FOs, WIPs, & SEX!

(I am not normally one for acronym alphabet soup, but knitting acronyms are so fun!)

SEX:

I am weak, people. First, because even now I am totally procrastinating on what I should be doing, which is working. I have a report due on Sept. 30 (yup, that's right, in 2 days) that I am completely ignoring currently. And if I am going to procrastinate on that, there are a multitude of things that I could be doing around the house. Instead, I have spent the morning knitting, taking pictures, and reading posts on knitty. Second, I am weak because I have been on a yarn diet since the fiber festival in August, and I totally broke it over the past week. In a big way. Take a peek:


The purple pile is Rowanspun Aran in Heath, which I am going to use for the Hourglass Sweater. The grey pile on the left is Rowanspun DK in Mouse, with one skein in Mist(the lighter color). I wanted the Mouse to make the Retro-prep Pullover, and whatever extra I have will be used with the Mist to make a scarf. The Red & Cream Skeins are for a fair isle Christmas Stocking for my grampa. SO--this is a gift investment and is completely exempt from guilt. The Patons Merino on the left is for felted projects, also for Christmas, which should also be exempt. The 2 balls near the top are from Schaefer. One is Anne and one is Lola. The colors are amazing....and I couldn't resist. I have no excuse for these 2. The Anne will be used for socks, and the Lola will be used for gauntlets. The Knitting Ganseys book is to help me design my next sweater for my hubby, which I already have the yarn for. A total investment. I should have known that I could only be good for so long.....

FO's:
Speaking of sweaters for hubby...I have some FOs to share! Blogging about the sweaters helped me get over the hump and start working on them again. Here is a pic of my hubby's Manly Sweater:
I still have to block it, but other than that, it is completely done. Oh--and I used Lion Brand wool-ease for this. My DH wanted washable and easy, so that's what I did. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't as enticing to work with. I also seamed the Erin Sweater at the shoulders and knit the ribbed neck. I think I am really going to like it, so I am going to start on the sleeves soon. But--I don't like how the neck looks where I picked up the stitches, so I am planning to redo that after I get the sleeves done. I also finished the boogie vest:
I still need to block it, but it is otherwise done. I'm not sure that I love the neck. It turned out like it was supposed to, but I would prefer more of a V-neck. I am still debating on if I want to rip it back or not. I used Lopi for this, which I bought from Webs when they had their spring sale. I bought it because I hear so many people talking about Lopi, and I had never used it. The Boogie vest was a good, small project to take it for a test drive. I have to say, I don't think I will use it again. I felt like I was getting rope burns when I was knitting with it and I can't have it touching me at all when I have it on. On the good side, I love the colors that they have and it is super warm. I think for hard core, durable outerware, this would be a good yarn.

And now:

WIPs:
I started a new sweater for me, because I am also putting off Christmas knitting. I have had rowanspun dk in Goblin for months, and have been really excited to start knitting the retro-prep pullover. I really wanted to begin knitting with it to try it out before I bought the Mouse. I like it a lot, and I love the knitted fabric. However, as I was taking pictures for this blog, I noticed this:Can you see it? How 'bout now:



I had forgotten that I had bought a single ball to check the color before I bought the bag to make the sweater. Out of 11 possible choices, I (of course) grabbed the one ball that was a different dye lot when I cast on. The dye lot is one number off, people . So all the remaining balls match the dye lot of the second ball I used. Which means that if I rip this out to make sure everything matched purty-like, I have to rip everything out. All. Of. It. Makes me want to giggle and rock back and forth on the floor. I love this sweater, and was so excited that I would be done in another week or so, if current pace continued. Bummer. I think I may go back to Christmas knitting.

I came to knit socks and chew gum...and I'm all outta gum

Over the summer, I traveled quite a bit. Mostly on business, but my hubby and I also went to see our best friends who live in Connecticut. My travels had one thing in common: in each place I found at least one yarn store. I was mostly sane, with a bit of nuttiness when I found ArtFibers in San Francisco (oh the silk!). While I normally can't justify buying anything that I can find at my LYS, sock yarn tends to be the exception to this. I had a decent sock yarn stash, and had bought a bit here and there over the summer at each place I found. In August I went to Florida to do some research, and was left to my own devices for a week. I found a yarn store in Gainesville, Yarnworks, where the ladies were really nice and they had tons of sock yarn. The longer I stayed and talked with them, the more balls of sock yarn I picked up. On the way back to my hotel one night, I stopped at a craft store that was literally next door to the hotel, and they had lion brand magic stripes sock yarn on clearance for $2.50. Seriously. I bought some for me, some for my girlfriend back home, and some to knit up as gifts. Half of my suitcase was sock yarn. When I got back, my LYS was having a sale on sock yarn for the month of August. Dear Zeus, what's a girl to do? All of this stash acquisition ended up being added to the existing stash, and now looks like this:

It's enough for 40 some odd pairs of socks. And I really want to add some Lorna's and Mountain Colors and Fleece Artist and STR and some plain colors to do fair isle (like for arrgyles), but how can I justify acquiring more, when I have all of this???

Thankfully, I love knitting socks, and I have already knit up four pairs out of this, and have a bunch more that will be going out as Christmas gifts. I love having a stash, but I am a bit overwhelmed and am looking forward to knitting this down. I am much faster at knitting socks than I used to be, but whoa. It's gonna take a while. I am hereby going to pledge that I will reduce this by 25% before I buy more. I think this is reasonable since I am totally going to count the four that I have already done. I think I can resist ( unless I come across Fleece Artist...that is soooo an exception). And just because I have a picture handy, these are the socks that I have knit for myself over the past year:


I have knit this many again for others as gifts. Notice the plain vanilla that I normally use. I do want to start experimenting with more patterns, but I always seem to have other complex projects going on, and plain vanilla is a comfort.

So that's a glimpse at my sock addition. Later we can talk about my warshcloth issues. And--as an added bonus, blogging about the sweaters that haunt me helped. I will have a big FO post coming soon. I guess I did exorcise some of those demons!

Sweaters that Haunt Me.....

Maybe I should have saved this for Halloween, but I wanted to exercise some demons. I have been knitting since February of 2005 or so, and have completed 2 sweaters. Skully from the Stitch-n-Bitch book, and Martha from the Rowan Cork Collection pattern book. Skully killed me a bit, mostly because I was new to knitting when I started it and I thought that knitting with wool & mohair was a rational way of spending some time over the summer. I had to rip out each sleeve 2ce and also the bottom of the back once (I now pay way more attention to row count). Overall though, it was a good experience, and I am really proud of that sweater. The second, Martha, was completed for the knitting olympics and so was done in 16 days. I procrastinated a bit with Skully, but by and large they were both done in a pretty quick timeframe.

Then came the Manly Sweater. My DH wanted a sweater, and I like to make him happy. Because he's cute and sweet and all that good stuff. He deserves a sweater. However, I didn't realize what a commitment this was going to be. He is around a 54 inch chest and is 6'4". That's a lot of knitting. Also, he is not all that interested in color. It took me awhile to even talk him into allowing me to do a little stripe just to break the monotony. I started this sweater around early spring of this year. I was doing pretty well on it, and then I just hit a stretch of apathy. It has looked like this for four months:
How ridiculous is that? One more seam. I also have to rip the sleeves back a bit so that I can add a ribbed cuff, but one seam will make this into a functional sweater. What's my deal? Is it the complete overload of grey? Miles and miles of grey, oh my?

But if monotomy is my excuse for Manly sweater procrastination, then what is up with the second sweater that I have hit a stand-still on? This one is Erin from Hot Knits. I just loved the whole idea of this one. It had the sort of rainbowy thing that (as demonstrated in my last post) i have an issue with and because it was fair isle, I could use up some stash. So, this is what it has looked like for the past 4 months:

The sleeve is actually a giant gauge swatch. I have to redo it because the fair isle at the bottom of the sleeve is too tight, which I remedied on the body. I converted the pattern to in the round, which now I''m not sure was a good idea, but it definitely made for easier fair isle and weaving in as you go. I just can't bring myself to pick it back up. Why? I love the yarns that I am using, and there is an end in sight. And look at that fair isle:What a fun pattern! And yet-the thought of picking it back up makes me want to lie in the fetal and eat lots of chocolate. I think I need a WIP support group. A cheerleader mayhap, who will come over and use positive reinforcement techniques with chocolate rewards as I inch closer to the sweater...and slowly pick up the needles....and knit my first few stitches. Oh, and the chocolate has to have zero calories so I don't outgrow the sweater before I finish it. That's reasonable isn't it?

Hopefully going public with this will give me the push to pick up those needles again with these sweaters. I have been knitting other things in the mean time (which is for another post), but I am not allowing myself to start another sweater until I have these done.

How do you make yourself finish WIPs?

Fiber Festival Part 2 .....(way late, sorry!)

Okay, so it has been multiple weeks since I last posted. I started this blog to talk about knitting and share the stuff I do with other knitters (my DH can only nod and smile so much), but then I get kind of overwhelmed when I get behind and then I just haven't been posting anything. SO (breath after very long sentence), I am just going to de-stress and post a little at a time and try to do it more often. *sigh* much more relaxing.

I am going back to the fiber festival, because I took all sorts of photos of the fun stuff I bought, and I simply must share!
So-first. Bad Amy and I started at Mielke's Farms and got little bags of samples of a bunch of different fibers: corn silk, soy silk, real silk, merino, some blends. It was fiber heaven!


I also got a drop spindle there. Bad Amy and I are both saving for a wheel, but I wanted to be able to play with the fibers in the mean time. Next, we went to see the Silver Fox Ladies and scored some Camel, Yak, Linen, and some beautiful dark superfine alpaca fibers. So exciting! We were then off to Sandy's Palette (she is so nice!) where I scored some beautiful hand-spun and hand dyed sock yarn, some mohair and some silk:I found BUFFALO for super cheap (okay--relatively.....) which was very exciting, and then I got some very nice wool roving from Centennial Farm Wools. I also picked up the softest alpaca ever from Circle R ranch and a bunch of black mreino roving from (?) that made my heart go pitter-patter and was sheered from Percy the sheep. Then--my inner child, who(m?) grew up in the 1980's came out and would not be denied:
This is from Blackberry Ridge, and it is a great pattern. I have to admit, though, it was the colors that sold me. Rainbowy! I just had to have it. Speaking of absolutely having to have something:
This is superwash merino sock yarn called Grandma's Blessing from Briar Rose. It is gorgeous and I can't wait to knit this. But--I must wait until I am a little farther with my Christmas knitting. This is most of my fiber fest booty. Oh wait! One more thing. I got some really soft fiber from Sheepy Thyme Farm. It was really soft, and very nice. The thing that made me really need it though, was the label. Take a look:

Yes, that's right - mutant sheep and angora blend. How cool is that? My husband thought that it was great, so added bonus that he felt it was a necessary purchase.

So this was our adventure at the Michigan Fiber Festival. Definitely a worthwhile, fun, event. I can't wait to dig in. Last, but not least, a pic of what we looked like after it was all over: