SKA?

Guess what I started the other day? Yeah, another scarf. Is there a scarf-knitters anonymous (SKA?) support group out there anywhere? I just can't seem to stop!!

I bought two skeins of TLC Amore in plum waay back in June and had no idea what to make with it. It's so soft and pretty I decided to try out the Razor Shell lace pattern I fell in love with from another blog. Here's the beginning:

I haven't decided whether I like it yet or not. I love the pattern. I love the yarn. I just don't know if I love them together. What do you think? The boucle doesn't give very good stitch definition. But it's soo light and airy I already want to snug it around my neck and never take it off! But it's another one of those cool weather scarves-- definitely not built for biting cold and snow. So while I mull it over I put it aside and started this instead:

The cable pattern is from the Harmony Guide and the yarn is called Chile from the LYS-- the same stuff I used for Grandma's hat and scarf. Only... halfway through the second repeat I decided I didn't like how big the cable looked with this bulky yarn. So it got frogged. I've put together a new pattern using two different cables from the Harmony guide and am halfway through the second repeat of that now. (No, I didn't take a photo! Whoops. I promise one next time.) So far, I'm liking attempt #2 much better.

And in all this scarfyness I did get some work done on the rainbow one. See? It's pushing 3 feet! Slow and steady. Afterall, Christmas is a few weeks off yet, right?

And now, in un-scarf related news, I just finished my first swap on the Knitty Coffeeshop. I had a copy of Jill Eaton's Minnow Knits book I wanted to pass on. The lovely Kori is now its proud owner and she sent me such luscious yarn in return, I nearly cried with joy!!

From L to R that's two balls of Classic Elite bamboo yarn, two balls of Sisu sock yarn, and three balls of Rowan linen drape. I'm so in love! The Rowan colors are so yummy they make me wish it were autumn again. And the bamboo yarn... *happy sigh*. If you've never felt bamboo yarn you've GOT to. It was the first time I'd even heard of it and this stuff feels like buttah. I have no idea what any of it will turn into but I can't stop taking it all out, looking at it, and petting it a little. Thanks Kori!! :)

The Neverending Scarves

Yes, I know I'm supposed to be working on that last Christmas gift. I even like how the scarf is turning out! I just can't keep myself focused lately.

This weekend hubby and I were Christmas shopping in downtown Heidelberg. We were in Galeria Kaufhof looking around when he had to visit the WC. Am I to blame that the clever folks at Kaufhof put their yarn section right next to the restrooms? Absolutely not! I found some super bulky navy blue yarn that matched what I used to make his hat a few weeks ago and decided he needed a scarf. Hubby is not a scarf person-- I'm not sure if he's ever worn one before in his life! But it's chilly here in winter and hats and jackets only cover so much. The yarn was a wool/acrylic blend so it's warm without being itchy. Super bulky meant that I knit up the garter stitch scarf on size 13 needles in one afternoon. Hubby seems pleased with it, so maybe he'll actually wear it! If he won't I'm sure I will. :)

As if I hadn't had enough scarf knitting to last me a lifetime, I really want to start work on my Irish Hiking scarf this week. Only the yarn I intend to use is still in thrift-shop sweater form. Whoops! Looks like I'll be doing some frogging tomorrow. Tonight, it's back to the rainbow scarf. I swear!

Booga Bag

First off I'd like to apologize for the poor picture quality. Taking pictures at night isn't the best idea but I was so excited when it was finished that I couldn't wait! Plus the days have been gray and dreary here lately anyway. Now... to the booga!

This was my first felting project and I have to say I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out. I knit it with Knitpicks Wool of the Andes in Mist, Fog, and Blueberry. Much cheaper than Noro Kureyon and I still got the nice stripey effect.

Here's a shot of me hard at work. Dell is hard at work too. Catching up on his beauty sleep. Such a good kitty! Look how he could care less about all that dangly yarn!

This was my first experience with Knitpicks and my first time knitting with wool. I think I'm hooked. I've felt wool in the LYS before but it never appealed to me. I have sensitive skin and thought all wool would be too itchy. Even the merino blends felt rough. But I have to admit... this wool didn't bother me at all! I loved the feel of it and couldn't stop rubbing the bag against my cheek. I'll definitely be a returning Knitpicks customer.

Dell seems to agree :)

With a lot of spare time on my hands, the entire bag only took me about 4 days to complete. I thought the I-cord was going to be a pain but it went really quick. This was my first time knitting stripes too so I got to learn how to carry colors up along the side of my bag and up through the middle of the I-cord. Fun stuff :) I'd read comments from other people who have made Booga Bags in the past and saw that it came out smaller than a lot of people expected. Since I like bigger purses I cast on a few extra stitches and did a few extra rounds. Here's the unfelted bag..

I made hubby come down to the laundry room with me to felt it around 8 o'clock Monday night. I quizzed him for an upcoming test he has and kept an eye on the felting progress. I was checking it every 5 minutes. Almost two wash cycles later I had a felted bag. I couldn't believe how easy this was! It was like magic. I blocked it over some VHS tapes, gave it a buzz with hubby's electric hair clippers to remove some fuzz, did battle with some dpns and scissors and voila! My first felted bag :)

It came out a bit more square than the one pictured on the pattern but I don't care! I suppose I could have stretched it out to make it longer while blocking but I like it just the way it is. Imperfections make it one of a kind :)

Future Projects

No photos this time... I'm too lazy to plug in the camera and download/crop/upload pictures right now. Next time, I promise!

I never did share the horror story of trying to knit my first pair of gloves. I thought the Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns would make it easy! But for me, gloves are turning out to be quite difficult. I couldn't get the sizing right. My wrists are small but my hand is wide. To make a long story short I tried a small size cuff with medium hand... on two different pair of needles... with single and double strands of yarn.. and still couldn't get it right. So I tossed it all in a bag to come back to later.
Someone suggested that I try knitting socks first.. to get used to using dpns without all those tiny fingers to worry about. I might just try that!

After my battle with the gloves I decided to make my Booga Bag. I ordered the yarn from Knitpicks awhile ago and decided now was the time for my first felting project. The pattern is a piece of cake.. garter stitch bottom with stockinette body (knit in the round, so no seams! woohoo!). A lot of mindless knitting + movies + hubby working all day Sunday = Booga bag by Monday afternoon! I felted it last night and am still amazed at how it came out. It's drying over some VHS tapes right now and as soon as it's all done and assembled I'll put up some pics. I plan on taking it out on the town Wednesday when hubby and I go to see the new Harry Potter with some friends. :)

Now I'm forcing myself to work on the second rainbow scarf. Must finish before Christmas! But there are so many things I want to knit!!

- My first pair of socks
- My first pair of gloves
- Irish Hiking Scarf
- String Baskets from Comforts of Home by Erika Knight
- Topsecret sweater from Knitty
- Razor shell scarf
- Felted Clogs

I'd also love to try dying with Kool-aid sometime. We have quite a few flavors available at the commissary too. And... sometime in the way off future I'd like to try spinning :)

RAKy Goodness

I've been RAKed!!! Hubby came home from work today bearing a package from a nameless pal out in Boston. Thank you so much! I certainly wasn't expecting this! After the crappy day I had yesterday.. losing the battle with my gloves... this just made my day!! :)

I got some brand-new size 2 dpns, yummy blue stripey Lana Grossa sock yarn, AND a pattern, tips, and websites for helping me on the journey of sock knitting! My glorious RAKer also sent a pretty blank notebook, a bar of Scharffen Berger chocolate (mocha flavored, yum!), and two.. yes, TWO heavenly chocolate covered pretzels!!! Here's the loot:

(Yes, that's a bite taken out of the pretzel. I couldn't restrain myself before realizing I should probably take a picture of these wonderful gifts!!)

Mysterious RAKer... I bow down before you. :)

Veterans Day Weekend

Hubby had 4 days off of work this weekend so we took the opportunity to get out and explore some more of Germany. Saturday we went to Frankfurt and played 'tourists.' After the most AMAZING lunch at a Chinese restaurant called Jasmin we strolled along window shopping. We stopped in a tea shop so that I could buy some new tea. I think I spent 20 minutes smelling every single one! It's hard to choose a flavor when you can't read the labels. Eventually I found one called Winterzauber that I fell in love with. It's a red tea blended with almond, cardamom, and cinnamon flavors. Delicious! And look what else I found! :)

Yes, that's a yarn shop called Lana. Full of-- you guessed it! Lana Grossa yarns. I was drooling all over the front window! But since I'd just bought myself a present at the tea shop I promised hubby I wouldn't even go in. So I took a picture instead. However we DID go into a Woolworth's and Karstadt's looking for some cheap sock yarn and new dpn's so I can try knitting socks whenever I have a chance. Here's my cat Dell posing with the new equipment. Doesn't he look thrilled? Such a good kitty. He could care less about my yarn. The notebook holding all my printed out patterns however, is a completely different matter. He won't stop chewing on it!

On Sunday we drove 3 hours to see Neuschwanstein castle. It was just as beautiful as I expected even if it seemed a bit smaller in person. The tour through the inside was nice but a bit short and rushed. The rooms we got to see were amazing! Unfortunately most of the castle wasn't finished before King Ludwig's death, and construction came to a halt after that. On the drive I finally settled on a pattern for the last Christmas scarf. (YAY me!!) Simple 2x2 ribbing. LOL, I know... I know. :) Here's the start:

Last, I'll leave you with some pictures I took while we were at Neuschwanstein. Enjoy the view!

Neuschwanstein

Neuschwanstein


View from the castle


Hohenschwangau Castle

Perfectionist

This is what's been staring at me for the past few days:

At first it was patient... sure that eventually I would decide on a pattern and start knitting it up into the vibrant rainbowed scarfalicious glory that it's destined to be. It's one of a pair of matching-but-not-matching scarves I decided to make my sister and her girlfriend for Christmas. I'm no super-knitter but I figured whipping up some scarves would be a piece of cake. Especially since I started in August and the first one was simple garter stitch. Now it's the beginning of November and I still don't have a second scarf even started. I think the yarn is starting to get grumpy.

What's my problem you ask? I'm indecisive and a bit of a perfectionist. Not a good combination. What this means is that I've done about 15 different test swatches to try out simple stitch patterns from both the Harmony Guide and the Vogue Knitting I checked out from the library. Not to mention the handful I found online. I just can't find anything I like!!! This yarn is dk weight acrylic... these are more autumny scarves than mid-winter apparel. But I'm trying to avoid lace/hole-filled patterns that will make them even less warm. I want to keep the second one simple to balance with the garter stitch in the first one. But so far I just can't settle. I don't like the way this stuff knits up in moss stitch and for some reason ribbing comes out wonky. Chevrons aren't quite right.. I don't want to do cables... lattice stitch is all wrong...

So far the only thing I'm half okay with is diagonal garter stitch ribbing. Fits well with the other one... but the ribbing doesn't show well with all the color changes! Grrrr...

What do you think? Should I go ahead and knit it up? Or keep questing for the perfect pattern?

To make things worse, two sweaters I picked up last weekend at the thrift shop are sitting there begging me to recycle them. Neither had tags so I'm not sure on the fiber content. As far as my inexperienced fiber-sense can tell, one is a cream acrylic or cotton worsted and the other is some kind of soft fuzzy mohair/angora/blend-something or other. Once I start frogging them I plan on doing a burn test to see if I can get a better idea.

I'm thinking of using the cream yarn to make myself an Irish Hiking Scarf. Now that I know I can kick cable butt I'm excited to jump on the IHS bandwagon. Who knows what will become of the other one. I just like watching my stash grow :)

Who stole my voice?

I haven't done a lick of knitting today. I might cast on for that last Christmas scarf tonight if I find the motivation. This cold is just running me down. I've got that icky-sore nose thing going on from wiping it 234,702,695 times today. Then by the time hubby came home from work my voice was nearly gone! Ack!

I spent my afternoon working on some dorky homemade postcards. I'm part of a postcard exchange at the Anne McCaffrey fan forum and decided to make my own cards this month. If I see another pressed leaf or glue-gooey paintbrush or more decoupage again this year I might scream. But they did turn out kind of nice. Here's a batch I mailed out last week.

I guess I can take this opportunity to share my first foray into recycling yarn courtesy of a big yard sale that went on near here a few weeks ago. I have to watch what I spend on yarn and really loved the idea of recycling sweaters. But the thrift store here kind of sucks. I miss Savers and Goodwill!! I did find one sweater that was $1 and bought it more for the experience than for the yarn. It's a brownish acrylic chenille yarn.

After lots and lots of problems with the neck and shoulder seams I realized that the top of the sweater down to the armpits had serged seams. Arrrghh! Once I figured that out and slashed away the top, things went beautifully! The whole living room got covered in brown fuzzies and I ended up with a whole lot of yarn. (This photo was taken when I was half done. A whole gallon-sized bag full already!) I was so proud. And actually, this yarn seems perfect for knitting up a teddy bear (for which I'm still searching for the perfect pattern. Yes, I'm picky about teddy bears.) I saved the bits of black for detailing on the future teddy.

Now that our thrift store has started stocking winter clothes I'm keeping my eyes open for any good finds. Unfortunately their prices are higher than the good-old chain thrift shops but you never know!

I hate the craft store, this hat and colds.

DONE!!

Knitting and cold medicine don't mix. I found this out the hard way this morning when I realized I was knitting the body of the hat backwards in reverse stockinette. Now, I could have left it that way I suppose but I didn't really like how it looked. So it got frogged and started anew.

Then 3/4 of the way through I realized I was running out of yarn. I had 100 g. of bulky weight yarn for this thing but perhaps underestimated how much yarn cables take! I quickly made up my own decreases since I'd changed the Coronet pattern to suit my gauge... and finished the whole thing with about a yard to spare. Sheesh. But it's done! I had hubby take a photo. (Please excuse the dark circles, I'm still feeling quite under the weather.)

Now I'll need to block it so the cables will lay flat. (If you look closely you'll see that the right side of the scarf has already been blocked. I'm using acrylic yarn and when I started I wanted to make sure blocking it would work to combat the curling. :) )

One more scarf to go and my Christmas presents are d-o-n-e! Then I finally get to knit something for myself for a change.

Now... about the craft store. It sucks. I went looking for my dpns and they only had sizes 7, 8, & 9. What kind of crap is that?! I'll have to order some online for next time. Today I made do with some clever manipulations with my Denise kit. I also planned on buying some polyfill for the teddy bear I plan on knitting sometime in the near future. And they didn't have any! What kind of craft store IS this??

I got a late Birthday check for $25 from the MIL last week. I'm planning on spending it on knitting stuff (what else?) Maybe a bit of yarn.. new needles... or a book. I really want The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns and Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I mentioned them both on my Christmas list but might cheat and get one early. We'll see :)

Hat Horrors

Have you ever felt like a piece of knitting actually hates you? And when you aren't in the room it chuckles an evil little laugh, rubs it's nubby little stitches together and forms diabolic plans that are sure to leave you tearing your hair out for hours on end?

This hat is evil I tell you. Everything was going fine until it came time to graft the band together. I was proceeding merrily along, quite proud of myself for getting the hang of a provisional cast on so quickly when the devil incarnate reared it's purly little head and grinned. Well, reared it's purly little head and then dove back into the cable band disappearing in the void forever would be more like it! Upon undoing the provisional cast on I realized I was one stitch short. Crap. Okay, no huge biggy. I'll just find where it dropped and pick it back up.

MUCH EASIER SAID THAN DONE! Recall that this scarf & hat set is my first go at cables. This is now my first attempt to fix a dropped stitch with cables. So I poked... and prodded.. and stretched.. and peered... and couldn't figure out what the bejeebies I'd done wrong! So I decided to rip out the whole row and pick up the stitches all fresh and new in the next row.

Nice plan, not so good put into practice. Still one stitch short. What the @#$^@^! I spent nearly two hours trying to figure this out. I finally threaded a piece of waste yarn, went down an inch to the nearest clearly uncabled row and proceeded to lace through a lifeline. Then I ripped. Presto! Picked up the stitches and... @#$#%!!!!!!!!!!!! Still one short. {Insert VERY disgruntled look here.} At this point I threw the whole thing down, watched the end of Ghost, and ate some more Halloween candy instead.

After dinner I gave it another go. After ripping yet another row I gave up and seamed the stupid thing one stitch short, vowing never again to be so perfectionist. If I couldn't see a ladder then who friggin cares if I dropped a stitch or not! Take that you fuzzy-mucking-thingamapoo hat band! After it was done you couldn't tell a difference. And I still have no clue where that stitch went. I'm sure it didn't help that I woke up with a nasty cold this morning and was feeling icky and irritable. But did the knitting demon actually KNOW this?!

Then I got to try something new... picking up stitches. Piece of cake! Thank goodness. Now... the rest of this hat better go more smoothly. I'm going to pick up some 10.5 dpns at the craft store tomorrow for my decreases. I've done the magic loop method in the past but mine always comes out slanted in one direction. Drives me up a wall! I think I prefer dpns. I haven't used them since last January but we'll see!

Oh Happy Day

My blog got it's very first comment!!!!!! Woooooohoooo!!!! Thank you knit_chick for the kind words and for popping my blogger-comment cherry. :-D It's a very very special day.

My hubby was out of town last night so I got a lot of knitting done. I finally finished grandma's scarf around 1:30 AM aided by a lot of Halloween candy. (It's our first Halloween living on an Army post. How was I supposed to know kids trick-or-treat at the bottom of each apartment stairwell instead of coming door to door?!) Now I've got a bowl full of chocolate that taunts me and mocks me until I have to cram it in my mouth just to shut it up.

I stumbled across the Knitty Coffeeshop yesterday and immediately signed up. A place where I can chat with fellow knitters? Joy! So far I've just been hanging around the Newbie forum but everybody seems really nice. I'm looking forward to picking people's brains for help whenever I need it.

Which leads me to my newest WIP. My own take on knitty's coronet hat. I've changed the cable pattern to match the one on grandma's scarf. Here's what I have done on the band so far. I had to learn a new technique for this too- how to do a provisional cast on. Piece of cake! Well, doing it was. We'll see when it comes time to take it back out. I'll have to learn a second new skill for this hat too. How to pick up stitches for the body of the hat. Wooooooo! Exciting :)

I had two extra balls of yarn left which will be more than enough to do the hat. I might even have tried some matching mittens if I didn't have that other rainbow scarf still waiting to be cast on. I started the hat band this afternoon and hubby came home around 5 this evening to find me surrounded by candy wrappers, happily knitting away and watching The Pagemaster. :-D And just in case you're laughing yourself silly over my movie choice, I check out 5 movies every week from the library so that I always have something on hand to pop in while I'm knitting. Our library has a pretty large movie collection even if they aren't the latest and greatest blockbusters. And since I often OFTEN find AFN lacking in quality programming I figure the library is the way to go. Best part: it's free. This week I was into kids movies. I got The Pagemaster, The Land Before Time I and II, Titan AE, and the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Okay, off I go... back to the hat! And maybe to another piece of chocolate. I hear it calling my name...