Lot’s to go

lace socks 2
Originally uploaded by isis1207

Now that I’ve finished my socks I can start on the last three Christmas gifts. Mom and my brother are getting fingerless gloves (Fetching and Dashing). I’m gonna make some slippers for my sister-in-law. Someone at my SnB-group gave me a really simple pattern to make slippers. On the way home I had already rummaged through my left-over yarn in my head deciding what I could use. Once I got home I realized that I have a really neat pattern for cabled footies in the book One Skein by Leigh Radford. I have yarn for all three projects and they should be easy to do. Which is a very good thing considering it’s almost December.

Extra dry cat

dry cat
Originally uploaded by isis1207

There are moments when you have to try something new. For some living here that means a new sleeping place. This is the first time that one actually picked the dryer to sleep in.
For others it’s trying to recalculate an entire pattern. I plan to use a yarn that gives me a completely different gauge then mentioned for the tilted duster. Right now I have half of the pattern written out for my own gauge and the final measurements still look good. I guess I’ll have to cast on soon, just to see if my math really is that good.

SnB day, November 3rd 2007

stash enhancement
Originally uploaded by isis1207

The second national SnB day has passed. Together with L I volunteered to man the daycare center for men. This was for all those nice men who had to come along with their wives and partners looking at yarn all day. It was very quiet, in those 2 hours three showed up. One was with his little girl, the other two kept themselves busy. After daycare we made a quick run past the stands. I bought yarn for a cardigan (the blue stuff in the picture). After that I had 2 workshops; spinning with a spindle and a sideways knitted sock. The spinning actually went pretty well, I just need some more practice. I’m definitely making the sock, after finishing other projects. After the workshops another round past the stands. This time I bought a skein of laceweight, dpn’s in the sizes 6, 7 and 8 and some yarn for the baby surprise jacket (scroll down a bit). It really wasn’t a bad day considering I had planned to spend more money. So I transferred the leftover knitting money to her including an order.
I am very content.

Swift

swift
Originally uploaded by isis1207

The mess is nicely on its way to becoming a sock. Because I’d rather not do something like that again I went searching for a yarn swift. There are some real nice ones with even nicer prices (from the seller’s point of view). On the Ravelry forum I found this manual, looks easy enough.
At first I wanted to send the link to the males in the family with ‘Christmas present’ in the subject line. That would mean that I’d have to wait 2 months before owning it. That’s pretty long. So I’m going to try it myself.
First I checked to see what I had lying around in the shed, which wasn’t much. Up to the hardware store and I bought a bolt, a small beam and a dowel. Measure, mark, saw and sand. After 2 hours I had everything finished, except for the holes. Asked dad for help on this one since I lacked the necessary drill bits. Dad made some holes for me and look, it works.
It’s not completely straight, the bottom is made of a board that was already warped and sawing straight isn’t my strong suit. But . . . it works like a charm. A skein of 1460 yards became a ball within 30 minutes.
Those spiders are not real, they came with the yarn. My cats love them, I’m not so sure about it.

Fun with yarn

tangled mess
Originally uploaded by isis1207

Last night I frogged a couple of socks and sat down with my woolwinder. One soch was too small around the ankle, the other one was simply too big. I couldn’t find anyone with bigger feet that wanted to wear purple, red and green striped socks so I had no other option than to frog the poor thing. I’ll use the yarn for another sock.
I also had a skein of sockyarn that needed winding. Working a bit fast, not all too secure, a bit of pulling and yanking and I ended up with a gorgeous mass of tangeld yarn. I spend the whole night trying to get it untangled. Who says you can’t have hours fo fun with a single strand of yarn? And I plan to make socks from it, more fun with yarn.

Minus two, plus one

fetching
Originally uploaded by isis1207

I had the fullest intentions to finish some projects and then to start on my cardigan. I still don’t have any yarn, so you’d think I’d keep up with finishing things. I’m planning on buying the yarn on the SnB-day so I have until November 3rd to finish stuff.
You’d think that what I’d do.I finish two WIP’s, the gloves form the MittensKal and the Clapotis. Especially the last one went faster than expected, I ran out of yarn right before the end. So what do I do next? I start knitting a test pair of Fetching. Yes, a test pair. I want to give these away for Christmas, but I don’t have the right colors for the intended recipient. Actually, this is just a good excuse to make them for myself.

Knitting break

No, I’m not taking a break from knitting. I started knitting during my lunch break at work. I took my knitting to work for the first time this week. During lunch I found a quiet place and sat down to knit. At first I felt really awkward, what will people say? Will they look at me?
At the moment I feel a lot less awkward. I have some quiet music on my I-pod and focus myself on knitting for at least 30 minutes. This is really a work break.
Another good thing about it is that I have some progress on my WIP’s. The downside of Ravelry is that there are too many things to be seen that I want to make and I end up starting project after project. At some point I have to start finishing things. I really want to make the Tilted Duster from Interweave, but I have to finish at least one thing before I start.
Besides, I don’t have the yarn for it yet.