Demonic Progress

Update on stuff

I've been busy  :) 

First of all, here's a pile o' sweaters and hats I finished today.... things customers have ordered:

They're all cotton, so now they get preshrunk. Then they take a fun ride in a UPS truck :) 

I have been working on my With a Twist sock: 

   

I LOVE knitting these socks!! They are so fun. They kind of remind me of the Wandering Path socks I made earlier this year, and although I got a little sick of those partway through the fourth sock, these Twist socks are very very very fun, and I only have to make ONE pair of them. 

The tencel/merino blend gives these socks a nice sheen and the yarn is quite soft. I got it at the Dye Dreams booth at SPA 2008, believe it or not. It is fabulous yarn. 

I have also been working on my Ballerina Hanne Falkenberg jacket:

I am almost halfway done... I have half a green gusset and one striped section and one half of another green section, and then I will be at the center back! I am absolutely loving working on this project, and I can't wait to wear it this winter. 

And finally, not knitting related, but a warning about THIS: 

This, my friends, is a Cranberry Apple Strudel from Cappy's Bakery in Camden, Maine. Oh. My. God. DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT eat one of these delectable delights..... if you do, you will be unable to keep buying one every day until the end of time, because they are probably the very best thing you have ever eaten in your entire life! Ever! I purely do not know what I am going to do when Cappy's Bakery closes down for the winter. I will probably go into a strudel-withdrawal coma. I wonder if I can knit in a coma....

Yarn Booty

We got a crate full of yarn from Done Roving yesterday:

It's 2 kinds. One is Kidding Ewe, a blend of mohair and wool. The colors are so rich! It has a lovely sheen and a little fuzz, and it feels fantastic! It has 300 yards per skein and knits up at 5 sts per inch; I am not at the store as I post this, but I believe our price is $29.95 a skein. These hand dyed colors are unbelievable. As we unpacked the box, all 3 of us kept saying, this is my favorite color! No, THIS is my favorite color! 

The other yarn is called Wool 4 All. It is in a 216-yard 4 ounce hank and comes in 9 lovely colors! If you love the look of Kidding Ewe but can't take the mohair, this is a good substitute. I think Wool 4 All is selling at Unique One for around $13  a skein. I want to say $13.75. We shall see how accurate my memory is when I get to the store. 

Both yarns are great for felting, and we even have a sample felted drawstring bag model on display. I think these yarns have "potential Christmas project" stamped all over them. 

In other news, I have abandoned my Swirl Shawl project in Andrea !00% silk lace weight yarn. The silk yarn will be lovely in some other project, and the shawl will be lovely in some other yarn, but together, they are not really thrilling me. I think I will just set both the pattern and the yarn aside for awhile and stick to the 4 other projects in my list til one or two of them are done. And one of these days, the exactly right yarn for that shawl will come along, and I will discover the exactly perfect lace scarf pattern for the Andrea yarn. It gives me something to look for :)  

Some Pictures

Here is Joe's vest, done: 

It took 19 days to make.

Here is a picture of the beginning of the With a Twist socks (from the With a Twist socks knitalong, in the Knitters Brewing Company group on Ravelry):

I haven't gotten very far, but it is a start. I would like to get one sock done by Sept. 30. I'm making it out of Dye Dreams "Twinkle Toes" sock yarn, which is 50% superwash merino/50% tencel. It's shiny. :) Y'all know how I likes the shiny. It should make the cables show up quite well. Note the size 1 dpn's from Signature Needle Arts :) I wuv dem, so pointy, ohhhhhh :) :) 

Here is the yarn, and beads, and stitch marker for the Shaken Not Stirred scarf KAL, also from Knitters Brewing Company on Ravelry, which starts on Sept. 1! It is NOT TOO LATE for you to order your kit from Wendy now, if you neeeeeeeeeeeeed a martini scarf like I do :) I picked Tidal Wave sock yarn, and here it is, all wound up, ready to go, complete with stitch marker and beads. I can't wait to start! 

Project Update

I have updated my Beth's Current Projects list on the left sidebar of my blog (scroll down). I now have 5 projects listed there, even though it looks like 7. Two of the projects kinda fill two categories each. I also have one store project that I am not putting in as a project of my own, because I hope everyone at the store will help me knit it. Its a model of a stockinette scarf made in a new yarn called Gioiello, which replaces Ritratto, but I need to make the sample out of Gioiello; it is a simple thing, cast on 50 sts, knit a row purl a row till you run out of yarn. I think the model is in 'Coral Reef', a really pretty pink color. It makes a lovely long scarfy shawl (if you shake it out sideways, holding the long side, it widens into a shawl). I think among all of us who work at the store, if we all work on it a little, it will be done pretty soon. And if you want to just come in and knit on it for a while to help us git-r-done, come on by and I'll set you right up on the back porch!

Vest is done!

I finished Joe's vest today; I will put pictures up as soon as I can. I had him try it on and it fits perfectly. 

My next project is one from the scary bins of time..... it is my Hanne Falkenberg "Ballerina" in colorway #16. I started this project back in mid-January of 2008, worked on it til early March, and then it kept getting pushed back farther and farther on the pile of projects, until it was finally put into one of my bins. 

Recently our Ballerina model that we have had hanging in the store for a few years, got stolen. So, since I have another one half knit, I decided to pull it out and start working on it again, and that way I can wear it at the store and still kind of have it available for people to look at if they want to knit the kit. You can click this link to see my original post and pictures from the past, to see where I am so far :)

So right now, I have my Hanne Falkenberg jacket to finish, and my Bermuda socks. I am also addicted to Knitter's Brewing company on Ravelry (where I participated in the Mystery Sock KAL), and I have signed up for TWO more knitalongs! One is called Twist Baby, a pair of cabled socks, and the knitalong is halfway done already, but it doesn't end til September 30. I have downloaded the pattern and hope to start it this week. I also signed up for a Martini Scarf knitalong, a lace scarf with a martini motif knit into it, with olives as well. This knitalong requires the purchase of the kit from Knitter's Brewing Company but I had to have it, and it is well worth the $24 it cost! I have gotten the kit in Tidal Wave, a nice tropical blue, and the yarn comes with the pattern and beads and a commemorative martini-glass stitch marker! I can't wait to start knitting it on Sept. 1!

Here are pictures of what I hope to knit in the knitalongs:

   

These are the Twist Baby socks, and I am going to dig through some of my old Spa 2008 purchases, I think I have some great blue sock yarn from Dyedreams to make these out of. 

   

This is the martini scarf. I am going to make it in the Knitter's Brewing Company color "Tidal Wave":

The kit came with beautiful olive green beads that are knit into the bottom of the martini glasses. And here is the picture of the adorable stitch marker:

All of Wendy's sock yarn colors are named for drinks, so somebody inquired, is there a Tidal Wave drink? I had never heard of it before. And there certainly is a Tidal Wave drink. Here is the recipe, copied from Wendy's forum post on Ravelry (you can bet I am going shopping later to get the ingredients!):

No need to invent - Tidal Wave is a drink! I’ve never tried one, but it sounds tropical-rific!

1-1/4 oz Melon Liquor 
1 oz Pineapple Juice 
1 oz Orange Juice 
1/2 oz Coconut Syrup 
1-1/2 oz Sour Mix 
1/2 oz Light Rum

Combine ingredients in blender with ice and blend until smooth. Pour into parfait glass. Garnish with a lime wheel and a cherry.

More Knitting Progress

I have been working on Joe's vest:

I am 3” shy of the top of the back, so all I have to do is finish that, knit the V-neck front, do the ribbings around the openings, and I am done. Then he will try it on and tell me it's too short or too long and I will re-knit the length. :) 

I also finished my End of the World socks:

Just good, basic worsted weight socks. I love knitting a pair of socks in three days! I finished them yesterday and started them on the 12th; actually on the 12th I only did the ribbing, really, so I pretty much knit them in 2 days. A sock a day! :D

Now on to a project from the scary bins of time: my Hanne Falkenberg "Ballerina" jacket. I have to figure out where I am in the pattern. I will love wearing it this fall :) 

Project Pictures

I've been working on Joe's vest and have it done to the underarm. Actually I have started the back, and have done about half the underarm shaping decreases:

It's just a plain, stockinette stitch V-neck vest, but that is what he wanted. :) 

I started a pair of socks day before yesterday, using some of the yarn from my SPA 2009 purchases. (I can't believe it is going to take me over a year to work through all of them, and I have been working on them pretty steadily, too.) In the Quiltessentials booth, I got a couple skeins of End of the World Farm yarn. This pair of socks is made from their sock yarn, which is wool with a little nylon in it. It's a worsted weight, so it is a pretty quick knit: 

         

By Monday I should be done this pair of socks and have at least the back of Joe's vest done. And I still am working on my tencel/merino fiber, hand-spindled Bermuda socks as well. :) 

Bermuda Sock progress

On Saturday I started knitting my Bermuda socks. Back in June, I bought some tencel/merino fiber from The Sheep Shed booth, and a new Millpoint spindle from the Millpoint booth, and started spinning. I got about half an ounce of fiber done that week, and then set it down for a long time, but I recently finished the first ounce of the fiber. It is a beautiful color called "Bermuda". 

I am knitting these socks and spindle spinning the yarn as I go, like I did with my Walking on the Sun socks that I started in February. This is how far I could knit with the first ounce of yarn that I spun.  I love the fiber, and spinning it is very fun. I love the color. However, I hate the feel of the yarn knit into socks. These socks feel like they are made from rayon crepe or something icky like that. Hopefully they will feel better after I wash and wear them a few times. I spun the fiber quite firmly, because I wanted the socks to wear well, and it also looks prettier that way, but although the yarn in the skein feels silky and drapey, when it is knit up it feels like I spun it from shredded cellophane. Luckily the colors are beautiful, so I will keep going. I will wear these socks if I can stand how they feel at all, but unless something changes, I will not wear them very often! Maybe when all my other socks are in the laundry….

I should have spun it a bit more loosely, as I did when I spun the same fiber the last couple of times in other colors and made gloves out of it. The gloves feel soft and lovely; I shouldn't have spun the fiber so tightly for my socks, because it makes the knitted fabric feel.... icky. Not scratchy, just not soft. Hard to describe. But it's too late now, I have to spin the rest of the fiber and finish the socks the way I have started them, and count it as a lesson learned :) 

It's funny, the skein was balanced and the stockinette part of the sock seems fine, but the ribbing at the top looks skewed, as if the yarn is overspun. That's kind of odd. Oh well. These will be my odd socks :)

Pictures of Old Finished Projects

I finally got the batteries and the camera and the computer all together in the same place today! So here are some pictures of some older finished projects.

I finished my Mystery Socks on July 3:

They came out great :) I find that they will wear quite well with some shoes I have that are Mary Jane style, and although the band across the top of my foot does go over some of the beads, it doesn't hurt or feel bad at all. In fact, they are quite comfy cosy. And pretty and shiny! I love them. 

I finished the Diamond Patch mittens on July 6, and they came out great. I got a lot of compliments on them while I was still knitting them: 

I also finished my shark shawl, and had enough yarn left over to crochet a simple scarf from the leftovers. Here are both the shawl and the scarf, draped on the bench in front of the store: 

I finished the shawl on July 14. I started the scarf on July 14 and finished it on July 30. So now you know what I did in July!

A Little Spinning

Since I got up so early this morning, I had a little extra time on my hands, so after feeding my husband a breakfast feast, I did some spinning with my Millpoint spindle and the tencel/merino fiber I got at Fiber Frolic in June. Right after the Fiber Frolic, I managed to spin about half an ounce of fiber, and then I set it aside for a loooooooong time. I don't know why. 

I love spinning. I love spinning on a spindle! I don't know why it took me so long to get back into it. Yesterday I started up again with the spinning ten minutes a day regimen, and of course I spun way more than that over the course of the day, ten minutes here, ten minutes there, twenty minutes at night. I finished spinning the whole first ounce of fiber!

I had divided the original four ounces of fiber into quarters, since one ounce is easily spun on the spindle without becoming overweight. This morning I plied the ounce -- two ply, plied on the spindle. I learned that it takes me an hour and a half to two-ply one ounce of fiber on the spindle. I briefly flirted with the idea of plying it on my Louet wheel, but decided I liked the idea of doing the whole thing on the spindle. It thrills me to think I will soon have TWO PAIRS of socks that I spun completely on my spindle. It's very cool! :) 

This color is called "Bermuda" and it does seem quite beachy. I love it very much, and I can't wait to start knitting my socks! The yarn is in hot water right now, setting the twist. It should be dry enough tomorrow or Sunday to start knitting socks with it! So fun :)  It is a fingering weight, sometimes heavy fingering and sometimes light, heh heh, so I will use size 2 needles and 60 stitches for my socks. I'm so excited! Pictures soon, if I can get the batteries and the camera together in one place.