President's Day Upload

Seeing as I had the entire day to myself today, I took advantage of the empty house and photographed my many finished and not-so-finished projects of the past few months.

The socks, 4 pairs, 2 single socks.

Other projects are uploaded onto the flickr and ravelry pages, to be added here in due time... maybe over the next holiday weekend.

New Kicks

To combat a bit of irritation at work a few weeks back, I decided to spend a few minutes shopping for shoes online. A co-worker had told me about piperlime.com, a new online shoe retailer owned by The Gap/Banana Republic/Old Navy but selling regular, name-brand shoes. The bonus? You can use your GapCard and accumulate those dollars they send back once you hit a certain amount. For someone who shops almost exclusively at The Gap*, this is fantastic!

Anyway, the point of this is to reveal my new sneaks, the perfect pair of shoes for any knitter. Behold, Sweater Keds!!

Oh hey there

It appears as though I haven't written here since late June. My goodness, quite a bit has happened since then!

~ Got a job in medical communications (see ya later research science!)
~ Moved to NJ for said job
~ Boyfriend moved with me and got himself a job down here
~ Finally bring home a living wage
~ Went to a few Red Sox games
~ RED SOX WON THE WORLD SERIES!!!!
~ Spent a weekend in Baltimore
~ Spent a weekend in Philadelphia
~ Spent a couple of weekends back in Boston
~ Worked far less than ever before while accomplishing far more

What does all of this mean for you? Nothing really. But I do have entirely too much free time for knitting and dispensable cash for yarn stuffs so maybe it means actual posts in this here space. For those of you on ravelry, I'm slowly uploading projects in various states of undone and hopefully pictures will follow (not anytime soon since I get home long after night falls). For those of you not on ravelry, pictures will go up on flickr and maybe I'll get moving on updates here.

We shall see.

Almost an FO

Just a few days of knitting and I finished the clapotis that was languishing in the WIP basket* for the past few months. Guess what? I hate it!! The pattern specs say the finished length should be 55in. Mine is 48in. A completely useless length. But all is not lost. Maybe a severe blocking will help.



The specs:
Pattern: Clapotis by Kate Gilbert
Yarn: KnitPicks Memories in the Fly Fishing colorway (a hideous combination of blue, brown and green)

Next week I will actually have something pretty to show. Let's just say I have official succumbed to the siren call of hand painted sock yarn. What a luxury.

* In preparation for a pending move I've been cleaning out the apartment and packing. Guess what I found? Several moth nests, one of which was IN THE KNITTING BASKET. Not just in the basket but covering a skein of ACRYLIC yarn. The one skein of yarn that didn't get properly stored in a sealed bag once I realized the scope of the moth problem. I found yet another nest in a pair of wool socks in my dresser... a drawer that hasn't been opened since I moved into this apartment 16 months ago. Hopefully this marks the end of my moth problem. Every other affected item of clothing (including all wool coats) has been removed.

Baby steps

These days even the smallest amount of progress is something to celebrate. The old projects have been getting a little bit of attention this week. I started (and finished!!) this socks AGES ago. So long ago I don't even remember. It might be the first thing I ever knit by magic loop! Yesterday I took it out to take a few pictures for ravelry and realized the ends were never even woven in. So sad. Now it's completely finished and awaiting a partner. Let's not discuss the fact that I probably don't have enough yarn for a second sock.



This is the garter rib sock from Sensational Knitted Socks knit using KnitPicks Essential in some gray color. One of these days I'lll man-up and use my delicious hand painted sock yarn instead of these boring KnitPicks yarns. I do enjoy the machine washable aspect though.

It was an FO, if only for a minute

This weekend I finally forced myself to get back into knitting and work on the long languishing pile of WIPs, all neatly packed away in plastic bags. I made progress on a project from the lovely Fitted Knits book but, low and behold, it was too small. Late last night I hooked it up to the ball winder and let it rip. Being made of Lamb's Pride yarn (15% mohair content) made for tough unknitting and the yarn is now all pilled and nasty. Hopefully I can salvage it with a quick wash because I really do want to start this project again in a larger size.

Here's a wee close-up of what it looked like before finishing and before being taken apart...


Now I have to find yet another old project to work on this week. Maybe I'll actually finish those baby cable socks that have been hogging my tiny circ for the past few months.

Long time no knit

The past several months have been consumed by writing and defending my graduate dissertation so the knitting was placed on long-term hiatus. Now that I'm finished with graduate school (finally), in possession of a PhD and unemployed, I have all kinds of time for the knitting. The only problem is that I keep starting new projects and dropping them for something new within a week. Once I find a moment of project monogamy, I'll start posting regularly again. I hope.

In lieu of knitting content, check out Ravelry. It's an amazing organization/discussion/fiber community. I was somehow lucky enough to get a beta tester membership but it should be open to the public around mid May. You can also send out an email to request a membership before then (check the sidebar on the website).

Here's a screen-shot of my project page. If you head over there and find me you can see what projects I've been working on during the past few weeks. Hopefulyl I'll be blogging about them all soon.