Full Disclosure... mostly

It's seriously hard to keep up, people. Yarn and patterns have just been a-jumping into my hands and on to my credit card lately. I promised full disclosure, but it's not entirely possible. You see, some of the yarn I've bought is already perilously close to being a garment!

Ok, so in Ithaca, I went to the Homespun Boutique, the only yarn store I have ever regularly patronized. I'm more of an online buyer myself - I get most of my yarn on sale. I particularly love Webs' end of the year clearance sale. I tend to stock up for the year, then knit the stuff up unless I get taken in by a pattern. Sock yarn, though, I like to actually see first. I'm a big fan of the Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport. Very affordable, wide range of colors, good yardage.That's what all the yarn here is. I also purchased the most recent Interweave (I've got to get myself a subscription to that), Knitting without Tears by EZ, and Jo Sharp Knit Issue 3, which has some great patterns for both men and women, along with a lot of variations on the same idea.

Then, my friend D took me to Threadbear for the first time ever last Saturday. I fell hard for the Man's Vest in the Classic Elite Summer booklet and purchased enough Four Seasons to make my size. I'm already halfway through the back. Crazy! Oh, and a little splurge on some high quality sock yarn. That's Dream in Color Smooshy in Butter Peeps.
As if that weren't enough on the needles, I started a sock (the one based on the loon in Knitting on the Road) which I'm sadly going to have to frog because I was trying to use up loose ends of yarn, and there aren't going to be enough ends to make two socks. I have about 1/3 of the back of the Deep V Sweater from Classic Knits by Erika Knight sitting in my knitting basket (ended up frogging the Saddle Shoulder sweater), plus a little baby sweater in a deep, deep blue for a "nephew" which is also about 1/3 done. I'm not usually a multiple knitter, but somehow I caught a massive case of startitis these past 2 weeks. Probably because I'm going to be in a bit of a knitting drought this summer at Aspen. There aren't enough hours in the day or room in my suitcase to plan anything specific for that.

And, as if that weren't enough, I bought fabric for a Built by Wendy dress (Simplicity 3835), which I'm hoping to start this weekend. A nice green shirting that looks like chambray, plus some buttons to punch it up a little. So excited!

I also may or may not have purchased the Nora Gaughan vol. 1 booklet with the yarn for the baby sweater. That's it! Enough buying of the yarn! Now, knit!

Eye-Candy Tuesday

This shot is from my recent trip to Ithaca. The trillium were blooming. I love trillium. Quite on par with daffodils in my book.

I'm having some hand issues right now... an audition coming up on Friday and too much practicing. So a full post will have to wait, but boy will it be a big one.

In the mean time, take a minute and enjoy the view.

Child's First Sock in Shell Pattern

Pattern: Child's First Sock in Shell Pattern from Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush
Yarn: Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport in Blueberry
Needles: US 1
Mods: Shorter leg, longer foot. These are acutally on the verge of being too long for me in the foot since I had to add a full extra repeat when what I really needed was half a repeat in order to get back to the correct stitch count.

I'm inclined to agree with Wendy. Somehow, putting holes in your socks ON PURPOSE just seems wrong. But a very pretty kind of wrong. I'm not a huge fan of lace socks. My feet freeze as a normal course of action, so I like to surround them in as much wool as possible. Funnily enough, after I finished the first one, I tried it on with a regular old cotton sock on my other foot which I had been wearing already, and the handknit one (holes or no holes) was definitely warmer. Still, I think this is as lacy as I will get. And I can jump around pretending to be a mermaid, since my feet look like they're covered in blue scales. So it's win-win.

A note on sizing: The pattern says that these are for women's shoe sizes 6 1/2 to 7 1/2. I wear a 9, but I have what they call a "low-volume foot" which means that while my feet aren't narrow, they are skinny vertically. My mom just thinks this is another term for fallen arches. Whatever. In any case, these fit me perfectly. Of course, that might be because I *cough* didn't check gauge *cough*. Don't call the knitting police on me. It all worked out in the end.

All by Myself

Look, it's a cute little A-line skirt!

But, wait. It ties!
And it has pockets!!

I'm pleased as punch with this wrap skirt. Unfortunately, I don't have the pattern with me, so I can't tell you what it is. I think it's McCall's, or Simplicity. But probably McCall's, and it's in their current catalog. It's a "Suddenly You're Sewing!" "One-Hour Skirt!" type of thing with three views. I chose the one with pockets because for me pockets are a make-it-or-break-it deal. I also can't give you any good details about the fabric, except that it's 100% cotton, and very soft. Also, I think it was on sale.

It took me a whole weekend to sew this. And, if you want the truth, I didn't do it all by myself. There was a whole lot of yelling for mom as I ran into things I didn't understand or sewed things incorrectly. Really, I did all the sewing, but she did all the hand holding.

The one modification I made (besides shortening it A LOT) was to use two big snaps instead of buttons to close the skirt. This was out of necessity, because I finished this somewhere in the middle of a Sunday night when mom was already in bed, but I think it turned out for the best, since now it's easily adjustable, and there aren't any buttons making impressions on my stomach.

I'm wearing it as I write this, though it's not quite warm enough here yet to justify a skirt. I'm hoping though....

Rainy Day Ithaca

See, the thing about Ithaca is that there are many, many, many totally awesome things to do when it's sunny. You can hike in one of the numerous local state parks (always my first choice), you can go to the Farmer's Market and spend half a day wandering around, heck you can just walk around town and shop on the Commons or admire the beautiful houses and gardens. You can head up to Cornell and walk around the Plantations and the Arboretum and have some ice cream at the Cornell Dairy or Bubble Tea at The Old Teahouse in Collegetown. But if it's raining, things get a little bit more difficult. And since Sarah and I are both on budgets, it gets even harder to try and find entertainment on a rainy day, as most of my trip to Ithaca was. We, however, stumbled on a rather awesome solution to the rainy day blues. On your next rainy day, when you feel cooped up and in need of some inexpensive entertainment, may we suggest going to your local big box craft store and spending $10? There are so many entertaining things to be found there, but we settled on painting shoes.

Painting shoes, you might ask? Yes, painting shoes. We found acceptable slip-ons at the craft store and procured a number of puffy paints in colors appropriate for painting dragons.

Then, we took to the internet in search of dragon-y inspiration. I sketched out what I wanted on a scrap of paper.

Then, we sketched our ideas on the shoes. I used regular old pencil, but Sarah used a white colored pencil since she chose black shoes.


Then, simply paint away, giggling madly at your genius. Sarah did hers all in one go, but I let mine dry a bit and finished off the detail work. Oh, and my we also suggest letting them dry on the top of the fridge if there is a cat around? Cats and puffy paint do not mix.

And there you have two very different takes on dragon shoes. Sarah went for a more gothic, kind of Dungeons and Dragons, sort of motorcycle girl approach with all kinds of super cool flames and abstract dragons.

Her feet are on fire because she's so hot! I chose a more fairy tale, literal kind of dragon.

My absolute favorite part (besides the two of us wearing them out together and hoping that people notice) is the dragons I painted on the back. This isn't a completely finished shot - there's more to the flames now - but I love the gold sparkly belly and the little horns.

Oh, hey, and if you're thinking to yourself, "Well, now I've got all this puffy paint, what do I do next?" Well, you can puffy paint more shoes, or you can get yourself a piece of wax paper and make stickies for your windows. Paint right on the wax paper, let them dry, peel them off, give them a lick, and stick them anywhere! I now have a little sea forest on the bottom of my bathroom mirror!

It is clear that I am a bad blogger, because I have a bunch of backed up FOs to show off (not to mention a trip to the yarn store to admit to). One step at a time...

FO: Mom's Dollar and a Half Cardigan

Just in time for Mother's Day.

This wasn't a particularly secret knit, since I took extensive measurements of my mom, my gauge, my mom again, and the finished object, necessitating some frogging, and an extra block for the most perfect fit I could manage. This took some major modifications. So:

Pattern: Dollar and a Half Cardigan by Veronik Avery from IK Spring 2007
Yarn: Cascade 220 in Italian Plum
Needles: US 6 and 8
Buttons: 4 - 1" from big box store
Mods: Um, here's where the disseration starts, so get yourself a cuppa or skip over this if you're not interested in actually knitting this sweater.

There are some pretty well documented problems with this pattern. Namely, the "finished size" and the blocking measurements don't match up (the blocking measurements are bigger), the reverse stockinette sections tend to be ripply and bubbly, and the overall length versus width of the pattern is pretty ridiculous (You will want to shorten everything. You will. Trust me.) Moral of the story for future knitters: I've seen some pretty hideous finished sweaters in this pattern, but if you're smart, you can churn out a beautiful and functional sweater. The version I knit for myself is my favorite sweater ever. Hands down.

I took all kinds of measurements from my mom. She did not have a sweater she liked for me to measure so I had to do a bit of guessing. Finished measurments: Bust - 36 or 37, Length - 22, Arms 17 3/4, Armholes 7 1/2. I don't have the pattern schematic measurements on hand, but I can tell you that those aren't them. I significantly shortened the body and sleeves, significantly lengthened the armholes, and blocked the sucker within an inch of its life. The lengthing of the armholes meant that I had to lengthen the sleeve caps too. I tried using the formula in one of the more recents IK to redo the shaping, but it didn't work out... possibly because of the stockinette/lace problem? Anyway, I ended up doing the bind off and initial decreasing as in the pattern, then I decreased on each end of every other row until the final shaping and bind off which I followed. This meant that I there was a plain row between each decrease row, whether the pattern said to or not. This way I achieved the desired extra 1 1/2 inches. They fit in the armholes very well, and everything worked out. Yay! I was quite concerned.

Because my mom couldn't give me an accurate gauge of how much ease she wanted, I tried for zero ease, which is how mine fits, and I love it. I knit the smallest size, thinking I could block it out a bit to get the size I wanted. It turns out that she likes more ease, so I went back and reblocked it out a few inches. The sweater held up very well to this abuse. Don't be afraid to manhandle it a bit. This actually worked out for the best, since then the lace pattern opened up beautifully.

Oh, and to combat the ripply, bubbly stockinette portions, I knit the reverse stockinette in a needle two sizes smaller. When knit, they still look ripply and bubbly, but the block nice and flat. Also, on this one, I knit all the edgings in the smaller needle, since my mom prefers a closer fit on the ribbed sections.

Wanna see the buttons?

Oh, how gloriously, adorably beautiful. I'm just IN LOVE with these buttons. They're maybe not entirely my mom's taste but they set off from the sweater beautifully with the silver and the bit of green while the purple thistle and the purple sweater create just the right amount of coordination. I couldn't pass them up.

All in all, I'm glad to have this one done. I'm heading back to Ithaca today where among many, many other things, I'll be visiting my favorite LYS. Full disclosure upon my return!

The View From Here....

... really couldn't be any better. The semester is over. My crab apple is blooming. It's sunny and warm and the best place to be is reading a book on the balcony.

Oh, and the semester is over! I have a brief respite before heading off to Aspen for the summer, where the work will start all over again. I'm excited to go, but I'm also not kidding myself. This will be no vacation. I am anticipating being stressed out to a degree I have not yet experienced, and as for free time or even sleep, I'm not betting on getting a whole lot. One of the things I really must do is make sure I make time to exercise. Does anyone have any tips for really good "on the go" exercise? It's also got to be cheap. That goes without saying. I'm up for anything.
But for now, I'm just enjoying a bit of relaxation and planning for what's coming up.... Happy Spring to you!