I forgot how to knit!

“Just relax, listen to the sound of ma voice. You R feeling an intense need to give tha puppy some head scratches and unlimited peanuts from the pantry…” –Roxie the puppy

Hey guys. There’s a lot going on in my head the past couple days. I’ve caught the housekeeping bug again! I think I’ve brought up here before how I tend to go in cycles, one of my phases that I cycle through is the “domestic phase.” I like to call it Nesting. In the past few days I have organized and decluttered numerous little nooks of random messiness that seem to multiply in my home. I’ve learned how to bake bread, it’s just the simplest recipe, but I now think I have a basic understanding how How Bread Happens. I want to bake my own bread all the time now!. Yesterday I cooked a turkey for the first time. Nothin’ fancy, just roasted it with some seasoning salt and put most of it in the fridge for turkey sandwiches and such. Right now I’m making broth from the bones and stuff. I think I’ll make soup this week!

But anyway, the thing I really wanted to blog about today is my socks! This is my first project of the year from my pile of unfinished craft projects. I knit the first of these socks…oh, I think it was last summer. It’s hard to remember. I really liked knitting it, it’s weird how things just don’t get finished even if one has fun doing it, but I guess it happens. The yarn is gorgeous and multicolored and smooshy and soft and shiny, I love it a lot. The colorway is mostly dark jewel tones, purple, blue and green, but my FAVORITE color in the yarn is the yellow. Every so often I’ll be knitting along and all of a sudden this gorgeous sunshine color will come up in the yarn. It’s always a surprise. It’s nice to get a break from the more intense dark colors every once in a while.

This is the gusset if the first (finished) sock. It looks impressive, right?

The pattern is called Spring Forward from Knitty.com. It’s a pretty simple lace pattern, I memorized it after only a couple repeats. BUT it *looks* complicated. Which is what we are aiming for here. :3

I guess I should confess though, that I have majorly messed up somehow. I have a feeling that his will happen a lot this year as I pick up old projects because what happened was this: I picked up the half-finished sock and couldn’t tell exactly where I had left off before. Now, I know how to knit a sock (or so I thought) so I went ahead anyway and started knitting thinking that, as long as it looked like the other sock that it would match.

_{It looks so pretty and innocent, but don’t let this picture fool you. Something is afoot. Haha….ha}

It does not match. Somewhere along the way I have forgotten how to knit a sock.

I’m not quite sure where I went wrong first, so I don’t yet now the best way to go back and fix it. As of right now, this lovely sock you see on the needles there before you is hidden in my purse, so as not to upset my temper (I don’t actually have a temper, that was a joke.) Today I plan to have a nice long sit-down with it and get down to the bottom of the problem here.

I’ll let you know when I figure it out.

Love,

Alek

Wooly goings-on

Hey guys! It’s almost the new year so, as per my resolution to finish lots of my works in progress, I’ve wrapped up the couple of projects I was actively working on so that I can dive right in to my closet-o-projects on January 1st.

Up first is my squirrely sweater. I wanted to knit myself a big smooshy wool sweater in a natural sheepy color. I used Fisherman’s Wool which I got from Michaels. It’s from Lions Brand, so not super high end, but not bad either.

I had fun knitting this one because it was so boring. I think this is my knitting “style.” I like to knit things that are straight forward and simple. Knitting is a calming activity for me, so I don’t usually like for my knitting to be too complex or I wont be able to relax while knitting.

My original plan was to have stripes or something along the hem and a colorwork squirrel on there somewhere. But that didn’t happen. *shrug* I’m  really happy with how it turned out. It’s heavy and comfy and warm. Perfect for hibernating in!

Ok, I’ll show you now Pardon the low quality photos, I had to use my webcam. haha

At first I thought I was unhappy with the bagginess of the sleeves, but with a couple of wears I find that I like them more than I thought I would. They make me feel quite snuggly indeed.

Believe it or not, this if my first full sweater. I’ve knit a short sleeved cardigan before, but nothing this big. It’s a knitting milestone!

 

Besides my sweater, I also wanted to finish plying the yarn that I had started spinning AGES ago. This is a 50/50 blend of wool and tussah silk. It had been resting in my closet for a while after our dog chewed up my plying spindle. At Christmas though, I got a new turkish spindle (from knitpicks.com) from my Mother-in-law so I wanted to finish this right away.

In the picture below, you can see that I was winding the cop upside down. Haha. I was at my mother-in-law’s house that day so I didn’t have access to youtube or my spinning books so I winged it.

 

Pretty, yes? I love the turkish spindle. It looks like a helicopter when it’s spinning, which is fun for me and my pets. I’ll be excited to try spinning singles on it for the first time. Plying on it was super fast and easy, but I’m not so good at spinning singles on heavier spindles. But we shall see!

This is the finished yarn as it sits right now. That’s a dime in there for scale. I’d say it turned out to be about sock weight. It should also be noted that these pictures don’t acpture the true color very well. It’s much more purpley in person.

I’m not sure what I am going to knit with it. Maybe a lacey beret style hat. I guess I could make socks with it. For now it’s just being beautiful in it’s unknit state and smelling faintly of the countryside.

Woah! It's been a while!

Hey guys! It's been a long time since I have written in my blog. Sorry =(

 

Let's see, in my last entry I was whining about being stressed about the wedding. Well, the wedding went fine. I had a pretty intense panic attack the night before, but I got through it well enough. It was so great to see my family and friends again. My dress was absolutely beautiful! It's hanging in my room right now because I can't bear to hide it in a closet.

 

Since my last post, lots has happened. For one, Dalin and I got a wee little addition to our family. Her name is Maxine and she is a Tabbyco kitten (Tabbyco is the term for a half tabby/ half calico cat)

Isn't she precious? She's a little insane, but we love her. She loves to climb into the sleeves of my robe (While i'm wearing it..) and sleep there.

 

Also, Nanowrimo happened. I got really far in my story and word count but got totally thrown off by Thanksgiving, when Dalin and I went to Rexburg to be with his family. So no, I didn't win NaNoWriMo this year. Sad times, my friends. But I haven't given up on my story yet. Hopefully it should be done before NaNo next year. Haha

 

I've been knitting a lot too. Remember those intricate cabled socks I was making for Dalin?

They are finished! Those are my feet in the picture which is why the socks look kind of big. They fit Dalin perfectly. He can't have them until Christmas though. Bwahahaha. I'm so glad I'm so glad I'm done with those socks. They were the first ever non-plain socks I'd ever knit and, though it was a good learning experience and my confidence in knitting really fancy socks was boosted tremendously by them, it just took FOREVER to finish them.

 

So, after I finished those, I decided that I wanted to knit some plain vanilla socks for myself that would be finished in no time.

I finished one of them already. Which means it took me just under two days to knit a whole sock. For comparison's sake, one of Dalin's socks took about a month to knit. Oh instant gratification, I love you so. These are being knit in KnitPicks Palatte yarn in the color called Semolina. I love KnitPicks yarn, it's so cheap and lovely.

 

Anyway, It's now suddenly December so I'm thinking a lot about the holidays. I think D and I will be celebrating Yule this year on the 21st again because I seem to have an adverse reaction to Christmas. I've been sick on Christmas for the past 6 years or something. We saw part of the Parade of Lights in downtown Caldwell last night. we found out about it last minute and only stayed for about half of it because I had forgotten my scarf and mittens and it was just too damn cold. What we saw of the parade was nice though.

 

Also, I found on Hulu the Nutcracker movie that I used to have on tape when I was little. Dalin and I are going to watch it together on Thursday. He's never seen it. I have such happy memories of this movie so I am really excited.

 

Other than that....I'll try to update more often. Poor blog. I love you, I really do, it's just so easy to forget about you.

Photo Dump. Yay!

I've been gone a long time? Why? Because it's the end of Summer and I'm feeling depressed. I'll post a general update some other time. For today...You get a photo dump. A photo dump is where I dump all the pictures i've taken recently onto the blog, with brief descriptions. It will give you an idea of what i've been up to without the hassle of actually writing about it. Yay.

Showing off my new lipstick. =]

Screenshot of my upstairs in Animal Crossing. Someone online wanted to see it. Pretty cute right?

Knitting by the Boise River.

Wee little snake I saw  by the river.

Close up of aforementioned sock. And intense Harry Potter quote. (I'm participating in a HP themed contest on Ravelry.com)

Lace crocheted scarf. I have pics of the finished product, but they were taken at night and don't capture the colors as well as this one.

Socks from previous post, in finished form. They are ridiculously comfy.

 

 

That's all I've got folks.

Knitting and stuff.

So I have been knitting a lot. First I just did some lame dishcloths out of cotton yarn I got for a dollar, just to get my groove back. Then I got a really pretty pattern for a super sexy sweater, aptly called Goddess. It is taking forever though! Right now it really doesn't look like anything, so the picture is just a close up of my pretty stitches with the picture from the pattern so you know what it's supposed to be.

Pretty right? I'm knitting it in Caron Simply Soft, which is my go-to cheap but nice yarn.

So, like I said, this sweater is taking forever, due partly to the fact that the bust is large and flowy and right now I have a grand total of 160 stitches on my needles. Insanity. It takes like 5 minutes to do one stinking row. There is another reason that it is taking me so long to slog through all that stickinette stitch, which is these socks:

I got this yarn from a wonderful lady from the Random Acts of Kindness group on Ravelry. It's so stripey! I love knitting with tiny little needles and skinny-binny yarn. I just dig it, and I'd much rather knit these wacky socks than my sexy sweater. Hm.

Other than knitting, not a whole lot is going on. I have been thinking about pushing the wedding date back, but my mom heartened me and now I think we will be able to still have it on October 17th. It's really stressful! And the more people tell me not to stress about it, the more I stress! It's going to be lovely though. I am willing it to be lovely.

Oh, and I dyed my hair again.

(My eyeball looks huge! Alien??)