sadly this is the best score I've seen...

9 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

Yep, big dork

The short and long of my travel woes is that I was delayed about 6 hours and didn't end up getting home until 4am. I slept/vegged in front of the tv for most of the day yesterday and I'm still a bit tired, but glad to be home. When I wasn't totally out of it I worked on my monkeys and this morning I grafted the first toe. I'm not much in the mood to dig out my camera and the chord, so I'm relying on the mac-cam:





As you can see the "dark" side of the moon ended up on the bottom of the foot, while the more sunny colours pooled a bit on the top. But I likes it.

And the big dork picture:

The Baltimore Washington Internaughty*

I know. Two posts in one day after a month + long interlude. But I'm stuck at the airport. Which seems to be pretty much the story of my life. Whenever I travel (which is pretty darn often) I have some kind of delay or problem or mixup. Because of storms both around here and around Detroit the flight has been delayed several times. Instead of a 4:30 take off time it is now almost 7:00 and they claim we're going to get out of here at 8:15, but I have my doubts. So I started, and then finished, the Complete Persepolis. I highly recommend it. And now the only entertainment I have is my newest sock. It's Cookie A.'s monkey (you all know where to find it... I'm too tired to link everything!) and my friend Terry's yarn (as explained 2 posts previous).

*I got a pre-recorded message the other day for my van service to the airport and for whatever reason - a glitch, a skip in the recording, a disgruntled voice-worker - my destination was called the Baltimore Washington Internaughty airport, as opposed to "International".

P.S. Since starting to write this our flight has been delayed another 1/2 hour and the flight that was scheduled to leave after ours is now going to leave early. Why they wouldn't switch the planes I don't know... just to stick it to me one more time I guess.

WWKIP

This is what my WWKIP day looked like:

I went down to Lovelyarns during HonFest where Sue hosted a tackiest knitter contest. In case you were wondering, the lovely lady on the far right took home the prize, and the tacky, tacky crown.

Let's see some closeups:





Pictures in this case really are worth a 1000 words...

This is the yarn...

This is the yarn that Terry dyed.
This is the yarn that Terry dyed, that I bought.
This is the yarn that Terry dyed, that I bought at my favorite yarn shop.
This is the yarn that Terry dyed, that I bought at my favorite yarn shop, to make into monkey socks.
This yarn makes me happy. :D

Ok, so I can't believe it's been over a month since I've posted anything. Thanks to everyone who left comments on the sweater dilemma. In the end I ripped it back, added several extra inches (I believe it was somewhere in the region of 5) and then stuck the pocket back on. It now has an almost complete sleeve and is in need of another. But it is just TOO HOT to even think about having a whole sweater made out of malabrigo sitting in my lap.

So I put that aside and have been working on the 2nd entrelac sock. I'm sorry, but entrelac gets darn boring after a knee-length sock and a half! So I've been chugging along on those, but it's been really, really slow going. And thus the acquisition of new yarn... I've been checking this yarn out (which is dyed by a friend of mine, Terry who runs crashintoewe on etsy and dyes for our lys. It's her merino sock, colourway "Dark Side of the Moon". It's not really "me" to have all these colours jumbled together at once (I like colour but just not ALL COLOUR, ALL THE TIME, like this kind of screams at me..) but I have loved this yarn since she brought it in a couple of weeks ago. So, on a whim yesterday, I grabbed and cast on. Monkey seems to be the sock pattern I always go back to, so there you have it.

I think for sheer displeasure with the weather, socks are what you're going to see around here for the next little while... and yes, I promise I won't wait another month and a half to post again!

wicked dilemma

As you can probably tell, my wicked dilemma is that my wicked is, well, wicked short. What do I do? Do I rip out the bind off (did I mention that I did a sewn bind off... wicked hard to rip out...) and add more seed stitch? Do I rip back and add more stockinette before the seed stitch? If I do that, then do I have to rip out the pocket and put it back on holders? Do I just try and block the crap out of it?? I probably need a good 3 or 4 inches to have it fall where I would like it to... check out how much longer my t-shirt is. Granted, it's a long t-shirt, but I'm past the age, and waist size, where belly-shirts are cute anymore. (And although I am working on the waist size part... the age I can't do much about.)

I probably already know the answer (and it's the worst out of all of them) but please advise!!

wicked start

wicked start, originally uploaded by gradschoolknitter.

I cast on for Wicked on Sunday and already have the sleeves on holders as of last night! I tried it on this morning (as seen above) and, hooray!, it fits! Not that you can really tell from that picture, but trust me, it does. I was a bit worried 'cause my gauge was slightly off, a but I think it's going to be ok.

Maryland Sheep and Wool got me back my knitting mojo

Sadly I forgot my camera on Saturday, but being around so much fiber really got me my knitting mojo back! I wasn't feeling it the last couple of weeks, but the last couple of weeks have also been extremely stressful, especially in the academic arena. Friday was my last day of teaching/class (and I don't even have to worry about final exam time 'cause our students took their last test during class time!) so spending Saturday at MSW was a great way to celebrate my first day of freedom, or, as some people like to call it, summer.

I might have forgotten my camera, but I did not forget my love of all things fiber. The damage:


Two skeins of "Sylvan Green" Domy Heather by the Davidson Corporation 475yds/100gms (and really, ridiculously cheap!)


And a skein of purple (I accidently threw out the tag when winding this so I don't remember the exactly colour name) of the same. I'm going to make a stripy cardigan out of these, a la newest knitty surprise cardi. I think this is very close to the weight of the yarn she used, so I'm going to play with needles and gauges and see what I like!


I also got a BUNCH of koigu KPM. This skein is for me, to use in some kind of colourwork with a skein of purple I've had for over a year. I'm thinking maybe Eunny's Anemoi Mittens. The other KPM I got was 3 skeins of a darker teal for my roomie. He's been a bit down lately and I thought it would be nice to get him a present. I know he's been wanting teal socks, so now he can make them for himself! (I got 3 'cause KPM is a little short on yardage and, well, he's a boy, so he probably needs longer socks than I do! I love that my feet are small and usually don't require that I get any extra yarn...)


And finally, what better than malabrigo to re-start my knitting mojo??

This is the beginning of wicked in malabrigo worsted "Verde Adriana". I didn't buy this at sheep and wool... I have enough malabrigo in my stash for 4 sweaters (including this one). Seriously, I think I have a problem... but it's a better addiction than most!

Still here...

I'm still here... April wasn't exactly a productive month for me, knitting-wise. I did manage to write a good chunk of a paper that I still have left over from last semester, and I was knitting, but I can't show you 'cause it was a test-knit for a book that should be coming out sometime next year and we (the test-knitters) were sworn to secrecy.

So, I'm done with that now, and I still have papers to write, but there will be new knitting content soon, I promise. I decided as a transitional project, I would make a new mother bear. Those go super quick, so I should have at least that to show off by the end of the weekend. Oh, and I'm going to MDSW (Sheep and Wool) on Saturday, so I'll try to remember to take a camera!

Karma

So I opened up my purse yesterday to find this:



Which sucks since I really need this set of needles - both for the test-knit I'm doing right now and, eventually, for the 2nd entrelac sock. Fortunately my roommate had an extra set of US size 1 dpns that he wasn't using.

But then I came home to these:


Completely and totally awesome hot pink knitting earrings from Lick My Sticks.

And I tried to get a picture of them on:


Go over to her shop or her blog. She's funny, a great knitter and makes some awesome earrings!

I finished up one entrelac sock last night watching Best in Show with my roommate, whom, by the by, had never see it before. So the movie was fun, but finishing the cuff on the sock, not so much. In order to put in the tassels (yes, these socks have tassels) there are eyelet rows and a hem and they're bound off in a way that attaches the last row to th inside... it's a wee bit complicated and quite a large pain in the arse. In fact the last couple rows of ribbing and the bind-off lasted the entire movie. BUT, well worth it:




And the side view:

PS3: earth yarns

Or: Malabrigo, how do I love thee? Let me count the stashed yarns...

I was somewhat surprised by the lack of green yarns in my stash this morning*. I really thought I had more! Green is one of my fav colours and over the years I have come to the realization that it really does look good on me. (In my high school years I wore blue all. the. time. I wasn't super popular - although I don't think I was a super geek either - so blue usually made it easy to blend in. I'm a much more colourful dresser now!) I have green eyes, and usually wearing green makes them pop. Anywho, enough digression, and on to the stash I plan on using for PS3: Earth.

So, the lack o' green yarns means I actually only have 2 pictures to show you. However, these 2 pictures represent quite large potential projects...


4 skeins of malabrigo worsted weight in Verde Adriana. This will (eventually) become Wicked. Or, at least, that's the plan.



5 skeins of malabrigo worsted weight in Oliva. Planning to be Drops' A-line jacket. The lighting (for which I am very grateful, not having seen the sun for at least a week...) made this look much browner than it is, but I think it's beautiful in all lights.

*Note: there are tons of green yarns in my stash, but all the rest are just partial skeins, left over from other projects. So, they don't count in this case. Or that's what I'll tell myself anyway.

up close and personal

I realize that yesterday's picture of the harlot holding my sock is not really a very good project picture... but it was just so cool that the harlot actually held my sock! Anywho... I'll get over my star-struck-ness sooner or later - although I actually also met the guys from Everclear on Friday, so it's been a big week for me and "rock stars". (Yeah, the harlot may not sing, but the woman announcing her at Borders did call her the "Beatles of Knitting"...)

Anywho, since it is still grey and icky and foggy out, here is a close up of my sock, as held by the harlot:



Pattern: Entrelac Socks by Eunny Jang, Interweave Knits Spring 2007
Yarn: Crystal Palace Panda Silk in 3005 and 3006 (3 balls and 2 balls respectively)
Needles: US1 / 2.25mm

whadda ya mean it's april already??

OK, so I've been slacking a bit in the blog department... I've been really tired since getting back from Korea - the kind of tired where I don't want to do anything all day but then I can't get to sleep at night. It's a vicious cycle. Also, I haven't done anything so interesting to even consider blogging it. I got very little knitting done in Korea (even on those 12-13 hour plane rides I mostly just tried to sleep). Since getting home I've finished the mate to this sock but they're pretty much identical... The striping patterns on both the leg and foot of the sock look almost exactly the same. I've also started another sock and gotten a package from Cookie A for whom I'm going to be doing some test knitting (secretive and "unbloggable" test knitting, of course).

But I actually, finally have something "bloggable"! I met the yarn harlot last night! A couple of knitterly-friends and I went to see her at the Borders in Annapolis. By the time we finally met her she was probably pretty tired (over 2 hours after she finished speaking) and her publicist had already left so I'm pretty sure that my picture won't be showing up on the blog (especially since mine is the only camera with proof positive of this meeting...) but it was lots of fun just the same.
Ok, on to the pictures:


Obligatory picture of harlot taking picture of us...



Harlot quizzing me on both my rocket-science abilities and my true Canadian-ness... more on that later.


Trading socks with the harlot!


And, finally, the obligatory hold-my-sock-while-you-hold-mine picture.


Thanks to my friend Terry (no blog, but she does have an etsy shop full of beautiful hand dyed sock yarns - including ones with real silver spun into them!) for all the pictures.

OK, so the rocket-science/canadian quiz: My latest sock is the entrelac sock by Eunny Jang from Interweave Spring 2007, as modeled above by the lovely yarn harlot. When she saw that she asked if afterwards I would be on my way to nasa to work on rocket science and sharing my brain with the world. I sheepishly told her that I do Spanish Literature and would probably in the end help, well, no one.
Then Terry yelled "she's CANADIAN" and I turned a little pink and said "Thanks, Terry" kind of flatly. The harlot looked at me and said "How long did you live in Canada?" And I said, well, technically I still "live" there, but I'm here for school. So she said "Do you think you can pass the Canadian test?" And I said "well, I would definitely hope so!" And she looked at me (somewhat suspiciously I think!) and said "Well, Americans can't get it, ever." And I said "ok...." (while thinking in my head "Oh. My. God. If I don't get this I'm going to look like the biggest dork, in front of the Yarn Harlot.) So she looked at me again and said "It's very easy, you just have to finish this sentence: "When you eat your smarties..."

Yes, I got the answer right, but no, I'm not going to tell you what it is. Otherwise we'd have to make you all Canadians... and you wouldn't get the joke anyway! She thought it would be a great question at the border to check everyone's "true" Canadian status... although you probably would have had to live through the 80's and 90's watching Canadian television to actually understand.

back and burnt out

Well, we're back from Korea (to Canada that is... I still have one more plane ride tomorrow to head back to school in the States) and I'm exhausted. The 13 hour time difference was very hard to adjust to and we were still waking up at 4:30/5:00 most mornings. Now I'm back home, it's 11am and I haven't finished my still-warm morning coffee.

Above is the usual BF-rubbing-Buddha's-belly picture. This was taken at a temple we stayed over-night at during the trip. When I'm a little less tired and I have time to go through and look at all of the pictures (and there are hundreds if you also count the ones on Dr. BF's camera) I will post more. Very little knitting was accomplished past the initial airport wait / plane ride. By the end of the trip I was so tired that I didn't even knit on the way home!

bus blogging

So this is completely ridiculous and over-the-top but I'm currently on a bus. A bus from the Detroit Airport to East Lansing where I'm going to meet up with my dad and then drive back to Canada. A bus with free wi-fi (ok, not really free, the fare was NOT cheap and I think the free bottled water and wi-fi are built into the price... I plan on taking full advantage of both). Who blogs in the middle of the highway? Musicians? Actors? Me, apparently.

Anyway, this is the first leg of my "spring break" trip. I'm going home for a few days, will spend some time with the fam and a couple of quiet days before heading off to Korea with Dr. BF. That's right, Korea. I can barely believe it myself. Dr. BF was asked to compete in a martial arts tournament (Hapkeido) and invited me along. We leave Thursday.

Of course, this lead to a packing crisis extrordanaire last night. (Hey, it's a miracle I didn't leave the packing until this morning at 5am when I got up.) 'Cause Canada is generally cold at this time of year (although apparently around my parent's the snow has been gradually melting and it's been warming up to a balmy 5C/40F) and in Korea it's supposed to be anywhere between 55-70F the week we're there. So I had no idea what to take. Also, the knitting. I'll be gone for 2 full weeks. How much knitting do you take for 2 weeks?!?

I finished one Jaywalker the other day:

and started the second, so I took that with me.

I also had yarn to make the entrelac socks by Eunny Jang from Interweave Knits Spring 07... so I took enough to make one sock. The directions are 3 full pages long (and there is only a very short list of instructions at the end for making the left different from the right and how to make/attach tassels. Yes, I'm going to make socks with tassels.) so I figure one of them will take at least a couple of weeks. Plus I'm going to be in KOREA! How much knitting time am I *really* going to have?? (Aside from the many, many hours we're going to spend in airports and planes, of course.)

ATC: Fire Swap

Ok, I'm a bad swap partner. I've had the materials for ages but no artist's glue. I finally sent a call out on ravelry and another local knitter was nice enough to pick me up some podge stuff on a trip to a Utrecht's. I picked it up yesterday and was able to finally put together my cards last night. My apologies to my partners... these WILL be in the mail today. I promise.

The pictures aren't great 'cause it's rainy, grey and foggy here today, and these represent my first EVER attempt at an artistic project outside of knitting... and did I mention that my mom is an artist who frequently uses collage in her painting? Don't take my art as any indication though... my mom is an amazing artist. If I can find some of her pictures later (I think I have a couple saved as jpgs in my gmail) I will post them so you can see that I cannot do her justice as an artist's child.

Enough digression:


"Windy Day"


"Changing Seasons"

FO: Mother Bears

I finally got a picture of "Petunia", the double knit bear. I finished her in a day, but she got hung up at the store before I could get a picture.



And, since I was taking pictures anyway, here is one of her big brother (ignore the face... someone else embroidered it for me and disregarded his given name) "Bernard":



And I'm currently working on another one 'cause they're so quick and gratifying. Plus, the wall is getting very full and she's going to have to ship them off soon, so maybe I'll save this one for the next batch.

double knit mother bear

double knit legs, originally uploaded by gradschoolknitter.

My fav LYS is participating in the mother bear charity which sends knitted teddy bears to kids in Africa affected by HIV/AIDS. I've made a couple so far, but I hate seaming of all kinds, so the pattern (available from knitty gritty for free or by $5 donation from the mother bear organization) kind of annoys me. But I also understand that they don't want all kinds of differently shaped / constructed bears because it means some bears might be seen as different / better than others.

So, instead I decided to slightly modify the pattern to be knit in the round. AKA zero seams. And since some of the other local knitters share my distaste for seams, I promised to write up my modifications. You may need to check the original if you aren't familiar with it already to understand my instructions.

Materials - various machine washable yarns, 2 circs and 5 dpns in appropriate size for yarn (you could do this just using the dpns, but I prefer 2 circs for the parts in the round)

To start I double knit the legs (as see above):

Leg 1: CO 20 stitches onto 1 circ. (double the normal amount) in bear's foot colour.
Row 1: * K1, Sl1 * to end of row
Repeat this row for DOUBLE the amount of rows you would normally work for foot (20 instead of 10)

Switch to pants colour (in my case I stripped the pants, so I was switching every 8 rows) and work DOUBLE the rows, continuing to K1, Sl 1 every row

When you reach where the legs would be joined take 2 dpns and holding them together, slip 1st stitch to back needle, 2nd stitch to front needle. Continue alternating stitches until all stitches are evenly divided onto the dpns. (My other tutorial for double knitting can be found here complete with a picture if you need visual aid.) Now you should be able to flip the leg "right side out".

Repeat for leg 2.

To join legs use circ 1 to knit across one side of one leg, then one side of the other. Now use circ 2 to knit across the remaining side. Continue working in the round using the 2 circular needles until it is time to switch to the sweater colour.
Switch to sweater colour, knit 13 rounds. For the next 7 rows knit back and forth across front of sweater, cut yarn and join to back, repeating back and forth for 7 rows on back of sweater. This will leave an opening for the arms.

Switch to bear's face colour and join to work in the round again. Work 20 rounds for bear's face and cut yarn, leaving enough yarn to later graft/kitchener head together (approximately 4 times the circumference). DO NOT GRAFT YET!

Use dpns to pick up stitches around one arm hole and knit arms in the round. Graft ends of hand together. Repeat for other arm.

Flip bear inside out completely. Sew in any loose ends, making sure to sew up the hole where the legs join. Flip bear back to right side out. Stuff and graft top of head together. Finish up bear (adding face, etc) as normal.

Taa daa!

Monkey + Cute New Shoes = Bliss

HPIM1118, originally uploaded by gradschoolknitter.

I finished up the second Monkey sock last night while watching La Vie en Rose, the Edith Piaf film. It too, has a miss-matched toe:



but I love them just the same.

Pattern: Monkey by Cookie A. (Who I will soon be test knitting for! W00t!)
Yarn: Panda Cotton Print by Crystal Palace (note: yardage is very short on this one... most of the other Panda sock yarns (Silk, Wool, etc) have 200+ yards... this has 170. If you have a foot at all bigger than 6.5/7 US womens, you will definitely want a third skein or modify the leg to be shorter...)
Needles: US 2 DPNS
Mods: None!