the sun is peaking out...

Actually, it's not. Not here in Missoula. It's another gray, gray day, the hills barely covered with a dusting of snow. On top of that, I'm miserably sniffly with this cold, going on Day 5. Fortunately, I made it through my interview this morning with minimal sniffling and coughing. I applied at a temp agency in hopes of earning some extra cash before my postdoc starts. (I'm just assuming I get one. Because I will/must.)

But, my own sunshine project is coming along well:

I'm really enjoying the cabling...and even the new increases I've learned. This is a very well-written pattern and definitely worth paying for.

I saw another pattern on Ravelry I just fell in love with. I think I may change my mind about making a simple lace shawl with the Universal Star Light, and make this instead - shrug meets shawl. Innovative, practical, and lovely: Fits my criteria!

For now, though, I'm focusing on my Creature Comforts Cardi. I've considered starting the Craftsman Afghan, but I think this project is giving me plenty of variety for now....

Though I am so impatient to find and start a real colorwork project; if I had the right yarn on hand, I would definitely be working on that now too! But the budget is not allowing for more yarn right now...even a couple of teeny skeins for the William, It Was Really Nothing mittens. How perfect is that pattern for me? Not only is it a reference to the Smiths (yay!), but to the blue faience hippo at the Met! The hippo was my "symbol" during a sandplay course; I ended up writing a paper on hippos and took a trip to the Met especially to see this one, since a tiny reproduction of it was what I had chosen during the course as my first sandplay object....I now have my own repro - a magnetized version that comes apart in two halves that you can put on the fridge. And it only requires two teeny little skeins from Knit Picks. These mittens are in my near future. I can feel it. What a first colorwork project! (Okay, I do have a gift card I could use, but I with all my current stashed projects, I feel a little guilty even using that. When I do, this, this, and this will certainly be in my cart!)

Off to knit, drink tea, nurse the cold, and get into some good reading on my nook. Not a bad way to spend a gray, gray day.

Looking for warmth and sun in the winter

For warmth, I have this:

And for a little sunshine:

And I've been doing a fair bit of cooking and baking. There's a Crock Pot of a delicious cabbage soup with tons of veggies - celery, carrots, onion, tomato and pepper.  Mmmm.  And cookies (long gone at this point unfortunately). These were maple-cinnamon sugar cookies, and I think snickerdoodles are in the near future.

In other news:
- I finished the Big WIP. 162 pages and who knows how many pounds of brain matter and how much --how do you measure this? -- sanity. Also the new APA format has me putting two spaces between sentences, so I'm doing that everywhere now, and it's making me a bit crazy. There goes more of my sanity. (I originally typed "I think I finished..." which is basically how unsure I am that it is good enough and doctoral-level and all that. Ugh. Will not be done really until I have degree in hand.)

- And six postdoc apps have gone out and I have one interview.

Knitting 2010 Reviewed

Lessons learned:
Importance of gauge
Cabling
Lace & yarn overs (twice!)
Crochet Edging
It's okay to adjust patterns so they better fit you and your skills (or dislike of seaming)!

Fawn Earflap Hat - gifted

Valentine Mitts - Much loved by me! First cabling project

Hot water bottle cozy - one of my favorite projects when we were living in our cold apartment in NJ. 

Cafe au Lait Mitts - gift to a grateful coworker; helped me learn how to do proper yarn overs (sort of....)

Wandering Trails Cowl - loved this pattern; haven't worn the cowl as much as I though I would though

 The Christine Bag - such a gratifying project, though it made me remember that I hate to sew!

 Lemon Drop Baby Blanket - for boyfriend's niece - it took me forever but I'm very happy with it and hope baby and her parents are too!

 Prayer shawl - for my dear supervisor. I loved the stitch pattern and meaning of the project, and I think it came out beautifully. 

 The never-ending hat for boyfriend - made it too small; frogged; started over and was bored, bored, bored by the many rows of K3, P3 ribbing. It did come out well though, in the end. 

 Winter Leaf Tam - made for myself with the beautiful yarn I was sent as a bonus when I ordered the cashmere. It matches my winter parka perfectly and I wear it all the time here in Montana. Warm, lovely drape and it doesn't flatten my hair too much. 

Mediterranean Tulle Wrap - Made with the yummiest mohair that was a birthday gift to me from sister. Haven't worn it yet, but I have two or three dresses it will be perfect for, and the weddings to wear it to this year!

Half-Felted Bag- Put on the needles as a respite from all the errors I was making in my first sweater project. Went very quickly and I'm pretty happy with it. However, it required almost five hours of sewing. Maybe it should've taken less time to sew on the pockets, but it didn't....I think it came out well though!

That was my year in knitting! I didn't include the frogged cardigan (still angry with it), or the mittenscarf, since it's not finished and will be a 2011 FO (soon).

This year I'd like to learn colorwork and sock knitting. I think that's reasonable. And successfully complete that sweater. Make some progress on the queued projects I recently bought stash for (afghan, another sweater, sleeveless top). Maybe some charity knitting with the Homespun I have. I'm less ambitious maybe than last year, especially since I realize I am a slow knitter! And there's still that dissertation thing, for the next two weeks or so.

Half-Felted Bag & Mittenscarf

The bag and mittenscarf were great projects over our holiday travels. I had no problems taking my knitting along with me on the plane, though packed it in our checked luggage in St. Louis, because I've heard security there is cranky, the lines are long and I just didn't want to take any chances there. Our flights and waiting were relatively short, too.

All the hardware arrived in CT in time, and I felted the bag successfully - my first felting project! I'm pretty happy with it, but I don't think it's a project I would make again. It took me four hours just to sew on the pockets. All hand sewing and I really couldn't see how I could machine sew them...maybe someone more skilled could. I may yet adjust the placement of the upper Chicago screws as my D-ring keeps flipping around, and I'd like to add another closure in the center of the bag since it flops a bit with closures only on the two sides. (But that's more sewing, so....)

The mittenscarf was great plane knitting - a simple K1, P1 rib for a long time. I started the mittens once we returned; finished the first mitten last night and am about halfway through the second mitten. I picked up my provisional stitches funny, apparently, since my ribbing moved there, but it looks fine. I'm running very low on yarn though and might have to order a third skein to make it to the end of the mitten....I'm not terribly upset about this because it would be an excuse to maybe order more yarn or a beginner's spinning kit....oh well. 

I'm looking forward to wearing it as today's flurries have turned into a real day-long snow shower! 

And here's one of my favorite Christmas gifts this year: qiviut! Two balls of 100% qiviut lace weight....mmmm.  It is so soft and lovely. I'm just trying to figure out what to make with it....two smaller projects....or figure out how to make a bigger scarf/shawl trimmed in the other color....not sure yet. I am looking forward to starting something though!

Stash flash!

New stash!!! The results of my Knit Picks Cyber Monday Sale purchase, a major online Stash Enhancement eXpedition. I almost didn't, but I couldn't resist. 

First, I was just going to get the Suri Dream Alpaca for the Craftsman Afghan I had planned a while ago. The pink/red/orange scheme doesn't go with our home so much, and some of the colors aren't produced anymore. So I went with blues and greens: Aegean, Atlantic, Fern Heather, Blueberry Heather, Natural and Black.


I kept looking at how much I had to spend before getting free shipping, and thinking about how much I was saving (because that totally makes up for sort of unnecessarily buying more yarn, but....). How could I resist buying discounted yarn for a few more projects? It's not like I was randomly buying yarn....it had a purpose!

So I got Wool of the Andes in Pumpkin for the Creature Comforts Cardi, since I've been in love with it since it came out.

And then I was really close, so I figured I may as well go for the $50 purchase to get free shipping. I added two skeins of Wool of the Andes Bulky in Porcini to make the Mittenscarf - perfect for the cold Montana winter, right? And so cute. Provided the airline lets me take needles aboard (it is technically allowed, but left up to the individual agent's discretion), it will be my holiday travel knitting.

My plan is to modify the pattern slightly, as I would like convertible mittens, the kind where the top flap buttons back so your fingers are free to drive or use an iPhone or so forth.

Finally, five skeins of Comfy Worsted in Pomegranate to make the drew sleeveless top. I've never really done any summer knitting aside from the failed bikini, so I thought this might be a good way to start. I love the gorgeous red color - it will go with I think two or three of my summer skirts, plus my dress skirts and suit, and of course any jeans or shorts really. I just love the ruffle details. I'm noticing in my queue that it is the small details like that that usually get me...ruffles, hardware, subtle shaping, etc.

The half-felted bag is coming along nicely. I've finished the front and back of the bag and sewn it together. I also completed the two loops. I didn't make it in time to felt them here as our laundry day was yesterday and I was seaming the bag until after 10! So I'll take it with me to CT and felt it there. The chain arrived yesterday, too, and it is perfect - sturdy and heavy. I'm hoping the rest of the hardware arrives in CT by the time I do! I know the Chicago screws have shipped, so it's just the lacing then.

I haven't done anything dissertation-related today, so I'm going to do that to assuage my guilt. I did make an awesome pickle soup for lunch and started looking at slow cooker recipes thanks to an early Christmas present. (Thanks Mom!)

Of course I really want to be knitting. I keep telling myself that once I finish writing these last two chapters and start submitting post-doc apps, I can focus solely on knitting and yoga for a good six months. But the less disciplined side of myself (not so much a half, but about 80%) doesn't want to wait. Besides, it's perfect knitting weather - grey, cold and snowy/sleety/rainy.

We're in a fight

I started my first sweater! I was so excited and had even finished all UFOs before casting on, so that I would only focus on this sweater. I also chose something in a super bulky yarn that I figured would knit up quickly and keep my attention during a somewhat bigger project.

I cast on. I knit a few rows. Got hung up yfwd (twice)....does it mean to loop the yarn over the needle twice and then knit my stitch? Does it mean to yarn over, knit, yarn over again, knit? Figured that out with some help from sister and the Internet. (Yarn over twice then knit.) But at this point I had ripped out the few rows I had done because I initially did the yfwd (twice) wrong. So I started over, confident that I now knew what to do. Proceeded to do so and went for about 20 rows successfully. Or so I thought. I counted my stitches on the first decrease row, and had 67, instead of something like 82.

I had already cast on about four times for this particular project. I couldn't figure out where I could've gone wrong to get 67 stitches so I wasn't sure where to backtrack to. The only thing I could think to do was rip it out and start over. At this point, I'm thinking the yarn has some kind of vendetta against me and is dropping stitches when I'm not looking. So until it learns how to behave itself, it can stay in little balls in my yarn storage. We're totally in a fight, and I know I'm not wrong, so. It could be a while.

I'll come back to it when I cool off. But seriously. We are so in a fight. Not cool, yarn. Not cool.

I decided to start something else in the meantime: the half-felted bag from Boutique Knits. I have some Lion Brand Wool (perfect for felting) in pearl gray, and it's knitting up very nicely (unlike some yarns) and quickly. I'm just about done with the back of the bag; the front is the same, and then it's just two bag loops and two pockets. The loops, back and front get felted, and then the pockets are sewn on, unfelted.

The knitting is relatively easy and I've been keeping a close eye on stitch counts in case this yarn gets any ideas. The hardest part has been finding the notions! The bag uses Chicago screws, leather lacing, cord lock stops, D rings and a purse chain. I thought I might actually have some luck locally with leather lacing and Chicago screws (commonly used in leatherwork) since hunting is so big here. No luck. Joann's had D rings and cord lock stops, as well as magnetic bag closures.

In case someone making this bag sees this and needs the resources, here's where I got the other stuff:

Chicago screws: via an Amazon seller. The Weaver Leather Chicago Screw Pack comes with 3 that are 3/4", so I had to order two. Apparently the nickel ones have a floral pattern on them, but I think it will either not be noticeable, or look good as it's a purse and it'll add a little girly detail.

Leather lacing: This was really hard to find! I looked at the websites for a bunch of leather goods/work stores. Nothing in gray. Maybe if you're doing black or white or brown, it would be easier. But for gray, I ended up buying leather shoelaces. They come in the right length, and I'm pretty sure it will work. They're the 72" square leather laces. If they don't work, I'll probably substitute black. (Joann's did have some leather lacing, but in very limited colors.)

Handbag chain: Somehow I almost had to order this from vendors in the UK or NZ! Before I ordered from overseas, I finally thought to check Etsy and had luck there. I ended up ordering a 24" nickel bevel chain that I think will be perfect; it also has swivel snaps so I won't have to do any metal twisting to get it on!

The chain should be here early next week I didn't trust the shipping time on the other items, so I had them sent to my mom's house, so that I can finish constructing the purse there. My plan is to finish all the knitting on it and possibly the felting before I leave so that once I get there, I can just put the hardware on, and voila! A new purse! Happy Christmas to me! Anyway, I'm enjoying knitting this in comparison to other recent projects. I'm also enjoying how ginormous it currently looks unfelted. Like some massive mutant bag....it grows so quickly too, on size 11s.

I also just finished my mohair shawl, complete with ribbons and buttons. I'm not really a bow girl, so I just looped the yarn at the ends and fastened it with the button. It has some unique design features....like where the rows shift from where I lost track of the pattern...and the odd dip in the middle. Also, I'm now completely unsure if I knit it right because my pdf says to repeat the two rows in the pattern, and the website says only to repeat row 2. But it's a nice lacy mohair shawl nevertheless, and the ribbon and button idea is so cute! It really adds something. And Isis really enjoyed the part where I was weaving the ribbon through. She thought it was a game just for her. Disappearing ribbon! Oh boy!!! I told her, "Not everything is kitty playland." But she disagrees. Fortunately, she did not do anything terrible to the shawl, just chewed the ribbon ends a little. Now I just need an occasion to wear one of my dresses again....maybe a certain wedding in the spring?

Well, back to the knitting I go. Oh! And the dissertation is coming along well. I just need to write my last two chapters. Oh, and make some tedious changes due to the new APA style manual. Adding a number at the end of all my citations (super tedious), two spaces instead of one after a period (really? I can automate this, but really???) and some changes to parenthetical citations. Sigh. I wish my school did what most others did: If your proposal was written and approved in Style 5, keep it that way. Otherwise, Style 6. But apparently the dissertation process could always be more difficult/frustrating/tedious.

Home! Yes I am home....

No blogging for a long time, and let me tell you why.....

Firstly, moving pretty much took over my life for a while. Packing everything into boxes, buying boxes, buying more packing tape, taking one or two at a time to the post office, and so on. Finally, I remembered that Greyhound does shipping and realized it would be a lot cheaper, so I ended up doing that. I thought it would be a lot easier to take everything in one shipment anyway and got a friend to help since there were 15 boxes, plus an oversized bicycle box. Well, it would've been easier if the Greyhound employee knew how to do his job....after an hour of arguing with him and him basically ignoring me (while other customers yelled at him for doing so), he finally believed me that I had paid for the shipping already and didn't need to wait for him to tally it all up. Yes, that's why there are already labels on the boxes. A strong letter of complaint is forthcoming. He actually said, "You're making a lot of work for me." Well, [insert your choice of angry expletive], this is your job. If you don't like it....half the customers in the waiting room said they were unemployed and would do a better job than you. Some people are just not cut out for customer service. 

Oh, and this was on the day of the rehearsal dinner. Had the employee known what he was doing I would've been out of there with time to shower, get dressed and get a manicure and pedicure for the dinner and wedding the next day. Instead, I had under 30 minutes to do all this, skipping the mani-pedi. 

The wedding itself was amazing and so much fun. Memorably, we stopped at McDonald's and Rita's as we had time to kill before getting to the reception. Boyfriend was in Montana of course, but I had the best date ever, a fellow bridesmaid. 

And two days later, Mom and I left for Montana. Isis was sedated and in a small kennel in the back seat. She was pretty mellow for most of the trip, but on the fifth and final day, she started freaking out, spilled her water bowl, and decided it was time to escape. This meant she tried to claw through the bottom of the kennel (plastic with a blanket and towel over it) and bite through the bars of the kennel (metal). She was unsuccessful and eventually gave up.

The trip was mostly uneventful. It was great having another driver for the first two days, especially since she did all the driving (thanks Mom!). Fortunately there was no snow, though most of the mountains were quite covered, and once in Montana, outside of Bozeman I think, there was some sleet. It was very strange to see signs in the lobby at the hotel in South Dakota with regulations regarding having firearms and other hunting weapons in the hotel....I've never been anywhere that hunting was clearly so important. I noticed Wall Drug even changed their sign that usually offers free coffee? free donuts? free something...to members of the armed forces, to hunters. 

It is so great to be home though, even though home is hovering in the minus degrees Fahrenheit right now. We had a blizzard warning a couple of days ago, and got a few inches of snow. Not a huge deal, except that they don't clear the streets right away and it appears that they never clear the neighborhood streets. It's been interesting driving, but most of all, bitingly cold. Fortunately I was warm enough shoveling with my added layers of long johns and a turtleneck. The squall parka from Lands' End is super warm, as is the fleece. Definitely needed purchases for this winter. I've been continuing to nest, adding pictures and other decorative touches. 

I've also been knitting....I am almost done with the mohair shawl, and I got distracted and decided to knit a tam with the silk/merino/bamboo blend yarn. I realized it matches the color of my parka perfectly. I think it came out very well for an impulse knit! I'm going to try to stay focused though and finish the shawl, and next start the cardigan, now that I have better needles. It should go quickly. 

There is probably a lot more, but I'm hungry and the Boy brought home some novel food. We haven't ventured to the grocery this week due to the snow, and he walked down the street to Subway, which sounded way better to us than the piles of leftovers we've been eating. Yay sandwich!

Moving along

My WIPs have been coming along well. Excepting the occasional freak-out about not having a job and the postdoc/job situation in Missoula being bleak so far, I'm making progress in many areas. (As well as mistakes, fortunately mostly in knitting.)

In less than two weeks I'll be leaving for Montana, and should arrive there on November 13th. I'm all sorts of fidgety about that. Mostly excited to see DB again and as always a bit apprehensive about the drive, especially with the cat. But I'm getting the cat sedatives so I can always give her one if she's not doing well with the long hours on the road. (Note: She just crawled into my lap. She is jealous of anytime my fingers are doing something except pet her, so typing, knitting and iPhone-ing are all out the question, in her opinion. When I submit disagreement, she steps directly on my kidneys.)

I finished one project, decided to frog another and began two. I also had an excellent stash enhancement expedition and dear sister footed the bill as my birthday present.

(If I ever relocate to the Northampton, MA area, the WEBS store will have been a major, if not the major factor in my decision. I was in absolute heaven.)

Completed is my neverending hat for DB. Once I picked it up again, it went quickly. I tried it on at points to be sure it was still fitting and hadn't magically shrunk itself or something. Once done, I stuffed it with plastic bags and spritzed it with water to lightly block it. It looked awfully stretchy off the needles, long and skinny. Blocking made a nice difference, set the folded-over part in place and made the top of the hat look less funny. (It looked funny when I tied it off. Very pointy.)

This was just in time to mail his birthday package: Lands' End Squall Jacket, reader/writer goodies from Levenger, the finally-ended hat and a mix CD. I included my current favorite song - actually a few of them - on this CD: "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and "Castles in the Snow" by Twin Shadow. It also gave me an excuse to indulge in a few new albums (I hate just have single songs by an artist), including the new Belle & Sebastian and Deerhunter. The birthday presents arrived yesterday and though initially I told him not to open it until his actual birthday, the winter weather that has already hit Montana made me reconsider, so he got them right away. This time, the hat fits. Success!

I decided I am going to frog the Canyonlands Throw. I'm not too far into it, and I just don't like it very much. I still couldn't find a pattern I liked to use instead, but I had a vision of something simple, stockinette with the tiniest bit of lace in the form of diamonds. Nothing was coming up on Ravelry, so I took out my wonderful Vogue Knitting book and found a "Lozenge Stitch" pattern that comes out exactly as I wanted. So I'll just do the math for a reasonable size throw blanket and integrate that stitch. This will be on hold for a while as I have some Very Nice Yarn to work with. As much as I've grown to appreciate the economy and synthetic loveliness of Homespun, there is nothing like wool. 100% super bulky wool and mohair to be precise.

Which brings me to my next project: the Tess cardigan from Kim Hargreaves' Heartfelt collection. (I'm going to take a moment and ask my knitting fairy godmother to please bring me all of her books, please!!!) I read over the instructions at least 10 times before I cast on, somewhat in haste. I had thought I needed to buy size 17 needles for this one, but found a pair of plastic circulars in my collection. I decided to cast on with those. Aside from the fact that I should've also knitted a swatch, I really should have gotten a nice pair of needles first. These plastic circulars are twisty and stubby. I'd be better off knitting with sticks from the back yard. I got three rows in with difficulty and came across this instruction: yfwd (twice). Having already read the pattern over, I had looked up and discovered yfwd is the British way of saying yo, and more specifically a between-knit-stitches yo. So I yfwded twice, creating two new stitches. I came to the next row and read (k1, p1) three times into double yfwd. Wait a minute....how do I get three or six stitches into four? I Googled and searched and read. I requested help from dear sister who confirmed what I thought. yfwd twice just meant wrap the yarn around an additional time, leaving three stitches (two new) on the needle. A video more than confirmed this. Also I have somehow still been doing yo wrong. I always put the yarn forward, put the right needle into the next stitch on the left as though to knit, then wrapped my yarn and completed the knit stitch. The last few instructions I've read now or watched have you do the the yarn forward, wrap the yarn on the right needle, the knit the next stitch. Huh. Not sure if there are actually two different ways to do this, if they produce two totally different results, or if I am really still doing yo wrong. All my yos on the baby blanket looked good. Something to play with in the future.

Anyway, I now have to undo what I've done on the cardigan so far which is fortunately only three rows. I also ordered new needles because the plastic ones are just awful. Once my new pointy wooden ones arrive, I'll get back on that. It'd be nice to have at Christmas this year.

This brings me to new yarn and new projects. (Also realize among all this knitting has been dissertating and bridesmaiding and packing. As much as I wish, I do not just knit, read and knit. I've transcribed all but two interviews and just need one (one!) more participant. Maybe my dissertation fairy godmother will bring me one of those too....please?)

My birthday loot included:
four skeins of Di.Ve' Mohair Kiss in a lovely colorway of grays and blues
four skeins of Universal Yarn Star Light in "sirius" - creamy white with sparklies

 I started knitting with the Mohair Kiss the Mediterranean Tulle Shawl I've admired for a while. It's coming along very nicely and I cannot wait to wear it! This is being made in particular for my navy blue silk slip dress and hopefully our anniversary dinner when I get back to Missoula. I am planning to use the Star Light to make the Muse wrap though as I've got a few projects to get through before I start this one, that could change. I've also considered a big, drapey moebius cowl/wrap with this yarn. It's so soft!