As Promised, Loot

As you can see, I really struck gold in the Christmas knitting loot category.
Counter-clockwise from top left:

1. Socks that Rock medium weight from PassionKnitly- not for Christmas but since she picked this up for me at Rheinbeck and I got it at Thanksgiving, it still feels new and part of the holiday season. First STR EVER! Colorway - Spinel
2. Recycled Sari Silk from PrincesSara - 3 skeins total, 509 grams. Still no idea what I'm going to do with this. But if I continue in my stash-busting mode and try to [loosely] use a first-in, first-out method, then the sari-silk will be with me a good long time.
3. Knitpicks Options from MIL
4. Stephanie Pearl McPhee Casts Off from E - Yarn Harlot
5. Stitch-n-Bitch notebook from E
6. At Knit's End from E - by the Yarn Harlot. This has already been put in the bathroom, replacing Secret of Life of a Knitter.
7. Sheep measuring tape from PassionKnitly
8. Frog doo-dad caddy from PassionKnitly
9. Eucalan from PassionKnitly- Needed this for hand-knits and blocking for a long time. And recently I used it for a few commercial sweaters! Smells great.

Obligatory post-Christmas list

Wow, I'm off to a stellar start with my plan to post more often.

As I am a knitter and have a blog, I think I'm required to post a run-down of the holiday knitting gifts and loot.

Given:
1. A feather & fan scarf for my gram done with Brooks Farm Duet, previously written about here and here. I finished it in November which I've decided is an excellent way to mitigate some of the December-knitting stress. I should do this more often.


2. Red Sox red socks for my brother. I knit these with Dark Horse - Fantasy which is *gasp* acrylic. I chose this yarn after a lengthy, and somewhat public hunt for inexpensive, solid red , superwash sock yarn. I failed to find anything adequate in time, so after talking to a helpful person at Knit Happens, I was able to accept this high-quality acrylic because it came so highly recommended and I didn't trust my brother with higher maintenance yarns.

3. Red Sox red socks for PassionKnitly. Knit with Lang - Jawoll superwash sock yarn. That's right, I eventually found what I was looking for at A Tangled Skein.
I'm cheating a little in putting this on the "given" list since I immediately took them back after she opened them. I had a good reason though - they were unfinished! I was totally on track to finish them by Christmas until I ran out of red yarn just after the heel on the 2nd sock. And THEN I had the tragic realization that I left the 2nd skein in Washington! I tried to recover by calling 4 yarn stores in RI, but sadly none of them stock that yarn in solid colors. LYS's seem to have an unhealthy obsession with variegated sock yarn! I'm now finishing up the cuff on said 2nd sock and hope to re-give them to the lovely recipient within the week. No picture for the blog though. Instead I will leave you with this very cute pic of Passionknitly's family's new puppy taken by my hubby. Hi Brandy!


4. His So-Called Scarf for Erich. This wasn't actually a surprise gift, but I wrapped it up and put it under the tree anyway. I think he likes it even though he no longer has frigid bike rides to work and despite the recent heat wave here in DC.

Ok, I've just run out of steam so the loot will come in a later post.

A title as creative as the post itself

To help get myself back in the habit* of blog writing, I'm going to fall back on my old reliable post format: The bullet-point list of how I spent my weekend. And without pictures! Try to contain your excitement.

• With some assistance from E, I changed my bike's rear tire inner tube! It had been flat for about 2 weeks. Initially, I wasn't that anxious to change the tube because as the weather has gotten colder here, the bus has become more comfy. However, any non-bike commuting method I tried took me about 3 times as long to get to work (and sometimes longer to get home). Unacceptable! While I enjoyed getting to listen to NPR so much, I did not enjoy starting dinner at 7pm. Now all I need to do to make my bike safer is replace the brake pads, replace the broken rack, and apparently replace the seat pole that is currently set about 2 inches higher than it's max height line. This is what I get for buying a bike that's too small for me.
• I went on a mission to a local yarn store in Alexandria to see if I could find some elusive yarn for a secret project. The woman there was pretty helpful and steered me in the right direction. I've knit about 25% of that project since Sat. night. And because of 1 person who reads this, I can't share any more details.
• Had a lovely meal with a couple friends at Red Rocks Pizza - The Victory Golden Monkey beer and the mushroom pizza were such a treat.
• I actually dusted furniture. I never do that. But we got up fairly early on Sunday and the cold, gray weather was just conducive to cleaning (and lots of cups of coffee of course). And after weeks of it bothering me, I also finally gave in to the desire to wash down all of the shelves in the fridge. I bet you're now regretting how lame your weekend was compared to mine.
  
• Online gift shopping: I had trouble getting into the holiday spirit this year. So I was even less inclined to battle store crowds and subject myself to suburban strip-mall hopping. Plus, since we were supposed to fly to RI, ordering things online and getting them shipped north seemed like the best option once again. I took care of about 5-6 gifts that way over the weekend. And of course, about 2 days later, we decided to cancel our flights and drive instead. Is that irony? Probably not.

* Let's pretend that I actually ever WAS in the habit of regular posting.

The Monkeys are Loud

But they are very comfy.
I finished them last night after the extremely satisfying Sox game :)
I wanted to finish them DURING the game, but halfway through grafting the toe, the people for whom we were babysitting came home and you know it's impossible to graft and be sociable. So I calmly noted where I left off, packed them into my bag, watched the last 2 innings at their house, and drove home. Erich fell asleep immediately (probably had something to do with the fact that it was almost 1 am and he had to get up at 4:30. But I was convinced I wouldn't be able to fall asleep until the toe was closed.


15 minutes later, sock #2 was done! I got up to go change the project's status in Ravelry (yes, I'm that bad) but a little voice inside me said that would be cheating since I hadn't woven in the ends yet. I was torn for a moment about whether to stay up even later to weave in the ends (thereby allowing me to declare it finished in Ravelry) or just go to bed. It was a quick moment. I got back down to business and was able to sleep soundly knowing I had a brand new pair of handknit socks to wear to work the next day.

So clearly, the answer to that question from earlier this summer is yes, I am keeping them. I still maintain that this colorway is way too loud for the monkey pattern. But I will not dwell on that anymore and will just enjoy the fact that I made them and the yarn is sproingy between my feet and my danskos.

Ingrid Michaelson tonight!

Last call for joining me tonight at the 9:30 club.
It's an early show and she's opening for Matt Nathanson who I don't know.
So I'm only planning on going at 5:30, watching Ingrid's set, then heading to stitch 'n bitch. I can't think of a better way to fill up my evening!

p.s. Both hubby and I are in love with her; she's totally on our respective "lists". I'm crossing my fingers that I get lucky tonight! ;)

Code Blue

Please bear with me as I fight with blogger over the customization of the blog. I spent way too many hours last night futzing with the html, only to end up overhauling the whole thing at the very end by upgrading to their new (and improved?) interface. This was probably a bad idea however since I think the new system uses xml and I only know how to work with html. So the fact that I have this nice saved word document with all the lovely html code I worked on doesn't help me too much - the new system won't accept all that as proper code.

The good news is that the new system does let you customize many things very easily. So at the end of the night I was able to sort of duplicate the look I was going for using blogger's new features. Now my only big task is to figure out how to get the header to fill the whole box at the top. The way its cut off right now on the right and left really bothers me. I've tried adjusting a bunch of the code in the new template page - haven't found the trigger yet.

Having said all that, I think I'm actually in the mood for a more dramatic change that would involve *gasp* NOT having a light blue background.

A scarf update

Thanks for all the input!!! I was so attached to clapotis that I couldn't judge the matter objectively.

After the overwhelming support for feather & fan, I ended up ripping out both swatches, cast on 2 needles sizes bigger so the lace would show up better with this yarn, and started in on a new & improved feather & fan scarf. I had only done about 3 rows when I saw the brilliant suggestion by Jenna to purl the odd rows.

As much I love reversibility, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that most lace does. not. want. to. be. reversible. End of story. By knitting every row, I had compromised the lace too much and it wasn't worth it just so it'd be a reversible scarf.
See? I'm not hopeless. Thanks Jenna! (and Seal, who I think was on the same wavelength)


Doesn't this version show off the yarn's colors and texture so much better!?

*Edit* So now I'm wondering if I want to knit the 4th row such that it looks like this.
It would help w/ the curling, but I don't know if its necessarily an improvement.
Oh, and because I have so much of this yarn, I'm thinking of making a beret/tam to go with the scarf so Gram could have a set. It wouldn't be a regular hat of course, cuz that would mess up her 'do.