Knitting like a woman on a mission.

A few new WIPs. A few FOs. I've got a lot going on and I swear I'll post pictures and information soon. (No really, I swear!)

I need a scarf just like this. Not want. N E E D.

Pogona

I met a knitter friend on Ravelry. Her name is Bobbe (on Ravelry, she's Bjohn). We decided "Hey, lets knit something together!". We picked Pogona by Stephen West and CO.

About a week ago her "cat got his claw stuck and ripped the whole project to shreds". We were both heartbroken.

Turns out Bobbe decided to gift Pogona to me! It gorgeous and wonderful and I'm still tickled that she'd offer such a wonderful gift. I have no idea how I could possibly return the favor (obviously I'd knit her something, but what to knit??).

Pictures? Of course! (I'm a little OCD and have decided to block it. It grew a lot and I love it.)

Oh, it looks really light in these pictures, but believe me: It's bright. Think of an almost-too-ripe avocado/radioactive pond scum/Nickelodeon slime/a forest full of trees. I love it.



(A charming picture of me looking like a linebacker.)


(Bobbe, you made it on the wall. Can you see it?


I love this picture :)

Smokey Row

I was at the football game Friday night with my friend, Nicole and we got bored and decided to split. We went off to the local coffee house/ice cream parlor/cafe/diner and guess what we found.


KNITTERS. Yeah, 2 college girls knitting in a booth. I went over and asked (totally couldn't help myself) if they had a local stitch and bitch and they totally did. It's tonight at 5:30 and I'm really excited. Really, really excited.

I'll tell you how it went later.

I want a sweater.

See, I have this yarn:


That about 1900 yds. of Cascade Ecological Wool in the Latte colorway. Yummy? I know! A sweater's worth (in the land of "Alex frogs her knitting a lot and sacrifices wool, a lot") with plenty more for fuckups.


It is soft and scrumptious, and from what I hear, it softens a lot in the wash. Yum.


Anyway, I've decided I want a cardigan-style sweater. V-neck with a cozy shawl collar. Kind of like this, the Smokin' Jacket from BrooklynTweed.


Or maybe a little more feminine, like the Indigo Playmate from Wendy Bernard.

(Truth be told, I'd probably wear pants with mine. Just sayin'.)

I, haven't never knit a v-neck, top down, raglan sweater was thinking "cool, I'll buy one of these patterns, see how it's put together, and then probably take those numbers and do my own thing". The problem is that they're not for sale online, ohhhh noooooo, they're in books. Does my library carry these books? No. Can I currently afford to buy these books? Not so much. (And am I willing to be patient and wait until I can buy one of these books? Ha! Funny. If you know me at all, you know the answer is no.)


So, like all of my great ideas, I'm improvising. I'm going to knit a swatch and wash it (I'm being reasonable, I'm going to need at least an idea of what I should be doing. No use knitting the perfect sweater if I wash it and it comes out be be 3 ft. too long.) and then I'm going to do The Math and figure out what numbers I'm going to use. I want a fairily deep v-neck, so I think the increases for the neck should be spread out more than the increases for the raglan shaping. Right? It sounds right to me.


This could, potentially, be a terrible idea. Whatcould possiblygowrong?



*a while later*

P.S. I totally said I'd swatch and I DID. Don't believe me? I have proof!




I know, I'm impressed too.

A hint of thing to come.

I discovered that the park is a perfect place to take pictures. The sunlight is perfect, the tables provide a good place to set stuff, the and trees are just too darn pretty. Tomorrow will be a long-overdue FO photoshoot.

SockssocksockssocksMORESOCKS

I went looking for sock yarn (startitis, what can I say) and found this.


I, uhh, think I may have a bit of a problem. Almost every ball of sock yarn I own is either blue or green (and this isn't even all of it). Oh jeeze.


I'm thinking about casting on for these, these, these, or these. Or maybe all of them. I can't decide yet.

Organizing.

My yarn was out-growing my 3 little stash bins. I upgraded to one big bin for the yarn, and used the little bins for magazines, needles, my bottle of Eucalan, my sock blockers, etc. Plus one bin is filled with my WIPs and the 3rd bin has a sweaters worth of Cascade Ecological Wool.

I dug all of my WIPs out of their various bags, buckets, bowls, nooks and crannies. I found some that I forgot I had, some I fell immediately back in love with, and some I hated. Like my mama's socks.

I don't hesitate to frog if a project is wrong. Example: A hat I knit and completed a few months ago that was supposed to be slouchy, but was dense and pointy. I never wore it, just left it. Today I frogged it and used the yarn (plus some skeins that were leftover) to start a scarf. (Which, in theory was pretty cool, and now I'm not so sure.) My mom's socks were another example, they just weren't right. The yarn wasn't going with the pattern, the toe looked wrong, and I just like top-down better. The second sock to my first sock ever? Frogged too.


I just get in a frogging kind of mood and it makes me happy. It's like, all of a sudden I have all of this wonderful yarn with so many opportunities instead of an ugly project I put in time-out because I hated.



Embrace the frog people, it means more yarn to knit with.



P.S. I've recently finished a hat, a shawl, and have made tons of progress on other items. All will be photographed soon, I promise. I've been really bad about it :(

I'm the luckiest girl alive.

Tonight in the small town of Pella, Iowa there was the Thursday Night Jamboree. (I'm not sure of the official name, but this fits.)

In addition to food and fun and mayhem, there was a woman with animals for show-and-tell.

The had an alpaca *swoons*, she had baby deer (so much more adorable than words can explain), she had a miniature horse, and.. get this.. 2 lambs (they looked more like grown up sheep to me, but what do I know?). They were show lambs. There were well groomed, clean, and gorgeous.

My mother (who I love dearly because I was too smitten to say anything) asked the woman who owned them if she used to the wool to spin yarn. Nope. The owner jokingly asked if I wanted it and my head snapped up so fast I may have gotten a wee bit of a neck injury.


Of course I wanted this wool. It's FREE WOOL. How much better could it get? The kind lady asked me if I was aware I'd have to wash it and "stuff" before I could spin it. Well.. yes. I had no idea how to prepare wool for spinning, but I could definitely learn how. "Alrighty, I work (at a place I'm not naming on the internet because she is MY free wool lady and no one will steal her from me) and you can come by and I'll give it to you. Have fun."


I then came home and researched the processes that need to be done in order to have wool ready to spin. It needs to be washed and carded for sure. (There's more than that, and many methods of doing each, but I'll leave it at that.) My mom has fabric dye, which after more research, works on wool as well. YES. In my dreams I'm going to be getting free wool, working with it, maybe dying it, and then selling it on Etsy and making big bucks. (Granted, I feel sort of inclined to give this woman some of my profits after I eventually start making money, but for now it's free and all mine.)


I'm going to try techniques from here and here. I'm tempted to buy this, and I need to buy one of these. Maybe eventually I can get one of these (which, as of now, is so far out of my budget it's not visible).


I'm really, really excited. (Did I mention she had an alpaca too? An alpaca just covered in lovely chocolate brown alpaca wool that looks so gosh darn hot in this Iowa summer and I have a feeling that the poor alpaca is going to need a haircut soon. I might have to ask about that.)



Oh, and onto other news, I am only a few rows away from finishing my green shawl. Today's a good day.

THE YARN HAS BEEN FOUND

I found the yarn in a box inside another box (cruel trick) and hugged the box, stroked the box, realized I was weird and set it down.


Now my set of sock DPNs are MIA.



I can't catch a break.



[Edit: Nevermind, they were hiding in my knitting bag because why on Earth would I look for them there? That's way too reasonable.]