Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of my friends in knitblog world. I’ll have some actual crafting to show soon!

Travel Knitting

We had a wonderful time in Australia! If you’d like, you can check out the travel photos here.

My travel companion through most of the trip was Coquille, seen here on a train in the Blue Mountains.

I finished it on my second-to-last evening in Australia, and I love how it turned out. I think it really shows off my Cairns handspun.

So the main beach in Byron Bay isn’t exactly the place for a wool shawl. It made a pretty backdrop.

And how long does it take to get home from Australia? Long enough to knit 63 rounds of Shedir.

This was the perfect pattern for a 32-hour door-to-door journey. It was just complicated enough to keep my mind busy, but easy enough to memorize that I could carry on despite major sleep deprivation and jetlag. Again, I’m pleased with the way it turned out.

I gave Juniper a tour of Australia, but I still haven’t decided what I’ll make with it. Think I can finish 4 oz challenge in the next two weeks?

Summer!

The northernmost sunset of the year.

Happy summer solstice! Enjoy that daylight!

May

It’s been a busy month.

My sister and I both graduated from graduate school (J.D. for me, Ed.M. for her).

We celebrated our cousin Katherine’s graduation from our alma mater.

I went to my college reunion and my husband’s college reunion.

It’s been a busy, joyous month. I have been knitting and crocheting, just not photographing any of it. I hope everyone is doing well!

WIP Wednesday – (too many?) Colors

Today’s WIP Wednesday is all about colors. Bright colors. Maybe too many bright colors.

The first thing to show you is my newest long-haul project, Featherweight Cardigan in Creatively Dyed Waterfall that I got at Rhinebeck.

The yarn is tiny and it’s going to take a million years. Fortunately I’ll be studying for the bar this summer and will crave some zombie knitting.

On Saturday I went to Webs with the gals. It was delightful as always, and I ran into Gudrun Johnson/The Shetland Trader and Melissa/Knitting School Dropout, neither of whom I’d met in person before.

I went to Webs on a mission: get more colors for Babette. You know me by now, does this look like my color scheme?

Of course not. There’s no green!

Ahh, much better.

Meet Penelope

This is my brand new Kromski Minstrel. I named her Penelope after Odysseus’s wife, who wove by day and ripped out her work by night (you should scroll all the way down on that mythology page. I love that painting!)

She arrived on Thursday night while I was at SnB, wrapped snugly in Polish newspapers. I ordered her from Copper Moose and was very happy with the service.

I chose the Minstrel for a few reasons. For one, the look really fits in my house.

Second, I decided that I really wanted double treadle after playing with my husband’s drum set. It’s a lot easier for me to do something with my hands if both of my feet are moving in the same way, rather than moving one and holding the other still. Third, Dr. Al let me use her Minstrel, and I felt very comfortable using it.

I’m very happy so far!

(The pretty blue fiber is BFL in “tranquility” by The Painted Sheep)

In case you missed it – January 2010

How did it get to be February?! I started and finished a Multnomah in the time since I last posted. Ooops.

Here it is, the best of January:

Best pop of color

Best use of red

Best in classic black

Best color comparison

Best use of black and white

Scariest knitting photo

Robots!

Most impressive grassroots effort

Most beautiful tribute

In case you missed it – November 2009

Over the last week or so, my husband and I have watched the whole first season of Deadwood on DVD (from Netflix). It is a totally awesome and badass show.  Knitting a baby blanket while watching filthy mountain men kill each other and drop eff-bombs is pretty incongruous, but nonetheless delightful.

I’ve made some good progress on Op Art, and it’s at the unphotogenic blob stage.  Since Op Art isn’t much to look at these days, I’ll take a moment to share some of my favorite posts and projects from November in blogland:

Now, with more VIKINGS!

Good sport husband award

Best idea for those couple random skeins of Noro we all have kicking around

Most intriguing mix of lace and beads

Best recycling

Coziest house

Most beautiful photos

Most colorful crochet (I should get cracking on my Babette again, shouldn’t I?)

Most colorful knitting

Best use of AWARD WINNING YARN!

I hope everyone’s December is off to a good start!

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.

NaBloPoMo

Should I do NaBloPoMo?  On the one hand, pressure kills the fun of knitting and blogging.  On the other hand, my first trip to Rhinebeck is coming up.  And Stitches East is coming to my home town of Hartford, Connecticut (wooot!).  I’ll have plenty to write about, right?

If not, you guys appreciate cute kitty pictures, don’t you?

I thought so.