surprise!

So I arrived back in town from a weekend in New York to find these bad boys waiting for me:

As you can see, my awesome sock pal, Megan, really knows what she's doing! She also enclosed some adorable stitch markers, a bottle of yummy smelling lotion, and a cute mini-sticky note pad. She used Knitty's Straight-Laced socks pattern and Colinette Jitterbug yarn, and I think they came out lovely! Sorry my photo really doesn't do them justice. Thanks, Sock Pal!

I also finished these socks for my own self:

Again, sorry for the crappy overexposed pic. I really need to get a new camera. Anyway, these are my RPMs using Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Argyle. Originally I bought the yarn because my favorite LYS in Texas was having a huge sale and this was the only color they had left. But as soon as I started knitting with it and I got an eyeful of those gray/blue/red stripes, it just captured my heart. Something about those colors together reminds me of something my little brother or I would've worn in the 80s -- maybe baseball pajamas? Anyway, they came out so awesome and unisex that now my gentleman friend wants a pair out of the same yarn!

In the meantime, I'm whipping through Juliet -- pictures soon!

remember this thing?

yeah, i wasn't that crazy about it either. it was a great idea, but it just didn't fit quiiiite right, and i knew that to make it really fit awesome, i was going to have to rip out the whole thing. which would've been fine, except that i also didn't like how the space-dyeing competed with the lace pattern on the bottom half of the garment. i don't know if you can see it, but i just did a really simple eyelet pattern, which looked okay but it wasn't quite what i was hoping for.

so i bought some solid yellow rowan cotton rope to make another, better fitting incarnation of this halter top. and guess what my berocco echo turned into?


surprise! it's a coachella!

this turned out to be a much better fit for this yarn, which is super light, soft, and drapey. i actually like the way it started pooling at the bottom. here i think the colors enhance the design instead of competing with it. yay!

So apparently I've settled into a nice quarterly rhythm with my knitting blog posts. I'll resist the temptation to apologize to all my imaginary readers out there and instead get right to the good stuff.

Here's one of my finished Sockapalooza socks (trust me, the other one looked just as pretty, and the leg modeling it was just as pasty). I love how they came out, and more importantly, my sock pal Bliss loved them too! (you can see more action shots of them on her blog) I'm absolutely tickled pink that she liked them so much! I haven't received my socks yet but I'm still hopeful...

(By the way, I finally got me one of them Flickr doohickeys, so if you click on my pictures, you can see my admittedly puny photostream. But it's a start.)

As much as I'm sure you'd all love to see me modeling these, I'll keep it PG for the kids. This delightful concoction is Mon Petit Chou, courtesy of Knitty's Sex and the Knitty issue. Apparently knitted lingerie is a highly controversial issue. I, for one, am in favor of it, especially after knitting these babies up. The lace pattern keeps things interesting, and the elastic yarn (Cascade Fixation) ensures a perfect fit. Actually, the top doesn't quite contain my bazongas, but I think it's meant to be more decorative than, ahem, functional. I'm actually thinking of using the extra ball of yarn I ended up with to whip up a Zaftig!, which looks to be more accommodating to the well-endowed.


Here's a pair of Fetchings I started on when I was home in Texas and realized I'd left all my extra Fixation in Boston. I'd just bought a couple of balls of this luscious Noro Silk Garden Lite at my favorite yarn store in the DFW area and I needed a quick knitting fix, and Fetching proved to be my girl. There was a break in the yarn about two inches into the left one, much to my dismay, so it ended up being a little heavy on the blue and turquoise. But otherwise I like them.

Ugh, Blogger's being mega slow, so I'll save my piece de resistance for tomorrow.

wot i've been up to

gah, i've been such a bad blogger! here, maybe this will make up for it:


here's sock pal sock #1! i'm using the pomatomus pattern from knitty and it's really fun and not nearly as hard as it looks. and this picture in no way does justice to the gorgeous yarn (mountain colors bearfoot in mountain tango). yum.





here's what else:

more thuja socks out of artyarns supermerino, this time for my mommy.














some flap-top mittens i whipped up in april when i realized it was still forty degrees every day. i used nashua wooly stripes tweed. *heart* there's just something about tweed i can't resist.
















this is a halter top i designed out of some berocco echo i bought two years ago when it was discontinued. at the time i bought one of their patterns to make a sleeveless cropped top, but it turned out hideous and way too big. so i decided that at some point in the future i'd rip it out and redesign it, and it's been in the back of my closet ever since. until now! overall i like how it came out, but the fit still needs some tweaking, as you can see. it was really hard to make that center band tight enough to stay in place, and the back sags a little.












i've also been trying my hand at some t-shirt recons. this is my favorite so far. i used the "cover girl" pattern from generation t, but i modified it so that it actually covers my boobs.

soft like a bunny

that's how my new sweater feels:

so here's my tubey. i knit it out of plymouth baby alpaca brush, maybe four or five skeins of the main color and one each of the contrasting colors. So. Freakn. Soft. not to mention warm. as for the pattern, this is maybe the easiest sweater i've ever made. the construction is unusual, but aside from picking up a gajillion stitches when you're starting the body tube, all the techniques are really basic. i added some shaping to the body tube because i could tell it was going to be too big, but the original pattern doesn't even have any increases or decreases. and did i mention there are no seams to sew?! awesome.

another thing i love about this pattern is how easily you could modify it to adapt to different gauges and textures of yarn. my original plan was to add a big cable down the front just to spice things up, but i was afraid it wouldn't show up in all that fuzz.

mommy sock #1 is almost done. i won't bore you with pictures yet since it's just another pair of thujas.

back from the dead!

wow, it has been way too long since i posted on this little bloggie. my apologies to anyone who actually reads it.

BUT! i have been knitting. boy, have i. first:

i made these pretty pretty princess socks for my roommate's birthday way back in december. i combined the basic structure of the thuja socks from knitty with the king charles brocade pattern from vogue knitting. i know it's really hard to see the stitch pattern, but it's basically stockinette with purl stitches forming big Xs. i used artyarns supermerino again, and i have to say, that yarn is gorgeous. it's a superwash, which worried me at first because i thought the socks might lose their shape. but they emerged from the washer just as snug and about ten times softer. yay.

then spent most of my christmas break working on this monster:

actually, "monster" probably isn't fair. the only thing monstrous about it is the amount of time i spent on it. so this here's my forecast, made from oh-so-delightful cascade 220 in a charcoal tweed color. it came out a little shorter than i'd planned, but i was afraid to make the ribbed section at the bottom longer for fear i'd run out of yarn for the sleeves. so she's just gonna have to stay cropped like this. dang my long torso!

i've also been making lots o' hats:








this one's for my jane.






this one's for a boy.

i also made one for myself out of the leftovers, but i haven't photographed it yet. for the top one i used the center square pattern (from knitty, por supuesto), and for the one to the right i did the same construction but used the "chesapeake" motif from vogue stitchionary 3. i used patons shetland tweed chunky for all three, which is surprisingly nice for a lower-end yarn. it's very soft and warm, and i love colors of the little tweed flecks.

next up: i'm making a tubey for myself (since i'm apparently on a mission to make everything from that issue of knitty) out of some baby alpaca brush that i got on sale. i'm also making some socks for my mama (also out of artyarns supermerino) and a shrug to wear to a wedding i'm bridesmaiding in. whew!

so ugly it's pretty?

that's what i'm telling myself, anyway.
so i made this weird, weird scarf for my mom, at her request (she saw something that looked sorta like it on home shopping network). the pattern is loopy from knitty, heavily modified (and occasionally ignored). the main color is crystal palace kid merino, and the contrasting color is some sort of chunky malabrigo whose name and ball band are escaping me right now.

i'll admit, i never ever would have made this for myself. and at first, i was like, eeew, it looks like those webs that caterpillars spin in trees. i still think it does look a bit like that, but it's kinda growing on me. it helps that it's really, really soft. so hopefully my mommy will like it.


i've also been working on a forecast:

sorry for the crappy overexposed picture. i'm pleased with how it's coming along, though. i'm using the recommended cascade 220 tweed, but in a nice muted charcoal. muted colors are not usually my thang, but the farther along i get with this, the more i like it. we shall see.