I decided to knit We Call Them Pirates for my sister as a birthday present (her birthday was over the weekend).

The good news:

It looks awesome!

It’s lined in shocking orange Shine Worsted to keep the wool off her face!

The bad news:

It’s way too short. It’s so short it pops off my head if I turn my neck. Curses. So I think what I’ll do is rip back and add a fourth row of skulls, and give it to her for Christmas.

Thank you for all your warm wishes on Fiona!  She is a very cute kitty and we love her very much.

Today when I was doing laundry (laundry is in the basement, which we have to go outside to access) Fiona escaped and returned to her natural habitat (she’s finally back inside now).

I tried to catch her but it just made her run away, so I decided to wait until she felt like being a cooperative kitty. I wanted to stay outside to keep an eye on her, so I took the opportunity to go through the yarn “crypt” – a box of yarn in the basement holding UFOs and random scraps.

I think that’s the yarn-y equivalent of a bloodcurdling scream, no?

Once I fought past the tangles a bit, the box was an interesting tour down pre-blog knitting memory lane.

Here is a scrap of the Wedding Afghan I started for my friends Kate and Evan, who got married in July 2005.  I ended up making them a  feather-and-fan afghan out of this yarn here.

It’s Valley Yarns Charisma, which has been discontinued. Evan is from New Zealand (and so is the wool) and Kate likes bright colors, so it seemed perfect. I still kick myself that I never took a picture of the finished item.

On the trip to Chicago when my grandfather passed away in December 2006, I got it into my head to make a top-down leaf patterned lace sweater. It didn’t turn out, but the idea later mutated into Foliage.

I frogged it, and the yarn became Wicked.

This hot mess is my second attempt at Unbiased, from circa fall 2004. 

The first attemt was according to the pattern, but the notch in the top allowed too much to spill out the sides, so I decided to modify it, but that didn’t work out either. I ended up frogging some of it VERY slowly and starting over on a purse of my own improvisation.

I kind of like it, I may finish it now that I remember it exists.

So, have you come across any interesting reminders of your knitting past lately?

The good news:  I figured out the pattern for Pomatomus!  The chart didn’t make any sense to me before I started, but once I got into the pattern it was very easy to memorize.

The bad news:  These socks are going to be tiny!  Comically tiny.  There is no way they would have worked for me.  Or my mom.  Or my sister.  They are just way, way too small.

Where did I go wrong?  I think my gauge has changed as I’ve become more accustomed to small needles.  I’ve only knit a few pairs of socks, and of course I wasn’t immediately comfortable with the tiny needles.  I couldn’t get a good grip on them, so everything came out really loose and I had to go down a size.  I think that as I’ve become more comfortable with the small needles I’ve started to get what would be a “normal” gauge.  Since I was still using a smaller needle, I came out with smaller socks.  Oh poo.

I won’t re-attempt these immediately.  I picked Pomatomus in green because of the March Socktopia theme “It’s not easy being green.”  Now that March is over I’m not in any rush.  I also have a TON of this yarn (CTH Supersock) that I got as a mill end from ebay.  I think I’ll use it to swatch for Serrano.