in the front yard, the sunlight does awesome things to my blue glass collection.  Perfect.

Flora

I got so caught up in the fiber fest frenzy of the last couple of weeks that I forgot to show you the Flora Hat I finished before Rhinebeck.

Pattern:  Flora Hat from tentenknits/Margaux Pena
Yarn:  Jo Sharp Silk Road DK Tweed, about half a skein of blue and half a skein of green.

I knit this to match my knucks and it worked perfectly!

Mods:  I decided to to a square top to the hat, I forget why.  I ran out of the blue, so the very top is green.  I didn’t like having a random green square up there, so I made little tendrils like I did on the knucks.  It’s a design element!  ;)

I enjoyed the pattern, and it inspired me to make some more stranded hats to practice the technique.  Currently on the needles: Inga.

Stitches East

I don’t have any photos of Stitches East because they didn’t allow photography. Argh! How out-of-touch with the knitting community can you get?! Is there anything we like more than pretty pictures of pretty yarn? Well, the yarn itself, I guess. But you get what I’m saying. I hear the rationale was that they didn’t want people taking secret pictures of patterns and copying them. Is that seriously such a big issue? Wouldn’t it just be easier for the pattern poachers to buy the pattern once and make copies? I’m frustrated because I saw SO MANY people wearing their gorgeous knits, and it would have made a really pretty blog post.

Anyway.

I did find some great stuff at Stitches.

I finally got to meet Gale Zucker of She Shoots Sheep Shots and bought a copy of her book Shear Spirit.  It’s so beautiful, I highly recommend it.  She was at the booth with one of the fiber folk the book profiles, Nan Kennedy of Seacolors.   Nan had a ton of different colors at the booth, but I was drawn to this misty grayish-pinky-purple.

Yeah, that’s a big ball of yarn. I’m not usually one to do the super trendy patterns, but I think this is destined to be a February Lady.  First of all, the pattern is popular for a reason. Second, this colorway very much reminds me of a misty February morning.

I also got a beautiful pewter shawl pin from The Elegant Ewe.

After we were done with the market, we went on a pub crawl that my friend Allison organized. We had a blast!

Me and Allison in our green sweaters. Hers is a February Lady, one of about eleventy-billion I saw this weekend. Resistance is futile…

Here I am in my Serrano, loving my big purple yarn-baby.  That ball of yarn is seriously the same size as my cat.

Woo party!

Allison and spinning superstar Jacie in her Apres Surf Hoodie.

Maura, Allison, Jacie, and Kris of The Painted Sheep.  Kris lives in our neck of the woods, but doesn’t come out with us often, so this was a special treat.

We also made great new friends from New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and DC.  Here’s to an even bigger crowd next year!

Serrano… finally

Is that…? Could it be…?

Yes, I’ve finally finished Serrano!

Pattern: Serrano, by Laura Chau (Knitty, Fall 2006)
Yarn:  Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Mill End from ebay (color close to Loden)

Please excuse the pictures, it was getting dark but I really wanted to get it in for Finish or Frog Friday. After two years in sweater purgatory, it is finally finished!

Good God, what a saga this has been.  I started it in April 2007, when we were still living in Boston.  In September 2007 I declared that we were in the home stretch.  Ha! I had intended to finish it in 2008, but I didn’t.   So here we are, nearing the end of 2009.

I’ve had two main problems, the first of which was the sleeve caps.   They just aren’t as rounded as most sleeve caps, they’re pointy.   As a result, the shoulder area did not fit well at all.   I’ve re-blocked it, and while it still isn’t perfect, it is much better than it was and certainly good enough.

In March I declared an intention to actually finish this. Later that month, I noted that I was having a hard time figuring out how to close it. And indeed, it took me another seven months to figure it out.  The original Serrano was made from Schaefer Anne, which is just not as stretchy or “sproingy” as Cherry Tree Hill Supersock. CTH is very stretchy, so the whole hook-and-eye tape thing was not working out. It just didn’t hang right with a non-stretchy closure along the whole front opening.

I finally found the right closure at Sit-n-Knit.

I’m really happy with the way the closure works with the finished sweater.

It took so long to do the pattern that I don’t really remember what, if any, mods I did. I do know, however, that I did a more cropped shape without the waste shaping. My gauge with the CTH was coming in smaller than the pattern was written for, so I basically followed the directions for a larger size and the gauge made it my size. That would have messed up the waist shaping, of course, so I just omitted it. I think it worked out.

I love the lace pattern, and I am very happy that it is finally finished.  I met the designer Laura/Cosmicpluto at Rhinebeck, which reminded me that I really ought to finish Serrano.  The best part is, I finished it just in time to wear it to Stitches East which is hitting my hometown THIS WEEKEND!  I’m sure I’ll have many more FO pictures after this weekend.

Let me know if you’ll be there.  I would love to meet you!

Dotty Cat Bed

I finished the knitting for Dotty a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted to let Fiona give the finish product a review before I posted about it.

This project is kitty approved!

Pattern: Dotty Cat Bed by Kelp/Kelly Porpiglia
Yarn: Cascade 220 in purple, green, and gray

She’s a small kitty (5.2 lbs when we found her, maybe 7-8 lbs now) so I only cast on 192 stitches.

It fits her perfectly!

She’s also really taken to it, which delights me. I put it next to our bed, so she’d have a nice place to sleep. She had been trying to sleep at our feet, but we would kick her accidentally so it wasn’t a good situation. This is much better, and she’s actually started going to her Dotty bed of her own accord.

I think it also really helps that she can use it as a place to sit while she watches birds out the window.

I messed up on the pattern a little bit, so it’s more like squares than like dots, but Fiona doesn’t care.

I think we’re both really happy with how it turned out!

Rhinebeck – Part 2

We left the fairgrounds at around five on Saturday, went back to the hotel for a bit, then went to the Ravelry party. It was dark so the pictures didn’t really turn out (Winged Orange has some nice ones), but I can show you the awesome cupcakes:

I had such a great time at the Ravelry party.  The coolest part was talking face to face with some of the knitbloggers I follow, like Peaceful Knitter, Whitknits, Lindsey Rose and Space Kitty. It was sort of hard not to be a geeky fangirl and swoon in the presence of Jess and Casey and the gang. While we were at the party, Allison gave me a spinning tutorial and convinced me to get a spindle the following day.

After the party we went back and hung out at the hotel with the other knitters, and Karen gave a spinning lesson to some of the Taunton gals.

On Sunday, we had breakfast at the hotel with our Southern CT buddies Mary Jane and Daria, then went back to the fairgrounds.

The weather was noticeably colder and wetter, and the crowds were noticeably more sparse. It wasn’t horrible though, it could have been a lot worse. I was pretty comfortable in my green winter coat, with my Foliage set and my Seraphim as a scarf. The upside was that the Sunday Ravelry meetup was a lot less crowded, so we got to talk to Jess and Casey.   I like to think I kept it together.

So, you may be asking, is that a spindle and fiber in my hands? Yes, yes it is. Don’t judge me! I guess I’m easily peer pressured But as you can see from my coat and my Lexie Barnes bag, that green is totally my color.  My friends told me to get four to six ounces, but as the lady was unwinding that ball I saw that the inside was a different shade.  I had visions of beautiful barberpoled green handspun and I panicked.  I bought the whole thing.  Some time in the next year I hope to have a green handspun vest.

We left the fairgrounds pretty soon after that.  Hooray for a great trip to Rhinebeck, and I’m already looking forward to next year!

Rhinebeck – Part 1

This weekend I went up to Rhinebeck for the first time with some yarny friends from the Connecticut River SnB.

(here you see Maura, Sharon, Allison and Karen)

We had a great time!

We drove up on Friday, and stayed at the Quality Inn in Kingston.  Some of the other folks in my SnB knew two other great knitters from CT, and we also met up with awesome folks from Taunton, MA and Upstate NY.  In the lobby that night, I worked on mittens that I desperately wanted to be able to wear this weekend.  I messed them up, so I did emergency surgery, with Doctor Allison assisting.

There was some scarring, but the patient survived.

On Saturday, we got to the fairgrounds at about 10:30. The first part of the day was a blur of yarn and fiber and cute sheepies. I tend to get overwhelmed at fairs. We really lucked out in the weather department though. They were predicting rain and snow and sleet and utter misery, but it didn’t rain much at all on Saturday, and I was perfectly comfortable in my Lite Lopi Pullover and a Foliage in Malabrigo Bulky (Rhodesian colorway) that I knit for the occasion.

At noon we went to the Ravelry Meetup, which was great. The star of the show was a giant knit Bob head, which is a rather amazing showing of skill and dedication.

(apparently it was designer Ysolda Teague under there, which I didn’t know at the time.  You can also see Laura/Cosmicpluto on the right in the orange mitts.)

Aaron, one of my traveling companions, took the opportunity to re-enact his Remnants thread, “Ask Justonescarf a Question”

In that photo, he’s wearing his THIRD scarf and his first HAT. We’ll have him knitting aran pullovers one of these days.

After the meetup, we went to check on our friend Jacie’s yarn submissions. She won a blue ribbon in the novice spinners category!

Woo hoo! Go Jacie!

After we saw the blue ribbon, I decided to take out my mittens, and work on them as we walked.

People stared a bit, which I thought was odd. Isn’t Rhinebeck EXACTLY the place to work on mittens as you walk? And anyway, I finished them, so it was worth it.

Whew, I think that’s enough excitement for one post. More to come tomorrow!

FAIL

Argh, school reared its ugly head and kicked my butt over the last couple of weeks. I completely failed at NaBloPoMo.

I also completely failed at my goal of finishing my sweater before Rhinebeck.

That red string shows where I was when I brought the thing out of storage. Whoops.

But you know what? It’s ok.

Mother Nature is gearing up for a total weather FAIL this weekend. It would have been way too cold to wear that sweater anyway. No choice but to swaddle myself in copious amounts of other yarny goodness.

Before

What is that, a hat?

No, it’s the Dotty Cat Bed pre-felting.

Fiona doesn’t seem impressed so far. I hope she likes it after a trip through the washing machine!

Coming out of hiding

Last night I mentioned that my first trip to Rhinebeck is coming up.  As I was writing that I realized that, indeed, Rhinebeck is only two weeks away!  What should I wear?  It seems that everyone who’s anyone is making a Rhinebeck sweater (as those in the know have for years, of course).

I haven’t started (or finished) any new sweaters recently, so I was thinking hard about what I could whip up in two weeks. Then I remembered this:

It’s my Pinstripe Pullover that I put in storage back in March.

I have about two inches left of the body to do before I start the sleeves. Think I can finish it in time?