Monday, May 12, 2008

Yeah, I'm seeing a theme to my knitting lately.

red period?

Shades of pink and red are dominating. Happens with other stuff too.

Spinning

Once I finished the periwinkley stuff Paige got me started with, I pulled red coopworth (I think) out of the stash and started on it. That red bobbin is half of it. I did a second bobbin of singles and then plied them. (This is what kept me from leaving till about two hours after my original intentional departure time this morning - spinning makes time go away in a crazy way. I feel the treadling once I stand up.)

That thing you haven't seen before in the first pic? That's the Quinn cabled bag. I got the top band finished a few weeks ago and tried to graft it about half a dozen times till I finally got over it and did a three-needle bindoff. Bags are allowed seams. I'm almost over it. It's super pretty and I think I'll like it once it's done. It's definitely the beta brainwave pattern I've been looking for.

Quinn

Yay. Yum.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Casting off

Ergh. Last night I got through the body of the red sweater. There was some "Long enough? No - yes - no!" drama, but eventually I got it decided and cast off however many bajillion stitches exist at the lower hem of a wrap sweater. And then I picked up near two hundred stitches for the neck band, where I'm two and a half of four rows in, and then those get bound off too. At a medium tension - as opposed to the loose one from the hem. Ergh.

I'm definitely of the opinion that casting on is better than casting off. This may be part of my top-down sock preference. I'm probably developing a bottom-up sweater preference as well.

In knitting milestones, I broke my first dpn tonight. Stepped on my sock-in-progress and snapped a 2.5mm Brittany needle. Currently thinking I'll sand the ends of the pieces and make cable needles - not that I use cable needles much lately, but it might be worthwhile nevertheless. Considering I've been knitting socks on wooden dpns for a year now, it's about time I did something dumb like that.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

progress pics

Right. Those. Red Sweater:
P4250074

Pink Shawl - need to update the progress bars too. Doh.
P4250072

Whoo hoo!

Tuesday started (I mean the fun part started, nobody wants to know how my 8am class and later campus errands went, right?) with Mandie calling and saying "I feel like I just bought a time machine." (The reference was to Monday's Big Bang Theory, and if you ever get to the point that you realize your nerdiness is reaching new levels and maybe it's gone too far, you know the feeling...)

Fast forward a couple hours, we both figured out both what we're wearing and what we're knitting (because dude, it's early afternoon and we're in this thing till late evening, we can't risk running out!), and we headed north - because a Harlot kind of day wouldn't be complete without a stop at a yarn shop. Stitches & Scones was full of people and totally psyched. They were complimentary of my Tuscany shawl, which was kind of cool. Spent lots of time, petted lots of yarn (S&S is very good about having lots of Dream in Color and feeding my addiction in that direction), and left at a time that felt dangerously late. Seriously. It was four. She was speaking at 7. Of course, the other magic thing about S&S is that it feels like a really long way from anywhere when you're driving there, but not that far on the way back. Also the Barnes and Noble in question is basically in Westfield, but anyway.

We get there and get settled, between Tammany and Kristen, with spicyfleece Holly and a group on the other side. And wow, was that place a vortex of knitterly energy. People were talking, knitting, laughing at the staff who betrayed some iota of how freaked out they had to have been, all that. Mandie and I spent some time talking about Traveling Salesman problems, as it relates to the Harlot's tour. Good times. Signing tickets were gotten, books were prepurchased (I got three, for me, my mother-in-law, and for Paige - who had the rotten luck of having a math final the very hour that the Harlot was speaking.), and after we found food, it was about time.

She came, we did the wave. She spoke, we laughed. There were books signed and pictures taken, and man, but it was awesome.

dude

She's an amazing person, no doubt, and I thank her for her time and energy. I came home entirely drained from just attending, I can't imagine what it's like to be at the center of that vortex.

She's posted her account of Indianapolis, and it's remarkable. I still sometimes feel like I just moved here, even though it's been twenty months now. I read her post and I realized that I recognize those people. Never mind that most of them I met that day, either at Stitches and Scones or in line, but we're all connected now. It's really cool. I'm not sure where I'd be without this yarn-obsessed community, but I am thankful for it.

(And those dinosaurs are right near where I work, isn't that cool?!?)