Knit Picks fatality.

Hello Blog,

I've been knitting steadily on the big Mystery Project this past week when this happened:

I love knitpick's needles and I use them extensively, so I'm surprised and distressed that this should happen. For now everything is OK, I stuck the two pieces back together and so far they've stayed that way. I'm just a little sad and concerened that it'll eventually happen again, then there will be dropped stitches and cursing and I'll probably have to replace it.

The good news in all this of course, is that the project is going pretty fast. I'm knitting through Buffy again - taking it a bit slower than my last marathon - I've also still got four or five seasons of medium to watch, but I'm saving that to finish Onerva with.

I've also got a new project planned, yarn bought and everything, which I'm hoping to start sometime next week!

Until later,

Cheers

Onerva

One of the lace patterns that have been in my queue for a long time is the onerva shawl. It's so simple and elegant, and I knew the moment I saw it that I wanted to knit it in a soft gray color. Recently visited my new LYS and picked up some Malabrigo laceweight. Oh, my, is it soft. Compared to Knitpicks pallette, and knitpicks gloss lace, which I knit my previous shawls with, this yarn is like butter, or bunny fur, or clouds. It's sooo nice. Mmmm. I'm in love with it. It's hard for me to make progress on my shawl because I keep petting it rather than knitting.

I am finding this pattern to be unreasonably difficult to knit, however. It is not written in english, but since the majority of it is just a lace chart, I figured that wouldn't really be an issue. But for some reason this chart has confused the ever living daylights out of me. With a lot of help from the notes of other wonderful knitters, I feel that I've sort of kind of got the hang of it now, but for the first 40 or so rows I was totally knitting blind.

Now that I've got a hang of the pattern I feel that I should be able to finish it pretty quickly :)

FO: Boot Camp and Waiting Scarf

Tada!

Here it is, my home-baked super long scarf ^__^

I loooove the colors of the scarf, I can't wait until I encounter some cold weather worthy of wearing it, but I suspect it's going to be a while because it's really nice here :)

As I've already said, started this project to de-stress on my way to boot camp, and finished it here in monterey as I was settling in at my new school ^^;;

Spoiler alert; This past weekend I totally visited my new LYS ;P

Boot Camp and Waiting Scarf

Hey blog!

Just wanted to pop in and give you a little update. I just recently graduated from Navy Boot camp, and got my first bit of knitting back. It's the boot camp and waiting scarf that I started the night before I shipped out and that I knit all the way to the inproccessing building at Great Lakes. It's knit in some super cushy acrylic yarn (probably my favorite acrylic brand right now ) Loops and Threads impeccable Ombre ^_^ No idea what size needles I'm using - generic circulars in case boot camp made me throw them out. They didn't even see me put them in the 'send home' box. ;)

Started with a square of garter stitch and then invented a little pattern based on threes.

Garter square

3 rows stockinette
3 three rows of garter and stockinette

square of garter

3 rows stockinette

three squares of seed stitch in between squares of garter

repeat.

I'm 2/3s of the way done. Aiming to do (of course) three repeats of the pattern.

My other yarn and needles are in the mail. I should be picking up my cables and lace scarf and starting a new pair of socks within the next week or too. Also hopefully there will be a camera somewhere along the way and we can get caught up on pictures.

Until then, stay chill :)
THEO

To Kindle, to Burn

Hey blog!

Just thought I'd drop in to say, Belated Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

I didn't get *all* of my christmas knitting done, but I feel good about how far I got. Next year I'll start sooner, lol.

I'm still working on my two yummy lace projects, but I had to take a break from them yesterday. I haven't been sleeping much and my eyes are...blurry and sore, making it pretty impossible to read the lace charts (Learned the hard way after ripping back the same row twice), so I went looking for a pattern for my new Kindle!




The Pattern is Kindle Cables I'm knitting it with KnitPicks Telemark from an old project that recently got frogged.
So far this pattern is a bit of a mixed bag; I got gauge on my first attempt, but Knitting this thing circularly on DPNS is super awkward, making it the most difficult DPN experience I've ever had.

One clearly brilliant aspect of the pattern, is that it introduced me to the miraculous cast on Invented by Judy Becker.
She is a mad genius and I can't help but wonder why It took me so long to stumble across her work.


It's hard to believe that 2010 is almost over! I've come so far with my knitting this year, and it's been great to be able to blog about my progress here on this blog. Next year is going to be full of even more changes and challenges; My blogging here will probably dwindle down to nothing over the next few months, but it will be a temporary lapse. I already have several exciting projects lined up in my queue for next year, so stay tuned!

Cheers
Theo

Provisionally

Yesterday I started a new project that required a provisional cast-on, which I had no idea how to do. Luckily, the internet is very useful in that department, and I quickly learned two new crochet cast ons; One in which you simply crochet a chain and then pick up stitches through the back loops, and one that involves a kind of contorted use of both crochet hook and knitting needle at the same time, pictured here ;

Despite quickly picking up these techniques in theory it took me an hour to actually successfully start my shawl. Maybe someone out there knows how to fix my problem, but my first provisional stitch was open (had the tail....) and I wasn't sure how to close it/ what to do about it, and so I kept losing it o.0;;

But every-thing's OK now. Despite how fun and exciting small projects like scarves, gloves (and especially) hats, are. They can be a bit wearing after awhile, so I'm really really excited about starting a new lace project ^__^

To do : Knit a blog entry

Hi.

Blog, I'd like to dedicate today's post as the first entry in a three part love letter to Patons yarns.

True story, I was working on finishing a pair of fingerless gloves last night, and I was really excited/relieved to be so close to being done. I turned to sixer and said "The end is so close I can almost taste it, I can feel the finish of this project...It's practically at the tip of my fingers!" Sixer promptly did her duty as my sister and let me know that puns of that quality were not only beneath me, but quiet frankly an embarrassment to knitters everywhere, and for that I apologize.

Allow me to offer this peace offering;

But lets not get distracted. The gloves in question (now finished, thank you.) were knit up with a single skien of Patons Kroy socks FX. I love this yarn. I have to tell you I was really excited when I found out that both Patons and Red Heart had sock yarn, and that my local craft stores carried them. Craft stores are just so much more convenient for me to get to than your typical LYS, but they have a tendency to lack decent yarns in smaller weights than worsted. In addition, I find drastically veriegated yarn to be a bit obnoxious at times, so the FX yarn, which merely has a slight color gradient, apeals to me a lot. It's soft, it knits up well. I only needed one skien to knit my gloves, and the best of all both gloves have matching strips! I don't know how they make it so that the color pattern repeats at the half-way point of the skien, but the important thing is that they do, which makes them awesome.