Help Me Pick a Project: Vote, Comments, Etc

Earlier I said I had too much Wollmeise. Well, not really too much, but I acknowledged that it's now spilling out of it's designated WM bin and that's just silly.  A couple of skeins I own are off limits--predesignated for projects--but most aren't. So, you're going to help me choose project and color, right?

Here are the colors currently in the stash (click through for bigger): 

Color 1: Admiral. I promise it's a super dark blue.
 

Color 2: Petit Poison Medium --think really dark raspberry, or port.

 

Color 3: Nazar Boncugu 

Color 4: Madam Souris

 

Color 5: Petit Poison, Number 5, Dark: Again, Raspberry/Port colors. Guess who just realized she had two skeins of Petit Poison?


Color 6: Ein Klein Wenig Verrucht: a  nice blue/purple shade
 

Color 7: WD: Fliederbusch: don't mind the WD, just mean's "We're different" so it's a little off from what the dyer intended. Still lovely.


Color 8: WD: Der letzte Versuch: Actually blues and purples in the skein


Color 9: WD: My Old Blue Jeans: Has anyone noticed I buy jewel tones?


Color 10: Turkis: so bright teal it almost hurts. (Also, seriously I've owned it for 5 years)


Color 11: Amazonas: from earlier this week, looks like Parrots.


Color 12: Im dunklen Wald

And here are some projects that I think would knit up nicely (all of these are Ravelry patterns, you should be able to click through and see them w/o an account: 

Pattern 1: Whippoorwill -- this is a lovely 2 color shawl. Please specify which 2 colors you think should go together. 

Pattern 2: Spice Route: long rectangular scarf that kind of looks like Clapotis.  Might be good for one of the variegated colors? 

Pattern 3: Undine: I've been meaning to knit this forever, no idea why I haven't yet. 

Pattern 4: La  Cumparsita: I love Marnie's patterns. And this looks so elegant. Would be perfect for a cocktail party. (Please note, I rarely go to cocktail parties)

Pattern 5: Carlina: A more practical scarf with interesting pop out details.

Pattern 6: Arctium: Marnie again, I wasn't kidding. 

Pattern 7: Christmas Lights Shawl: I could only make the smallest size w/ one skein. Hmmm....

Leave me a comment, tweet, FB post etc and let me know which pattern and which color.  

Sock Show Thursday: 2015 Edition So Far

If I'm planning on making 12 pair of socks this year, I'm already behind. Here it is, nearly the end of February and I have 1.5 pair done.  This doesn't bode especially well, because the spring doesn't look to be slowing down anytime soon. And while I should be knitting on the train, too many evenings of squished in with other commuters with broad shoulders and me a tired hedgehog...

Anyway, I have finished some socks! 

Oh, hmm. Well, pretend there are 2 now!  This is Baah! La Jolla yarns in the Purple colorway. My usual 1x1 rib pattern knit over 60 stitches on size 1 (2.25 mm) needles.  These are going into my drawer for Northwestern Football season when I don't really feel like being super purple but would like to have warm feet and pretend a bit of team spirit at tailgates.

Next up, sale yarn!



These are the socks I started in Florida (pictures still to come! I bought yarn. No one was surprised.) as the Philosopher and I took Alligator Alley to Tampa.  I really love the base and it's been gray recently, so my coworkers have all been looking at the skein hoping that something like that green comes for us soon. Only a few more weeks til spring now... Again, size 1 needles, 60 stitches.

This yarn is Zitron Wolkeinspiel and the color appears to be Snow Drops, if I'm translating correctly (Schneegl Ckchen--Sibling the Elder do you want to tackle that?).

To Figure Out This Year

I have something approaching an embarrassment of Wollmeise yarn. Claudia dyes up such stunning colors and there's always such a mad rush when it posts at The Loopy Ewe. I feel swept along in the tides of Oh-that's-lovely-I-got-some-too-limited-amounts etc etc..

I know better. The Wollmeise has a perfectly nice online wool shop in Germany. And at the rate I'm knitting it up (one skein every... 5 years or so?) I should be set for another 60 years or so.  Yeah.

So this year, I need to figure out at least a couple of things to make with it. Two of the skeins are spoken for. I won't say which, of course, because that'd give it away to the final recipients (only one of whom is the Philosopher).  But I need to go through my queue, figure out what works that will use up as much of each skein as I can, and just start knitting it.

You've figured out by now I bought more, didn't you? Two skeins of Twin (her Merino, Nylon base) this time:

Skein 1 is Im dunklen Wald and it does indeed look like a forest floor.





and Skein 2 is Amazones and it reminds me of parrots.





Hmmm, I see a call for a vote coming.  Off to scheme!

Marshmallow with a Squashed Stoplight

Yes, that's what I look like when I'm wrapped up to go outside. My cream down coat (which got a trip to the dry cleaners while I was in Florida--more on that later) makes me look like a walking marshmallow and my winter hat, which no longer unfortunately can be called "new", is in stoplight shades.

My first hat for the winter was the Pamir that I knit for Loopy Academy Semester 1. Unfortunately, we went to a holiday party and the hat went home with someone else.  It could have told me it wasn't happy with me, but I guess not.  Faced with the prospect of several more months of winter and my primary available hat not one I was thrilled with (the Mrs. Crosby one that I still need to rip out), I dove into the stash again, pulled out the Pamir pattern and set forth...

This is Pamir #3 (Pamir 2 went to Madame Massage Therapist)

It's loose on the head there because I was just getting ready to block it again.  I wear it every single day. 

Those of you contemplating your own Pamir may be noticing that the band on the first picture looks a little odd: it's inside out.  The Philosopher likes the geometric design that the pattern creates on the back, so I knit the brim inside out. When I fold it up over my ears, as the negative Farenheit temperatures have certainly called for, you see the usual pattern. 

The yarn is lovely. It's Dragonfly Fibers Traveller in the Chicago Blackhawks colorway. I picked it up at Sifu last fall. I'm only sad that it doesn't seem to be a regular one of their colorways and so I don't think I can get more. This was a huge disappointment to several friends who have tried to abscond with this hat--both male and female.

And while I enjoy it, I am just starting to get sick of it.  I need a couple more hats in rotation soon...back to the knitting needles! 

Some Progress...

We're midway through the month and I finally have some knitting progress for 2015. Not much, but at least I don't feel like I'm never going to complete anything and really, does it make sense for a woman to commit this much space in her living room to a hobby that she seems to have only a passing acquaintance with? Never mind the many bookshelves of books and a conversation with a friend recently where I admitted, in a vague tired way, that I hadn't read much since Christmas.



Meet my Catkin shawl.  I started it after Christmas I think, so we'll call it January.  I completely missed very clear directions and had to rip back. This has been sitting on my desk at home for six weeks. I'd knit 10-15 stitches (stockinette with some interesting increases) and then sigh and put it down to work on whatever it was, or go stare at a book, or sleep.  Midwinter blues and work crazies have been double whammies of tough this year.  I've just completed section A and section B should be a piece of cake--at least, assuming I can get back to working on the shawl.

The yarn is Dirty Water DyeWorks, purchased a few years ago in Washington DC.

I have also finished, though as yet I have no picture for you because it needs to be blocked, another triangle for the Philosopher. I sort of used the Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief as my guide--mostly because he likes the shape of those increase-- but there are no eyelet rows, just alternating stockinette, garter, and moss stitch. I abhor moss stitch, which I find surprising because obviously I have no problem with 1x1 ribbing. He'd asked for another "dark" triangle and this is done in the Styx colorway of Sock! by Lisa Souza, which is black/navy/purple yarn.

I'll see if I can get it blocked this weekend and a picture up for you. Perhaps the cats will pose with it if I tell them not to. ;)

Talisman

I've been carrying around my knitting as a talisman more than I've been working on it.  In the better part of a month I've managed to knit most of a sock and less than 50 rows on a shawl. The sock goes back and forth to work every day and probably has some serious resentment for my tablet, on which I read or have been playing games. At work it only has made it out of my purse on some days--waiting instead as I fling myself from meeting to meeting.

On one hand I desperately want to knit. I know it will calm me down, soothe a brain that has been tossed a whole lot of curve balls thus far in 2015. On the other, I just haven't cared. Someone out there just spit tea all over their keyboard. Sorry about that.  But I haven't much wanted to knit. I get a twinge of "ooh I want to make a sweater" and then my to do list bites my hand.

Part of it, I think, is that while normally I use my knitting as a way to let my brain work through things, of late my thoughts have been so overwhelming and frustrating that I haven't wanted to think things through or let my knitting be the way that they keep churning. I reach the end of the day, look at everything yet undone, zone out as best as possible on the way home, eat something, collapse into bed earlier than usual.

Getting back to wool is going to be a matter or necessity here shortly though, I have a conference next weekend and a flight the weekend after that. Time to figure out the on-the-go-projects for 2015...

Casually...

I didn't knit yesterday. That strikes me, now on day 2 of the new year, as odd.  I knit on New Years Eve, starting a pair of socks at S&K's party as I always seem to.  They always throw a great party and I always seem to have wrapped up all of my portable knitting, frantically having finished it for the holidays and whatnot. So I grab whatever skein is handy and stuff it in a project bag and, sitting at their kitchen bar, cast on what is both my last and first knitting.

This year, it's Baah! La Jolla in the Purple colorway. Perhaps not the most fascinating of names but it's accurate.



I bought this yarn from Loopy in Chicago when they were still carrying Baah! I was disappointed that they stopped carrying it, the colors just scream at you from the wall and then you want all of them.  Fortunately, there are other sources.

I've not made any knitting resolutions this year. There's the vague general wish of getting the stash a little smaller so it fits more neatly into it's bins rather than my precariously setting the lids on and hoping.  I've had some thoughts about hats and mittens and fingerless gloves. Of course, I've knit two hats in the past week (a new one for me and one for my massage therapist, more on those later) so perhaps that bug has worn off a bit. And more washcloths, as I try to work through the cotton. But overall I'm just looking forward to seeing what I have, making pretty things, etc.

Hope you're off to a wonderful new year!!