Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween from the Froggies, Ghostie and the Great Pumpkin!

There will be knitting content tomorrow since my brain made me read words that were not in the KoolHaas pattern. All the damage is fixed but my hat will not be finished tonight as planned.

Eat lots of chocolate!

I think my yarn drawer is full

The box of "I can't believe I'm working while I'm sick" yarn arrived from two swans yarns on Thursday. Frog enjoys helping unpack the boxes. Two Swans was having a sale on black or orange yarns so I got enough Naturally Merino et Soie to make a sweater. I also got some felted tweed since I could not resist it anymore. The Naturally Merino will probably become a V neck sweater and the Felted Tweed a Tangled Yoke Cardigan. We all have to jump on the band wagon some time.

All this is waiting while I knit baby sweater number two for another friend who is the prefect non-knitter. She always is interested in what I'm making and is really impressed that I taught myself how to knit. People like that need to be rewarded with hand knits. While the knit picks Swish is really lovely color red I don't care for the hand at all. It's crunchy or something and it makes me crabby to knit with it. I was very good for several days and only knit on the baby sweater, but finally broke down and cast on some yak yarn for a KoolHaas hat.

















Oh Shokay Shambala, you are so fuzzy and wonderful and you match my splint.

There was an accidental crushing of my finger in a car door this weekend. My boyscout husband assures me that it will heal up fine if I keep it splinted. My brother-in-law said I just need to get a really big finger puppet to wear over the splint. That sounds totally awesome. I'd like another monster please.

Two socks but not a pair

I've finished two socks in the last few days. On the left side is my woolgirl sock club in Miss Bab's sport weight. The one on the right is Mom's Christmas sock in natures palette fingerling, "Now with more length!" They both have perfectly kitchenered toes thanks to directions on Kitty. Yeah! The Miss Bab's waterfall colorway has a little bit of purple in it so we'll pretend they go together for now. Many thanks to my husband for providing me with additional lighting, even if he thinks I'm crazy. Look at the cables.... so yummy.

Today is mess up your knitting day. I've knit the turn of the heel on the companion Mom's Christmas sock twice. And ripped it out twice. I cast on all the stitches for the second Miss Bab's sock and immediately made a large error on the first row and just took the needles out and ripped.

This is why I'm working on a sock I have no business working on. Charade done in Pigeon Roof Studios Bohemian. And I hate knitting through the back loop. But I want to knit these anyway. So I will while watching "How I meet your Mother" on DVD. Delightful.

IK holiday issue has not arrived but I can go on their website and see a preview of the Winter issue which will not be delivered to my house anywhere around November 13th.

Are you going outside in that?

Hey look I finished two things in October!
When I asked my husband to take pictures of of the completed cable sweater out in the back yard he did say, "Are you going outside in that?" So we know his opinion of my completed project. The finished sweater is a bit frumpy, which is a bit of a downer since I really enjoyed knitting it. The upper arms of the sleeve are much too big so when your arms are down all this extra fabric gets wadded up into your arm pit (pattern's fault, not mine) Looking at Rowan model on the pattern, her sweater appears to be wide in the upper arms but her long flowing hair is cleverly concealing most of this area. Rowan you sneaky dog you. Lastly it might not be a good idea for naturally zaftig girls to wear lightly colored heavily cabled sweaters. I wonder if I should knit the Urban Aran after all. All that being said I've already worn my new sweater for several hours today and it feels warm and cozy. When our apartment is like ice in January, I will reach for it instead of my husband's sweat shirt. (Then I don't have to hear his complaints that I'm getting hair all over his sweat shirt.) I also did a little safety pin experiment and with a little tailoring to the side seam I could get rid of the excess fabric under the arms. Got to think on how I want to do that without causing the whole thing to unravel into a pile of wool. A frumpy sweater is a better than no sweater at all.

No Rhinebeck for me

Everyone is up at the New York Sheep and Wool festival this weekend. I'm very jealous but I didn't feel like driving four hours each way alone. The festival was mentioned to my husband and he says he's been to Rhinebeck (but not the festival) a couple of times because they have some historic airplanes there. Hmmm maybe I could talk him into going with me another year.

Instead I'm going to be pleased with simple things like my new loopy project keeper. Best 9 dollars spent ever. Big enough to put a regular sized book and a couple of socks in there. And really important things like you're new finger puppet. My honorary brother mailed me the pink monkey. It's a good friend who buys you toys when you're almost 30. When I look at the monkey I just think, "Pink monkey, pink monkey, ooo ooo, pink monkey." My husband has just watched 28 weeks later and keeps stealing and hiding him saying the monkey has the rage virus. I think he just wants to play with the monkey himself.

The mail just came. No Interweave Knits grrrrrrr!

All I want to do is sleep

I have my annual fall head cold, probably the first of many until the weather decides to stay cold. I tried to keep going to work but the cold got to the point where I was getting dizzy and almost falling down stairs. Time to stay home for a day. The plan was to go to bed early, call in sick in the morning, nap to 12 then eat and watch movies/knit. What actually happened was that I laid in bed wide awake for an hour thinking about the Tapestry stitch pattern that was on the Rainy sisters blog. Then I got up for an hour, stared at the picture and started inking it out on some graph paper. Some sleep was gotten until 6 when my husbands work alarm went off. Laid awake for another hour, finally got up and transferred Tapestry into excel and mocked up a repeat. Tried to sleep again but the neighbor was using power tools 2 feet from my window. The other neighbor could be heard loudly talking on her cell phone. When my landlord showed up beating on my door I gave up on sleep for the day. After a few unsuccessful attempts we have a nice printout of my Tapestry grid. Yeah that's good. My original plan didn't swatch well so this will be put away for later use. In happy news a new booty club shipment arrived a little earlier then I was expecting. The colorway is killer bees which makes me laugh for some reason. I feel like this yarn is the crazy relative that amuses you because they are so crazy. Socks out of this yarn would really freak out some non knitters and that would be very entertaining to me. Maybe I need to get out more.

Where the Heck is my IK

Shambala Yak yarn in Turquoise, check.
Big ass size 8 double points, check.
Interweave Knits Holiday Issue with pattern for Koolhass hat ummmm no.

Silly me, I thought a subscription meant I would receive my copy before some regular goober off the street could go to Borders and buy it. If the Holiday mag shows up TWO WEEKS after the book stand date, like the last issue did, I will be pissed.

Oh and the evil baby set was finished on Monday. The hat is finally all dried from it's blocking. Look at it, looking all sweet and pink on my kitchen counter. You'd never know how evil it's been. Actually I kind of miss working with the yarn, Sublime Baby cashmere merino silk dk. (Let's put all the fibers in the Name!) I might be tempted by Webs volume discount and buy enough for an adult sweater. I hope the yarn wears well. I did snag it a couple of times but only with the big pointy prongs on my engagement ring. As far as needles and fingernails it held up very nicely. Well evil baby sweater, I'll have to get the address of your owner and mail it off. Kisses and ummm be nice. A little button detail for your pleasure.

Can't knit... baking

I've gotten hardly any knitting done this weekend which is sad, but things needed to be taken out of storage for the cooler weather. Those space bags work really well if the only place you have to store anything is a damp basement. However your clothes come out recking of plastic and they must be washed with baking soda before wearing. I also managed to stuff a comforter into a regular sized washing and dryer. You just have to keep taking it out of the dryer and rearranging it so all the bits get dried up. But enough about house keeping I have something much more interesting, A Finished Object! Buttons on the baby sweater were purchased today and sewed on. No people or cars were damaged as I tried to get in and out of the crazy JoAnn's parking lot. All my attempts at a nice detail photo come out blurry so you can't really see how pretty the little flower buttons are. The booties have matching buttons in a smaller size, Hooray! I still have to knit a hat which will have the lighter color pink on the edge and the darker as the main color. Then the shoes being dark pink won't be so weird. Instead of actually knitting the hat up today and heaving a sigh of relief, I'm baking cookies. It appears that wool socks are attracted to warm ovens full of cookies. I also know someone else that is attracted by cookies. Little stinker.

Finishing..... maybe

It's been hot, humid, just nasty weather for days now, causing a lot of crankiness. I want real fall weather RIGHT NOW!!!! (Tantrum, tantrum wawaaa wawaaa wawaaa) Tonight it is finally raining and should be 68 by Friday. Thank you, thank you! Now I should wash the plastic smell out of the sweaters stored in the basement.
In knitting news, my original plan for the evil baby ensemble was to have sweater, hat, booties all done for this Wednesday's surprise baby shower. It was going to be tight but I knew I could make it. The rest of the sweater was sewn up on Saturday and was admired by family. My sister petted the yarn and said "Mmm softtttt" then my husband rubbed it against his face. (I had a few seconds of panic thinking his stubble was going to snag the yarn, but it was fine) A pair of boots were off the needles the next day and seamed up. But then Monday our Momma to be was suddenly put on bed rest until she has her little girl. Baby shower canceled, and all my motivation out the door. I really want something to be finished and out of my hair but I can't get myself to do it. All I need to do is buy buttons and maybe some size 6 DPNS to make the hat. But nooooo I'm worked on the silver cable sweater again. Technically all the pieces are now done but the sleeves are not bound off because I have serious doubts that they are long enough. Tonight the back and the fronts will be blocked and maybe once I've picked up a million stitches for the shawl collar the sleeve decision can be made. While that is drying I should lengthen the foot on my Mom's Christmas sock. She did a fitting and it needs to be about an inch longer. I have a plan on how to do this and not run out of yarn but I'm also procrastinating on that. At least I'm procrastinating by knitting the second sock.

Wine Time

As promised the pictures from our grape harvesting weekend. I should have taken some pictures of the vines but forgot. To the left the entire harvest of Chambourcin grapes with my husband studying in the background. There was less to pick this year but the fruit was better quality. After all the picking most of us sat back and relaxed while my father in law ran the grapes though the crusher. A nice action shot of that below. Then all the grapes go into the big white trash can and some of the stems get picked out. A bit of the liquid gets tested for sugar content and this year it was perfect, no additional 5 pounds of sugar needed. :) The grapes will sit in the basement fermenting for a while and then get bottled up with a nice illustrated label that my husband made. In a couple of years year 2007 might be a real tasty one!

In knitting news, the evil baby sweater is complete enough that other people at work are exclaiming, "I want one!" Ahhhh noooooo!!!! At least it started a fun conversation down at the train station. I had one very new knitter (only knew how to garter stitch) and one who hadn't learned anything yet but has signed up for a class, ask me about what I was making and if it hard to learn. They were both very nice and I enjoyed having a chat with them.

Trying to drive out the evil sweater curse

Frog helps frog

Overheard conversation by two young girls that sound strangely like 80's valley girls. First girl, "So like my friends are bringing Jenny to the playoff Phillies game and she doesn't even like baseball! I mean she wears tube tops and high heels. She doesn't even own any piece of clothing with Phillies on it!" Her friend with no trace of irony, "Oh my God, that's HORRRRIBLE!!!"
I believe the women sitting next to me heard me chuckling to myself.

The evil baby sweater is coming along. I would almost say that it's ceased to be evil except it hid the buttons I bought for it and is giving me a lot of trouble knitting the collar. Probably shouldn't turn on my back on the sweater or it may go for my jugular.

Walking home from the train Monday I saw a little girl playing outside in the perfect red/black tartan skirt. She needed a red sweater with Scottie dog buttons to complete the outfit. I've become very enamored with that idea, but in a bigger size to fit me. Maybe I've been reading my kids books a little too much.