Who knew?

Who knew pastries could be so dangerous?

Yup, that cute knitted cupcake snapped my size 4 needle tip. *Crack!*

No matter that I was using much too small a needle to knit up two strands of yarn held together...

Ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree?

No, because you can knit them with red toenails, silly.

I went to Susan B Anderson's blog today on a whim, and found out that she is going to be publishing a new book of toys! YAY!!! Her first book, Itty Bitty Hats is just amazing. It's like reading candy. I really cannot wait to see the new book. (Actually, I still need to see Itty Bitty Nursery, truth be told.) If her little knitted elephant is any indication, I think we're all in for a yummy treat! (Check out the Rav page for these elephants. Adorable. One person even took a photo of the elephant's bottom and it was the cutest thing.)

I finished my two-at-a-time toe-ups today. I have no pictures yet because I am ordering a pair of sock blockers from Knit Picks, as soon as I can call in my order. (Why must I call in my order when they have a perfectly good website? Because they don't have a perfectly good website, and I, like so many other knitters who want to give Knit Picks our moneys, can't get the checkout page to come up without sending up in a crazy loop back to the log in page. Grrr.) Once the much-desired sock blockers come in, I can take a picture that befits the beauty of the Queensland Collection wool. It's such a nice yarn and the variegations are so subtle and pleasing. In fact, of the four ladies using the yarn in my class, not a one got any pooling.

And while I decided I loved the yummy yarn I worked with on the sock, I have to say I did not enjoy the method. I like toe-up, mind you, but not so much the two-at-a-time. It certainly was satisfying to finish the entire pair at once and not have the Let Down That Is The Second Sock. But doing two at once is cumbersome. In my line of work (chasing after a 1.5-year-old), I need to be able to pick up and put down my knitting quickly before it gets yanked out of my hands and stuck in an electrical outlet, and with two socks hanging off the needles at once, the yarn get so tangled up that I have to spend five minuted arranging myself before I can dig in. No, not very practical for me, but as I said, I am so glad to have learned toe-upping and I will continue to explore that path. Maybe someday I'll be the crazy sock lady who knows every which way of doing every type of sock heel known to man. (And I'll still be cute, dagnabbit.)

Silver Bells and Cockel Shells...

... and pretty yarn all in a row!

I'm undertaking a major yarn-organization expedition. I want to be one of those people that the Yarn Harlot loves to hate: the people whose stash is all catalogued, who have swatches and notes lovingly placed in a notebook, whose yarn isn't stuffed into plastic bags and thrown on the floor in a pile.

I'm somewhere in between.

As anyone who has me friended on Ravelry will know, I've just uploaded a gigantic amount of stash info, so online at least, I am quite the organized bird. At home however... I think hurricane is an appropriate word. But that will be fixed! I purchased a little shelving system for the yarn, and it all is in piles--next to the shelves.

I had no idea I had so much yarn!

Accio socks!

"Honey, what are you knitting?"

"[blah blah, whatever I'm knitting now]"

"You haven't knitted anything for me!"

[in my head:] "But what in the world would you actually wear that I could reasonably knit?"

Well, now I have! DH's socks are done and have turned out quite well. I have yet to receive an official report on how well they wear (because he hasn't had the chance to wear them yet) but they do fit him well. *phew!* And such a nice picture, to boot. He seems to like them. If he enjoys wearing them at all, I might even consider it a yearly anniversary tradition to make him a pair of socks. At any rate, he seems satisfied that I finally made something for him.

The yarn almost ran out on me. I need to figure this out. Poking around on Ravelry, I didn't see anyone else having trouble with this using this yarn. Why is this happening to me? Am I knitting at an impossible gauge? Is it because it's men's socks?

Well, in the future I need to do toe-up, two-at-a-time to avoid disaster. Good thing my LYS is planning some classes on this soon. That way, if I do run out, the ankle is a little shorter, but they're still socks. One toe-less sock would have just been silly.

What a girl knitter needs...

Is a way to surf Ravelry and knit at the same time. Overload! I can read while I knit, but being on the internet is hard what with all the clicking and scrolling. What bliss it would be to shop for new yarn while I fondle old yarn knit though...

It would also be nice to have a way to tink SSKs. Those are a real mess to undo.

DH's socks are halfway done, and I know this because #1 is complete (with the exception of end-weaving) and #2 is cast-on. The finished sock is a perfect fit. :D Which means, of course, that I'd better not throw it in the dryer, lest it not remain a perfect fit. (Oddly, though, my swatch--and yes, I made a swatch and washed & dried it--did not shrink a bit. If anything, it grew, which really blows my mind.)

It's never easy, is it?

I want to accomplish lots of knitting this year. It's only January, I know! But I would like to have knitted gifts for Christmas this year, everyone is pregnant right now (except me), and my DH and Pumpkin need hand knits, too! I updated my queue on Ravelry to try to get it all out of the jumble those projects were making in my head and get myself organized and prioritized. Trouble is, with as much as I want to accomplish, a baby blanket for a baby due in May seems like it needs to be done tomorrow when I have so many others to knit. But I'm excited about each and every project.

Ugh, except Anouk. No, I'm excited about the yarn, which is quite soft, and the finished look I have in my head which is going to be extremely stylish on my sweet Pumpkin Pie. I chose celery and chocolate and will probably duplicate stitch flowers in pink (later...) But I have come to discover that the Cascade Pima Tencel has changed since the pattern was written, and so the original gauge for the pattern is impossible to obtain. So now the sweet little dress that I ordered the yarn called for specifically so it wouldn't stress me out changing things--needs to be changed. Argh!

So now it's on hold and I'm starting a baby blanket for a baby due in May. It's simple and I want to work on something I can just get out of the way and off my queue. I have so many things on there I'm having a hard time just relaxing and doing them one at a time. Adding to it, my little baby has learned to walk and is becoming a little girl, which means I'm running out of time to knit her all the cute tiny things I want to knit her!...OMGIgottagogetbusynow!!!... :)

Sock it to me

I still am working on the socks. Only now, they're not DH's anymore; they're my dad's. I got halfway down the foot and realized: "these look way too big for my husband's ankles." Sure enough, they were! I tried them on my dad today, though, and they fit him much better. The only major drawback is that now I can't surprise him next Christmas with hand-knitted socks. But he had lots of fun with the needles tickling his feet and standing on a sheet of paper so I could measure his foot so I can get a custom fit. :)

I procured some nice new yarn to try again on DH's socks yesterday. It's Trekking Natura (75% wool, 25% bamboo.) And it's ni-ice. To obtain a better fit, I can:

• Knit the women's size. (shh, don't tell!)
• Use smaller needles.
• Try Magic Loop (which my SIL says avoids the laddering you can get with DPNs).
• Incorprate some sort of ribbing pattern.

I will ponder my approach as I work on what-are-now-dad's-socks. I may do some or all of these things.

I Cheated.

I bought some knitted mittens for my daughter. I feel so guilty because I could have made mittens myself! But, I didn't want to knit mittens. Now that I'm a knitter, will I never be able to buy knitted things without feeling guilty?

Don't make me any Calmer!

I don't want to knit my Calmer any more!

I just needed to get that out.

Back to my Calmer.

The Saga of the Calmer

I bought a ball of Rowan Calmer yarn a while back. I got it to knit a hat for a friend's baby-to-be. Her first baby had very sensitive skin so I was directed to this yarn as being quite gentle. It's a cotton microfiber blend, and yes, it feels quite soft and nice.

I knit the umbilical cord hat from Stitch n Bitch on size 7 DPNs (as the pattern calls for). It had lots of uneven stitches and was way too small. I frogged it, thinking I'd try again on 8s like the yarn label calls for. Then the baby was born 11 weeks early and, ironically, I needed a small hat--only smaller than the one I'd already knit. I didn't feel like trying to adjust the umbilical cord pattern, so I went with a preemie hat I'd already knit before in the yarn I'd already knit it in (Encore Dreambaby DK). I still planned to knit a reguluar-sized baby hat for the baby in Calmer.

But, it got cold upon occasion here and my own daughter's head needed covering. I had a supercuteOMG! hat that my SIL had knit for her (complete with bunny ears!) that still fit a little, but it's cotton and I don't want The Pumpkin's big noggin stretching it out too much. So, now the Calmer is being re-purposed for a hat for Pumpkin. I designed a little hat in my head: a long section of double ribbing on the bottom (that will be ultra-stretchy and foldable to accomodate a growing head), then a few inches of stockinette, topped with two strands of i-cord to be tied into a bow (so it looks girly). How adorable!

Calmer, I was told, is a worsted weight yarn and I found an online pattern to base my sizing on using worsted weight. And since the Calmer label suggests size 8 needles, that seemed to make sense. But, the umbilical cord hat had been pretty small, so I cast on a few more stitches to accomodate. After a few inches of ribbing, I realized it was way too small for Pumpkin's head (sense a theme here?) Frog #2. I started over with a LOT more stitches. I knit 4 inches of ribbing and 2 inches of stockinette in denial over the fact that the hat was too big. Finally, I tried it on my head and it fit. *sigh* Frog #3. I cast on less stitches than last time, but more than the time before, and now I think it's right. *sigh of relief*

But the yarn is not all that easy to knit with, at least, not for a relative newbie. I had a big problem with gaps between the DPNs, but I finally got mean with yarn as I turned corners and yanked the fire out of it and fixed that problem.

But now, I'm on the i-cords. I've done i-cords on other yarns without problems. But the Calmer... just does not lend itself to i-cord. I spent my entire evening last night knitting practice i-cords on the other end of the ball trying to make one that looked nice. I yanked the yarn as I brought it back over to the right one time, I yanked the yarn as I made each right-hand stitch another time, I slipped the right-hand stitches off and yanked the yarn then (as suggested on KnittingHelp.com), and I yanked the yarn on the second stitch like I usually do in flat knitting (as suggested in Stitch n Bitch), and finally I tried not yanking the yarn so much because maybe this yarn just doesn't like such violence. The i-cords either aren't tight enough, or they come out with uneven stitches poking out. *sigh* I-cord, you cord, we all scream at the blasted i-cords!

That's where I am now. I doubt I'll ever use Calmer again.