Sorry About the Absence . . .

So, I've been MiA for a good little while - almost exactly a month, in fact, but I promise that it was with good reason . . . I'm now a member of ravelry.com, which I have been describing to people as a kind of "super-facebook for knitters/crocheters."
By the way, if you do any of those things, you might want to join up yourself - it'll blow your mind, but in a really good way.

I've got some knitting done - like my first hat and the first attempt on my Thermal, and I've gotten some frogging done - like the hat for my father and my first attempt on my Thermal, but all to the good, I suppose.

I've also organized my stash by putting all the skeins in their own separate baggies. As I was telling my friend, "I got tired of them fraternizing with each other."

As far as knitting goals still in mind, my mother wants bed socks, and my dad doesn't want anything, and so is probably still getting a hat. My sister may like a gift card better than a hat and I fully intend to enjoy knitting up my Thermal!

Apology . . .

Sorry I've been out for so many days - I caught death and have spent a good portion of my time in between posts fending it off. Having said so, I've also managed to get a little bit of work done. I'm four rows away from finishing a kind of cross between a knitted hat and a knitted headband I saw on Knitty.com called Calorimetry in this tweedy magenta yarn I found in the $2 bin at WEBS. Granted, it's a little hard on the fingers and not all that soft (at all) but I figured, eh, even if I never wear it, it was a little project that taught me about short row shaping and cost me two bucks - and gave me something to do while I was sick.

Pictures to come. I promise.

Halloween

So . . . Just thought I'd share what I did for Halloween.

(Sorry it's so late, but I just realized that I never posted this . . .)

But first I've got a bit of a confession to make: I didn't like my sweater. The Orange One. I had hung it in the closet and refused to wear it for anything. But then Halloween came, to my college town, and apparently, students here like to go trick-or-treating. Now, being a diabetic, I haven't even considered the yearly candy-run since around middle school, but what can I say? People in my house dragged me along. (I orginally hadn't intended to get any candy but this sweet old lady wouldn't hear of it and actually went in her house and brought me out a bag!!)

Anyway, I needed a costume in a hurry, and, flinging open my closet, I saw the orange sweater. My mind smiled.

Two black construction paper eyes and a mouth later and I was out the door.

The First Stirrings of Rebellion

I have spent the last couple of weeks in a seemingly endless search for the perfect sweater pattern. I have still not found it, but suddenly, that's okay, because I have seen a new horizon. That horizon is called "the wonderful world of design." I have purchased a book - the book is called Knitting from the Top and it is by Barbara G Walker. I have placed 13 balls of Elisabeth Lavold's Classic Al on hold at WEBS, to be retreived (most likely) on Tuesday. I'm thinking Henley-style - maybe with some wide ribbing for a hint of shapeliness. I might even consider tossing a hood on it . . . merely because I really like hoods. Or perhaps a little bitty pocket somewhere. The possibilities are endless, and what with my Christmas WEBS giftcard on the horizon, I think I'll get started right after the thermal.

Knitting Doldrums

So now I'm in this terrible of position of needing it to be Friday. The reason I need it to be Friday now is that Friday happens to be payday. (And I've been working sub hours, so . . . big paycheck.)

So I've been staring at websites, going to WEBS (even considered stepping into Northampton Wools) and generally staring hopelessly at my stash, wishing I could get some work done, either school-realted or knitting related, but nothing actually happens.
I did get in some yarn from Knitpicks on Saturday, which I will be reviewing soon, but apart from that, I feel completely paralyzed by lack of funds . . . Oh well, just two more days to go.

Alas . . .

I think I may have come to my senses at last. I've been having some thoughts about my Christmas ambitions and have come up against this terrible problem: I don't want to make things that people don't want or won't use. I have several male friends, and a female sister (of equal pickiness) as I have mentioned before, who don't like the idea of knitted gifts, and the last thing I want to do is force them to smile and accept gifts that they don't actually want. Many of them, however, have told me that they wouldn't mind receiving a sweater from me at some point, but as for this year, at least . . . s'just not gonna happen.

So my revised Christmas list goes more like this . . .

Mom - felted slippers
Dad - hat (my father's actually pleasantly easy to knit for)
Little sister -probably a giftcard to her favorite store in the world
Female friend - arm warmers or a scarf, whichever comes first
Boys:
Giftcard to borders and some other little thing for mister super-picky since I owe him from last year . . .
itunes giftcard for mister medium-picky
and for almost not-so-picky-after all, an anti-scratch case for his Nintendo DS which I shall diligently engineer. (unless, through secret espionage tricks, I find that he is perhaps a little pickier than I thought.)

And of course, my yarn-buddy of a cat is still getting his chinese-food themed toys. I might even try some Japanese thrown in. Maybe.

Anyway, that's how things are looking Christmas-wise. As for me and things for myself, I've got a list for that, too.
First of all, there's that Thermal sweater I want to make from Knitty.com, but I'm also in the market for a second, coarser-gauge sweater to be worn shirt-like in the coming cold.

I guess I should also mention that I fully intend to end this year with my very own ball winder and swift combo - since I just kinda need that sorta thing. (Especially since the yarn for the thermal [Knitpicks Gloss] comes in hanks and so must be wound up.)

It doesn't end there, though - I'm still working on my eggplant pattern - I started and then realized that I had failed to take a couple of things into account beforehand, but it'll be alright . . .

And for the springtime, I have a nugget of an idea for a hoodie cardigan knit in Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, one of my favorite yarns to work with. All this and more to come, folks!!

Start Your Engines

Now that I've been knitting for a whole year, I have a plan. With my yearling skill, I have decided that I need never brave a mall at Christmastime again. That is correct - I have decided to knit everyone's Christmas present this year. As a matter of fact, I have decided that I'm even going to be finished by Thanksgiving Break. I've got it all mapped out in my planner and I am determined to succeed.

Here's the list:

Dad's &%4!-ing hat
My cat's "Feline Dim Sum" (see knitty.com)
Mom's felted slippers
My sister's necklace and bracelet set (more on this later)
My female buddy's arm warmers (finerless gloves that end before the finger holes)

And then here's my problem . . .
I have some other buddies - guy buddies, and I have no idea what to make for them -they just don't do the winter bundling thing and I haven't the time to make them sweaters . . . I mean, what am I supposed to do?! belts, hats, scarves, socks - all rejected . . . and I'm running out of suggestions . . . what's a knitter to do?

So Here's the Story

Once upon a time, there was a yarn addict, and she lived in her parent's house over the summer with her blonde cat and the two of them were happy as can be. Oh yeah, and the yarn addict had a pumpkin - a stuffed one - that lived in her bed as well. One day, (very early in the morning) the yarn addict's ceiling fell in, all over her bed. She and her blonde cat escaped with their lives, but Plumpen the pumpkin was not so lucky. He was partially smooshed under falling debris - luckily he was a plush toy so this didn't upset him so much, but worse was that he was showered with toxic attic dust.

With Plumpen out of the hospital, it soon became clear that the yarn addict's asthma made it impossible for him to continue to live with her in her new bed in the livingroom, nor in her new new college bed in Massachussetts. He now lives in a box in the basement, where she can do no more than come and look at him from time to time.

There came a night, however, when the yarn addict realized that the empty hole in her heart could only be filled by a soft felted vegetable and went off in search of a pattern for a pumpkin. It was then that the revelation came to her - the period for pumpkins had passed. She would share her dreams with a new plant altogether, and thus, the journey to plush felted eggplant was born . . .

Never-Ending Projects

I don't know what it is about little projects, but sometimes I feel like they take so much longer than the bigger projects. For instance, that very same sweater I've been going on about seemed to have taken very little time to get done, and in actuality my total work time was about 2 1/2 weeks. The crazy thing is, I'm knitting a hat for my father at a bigger gauge, and yet it never seems to get done. No matter how many work shifts I devote to it (I have a monitor job that let's me sit on my backside and do whatever I want for hours at a time - with pay) and no matter how many times I drag it along to my knitting circle, it never seems to get any further along.

What's more, the longer it takes, the slower I seem to get work done on it. If I could just finish this $%!&-ing hat, I'd be able to devote myself to other people's Christmas presents and move along. As it is, I start other people's presents to avoid working on this never-ending hat and end up turning their presents into never-ending small projects as well. As an example - it's taken me two weeks to knit a 6in square for a cat toy I'm making.

I knit nearly all of a sweater in that time not even a month ago!!

I'm considering stuffing the hat underneath some of the less appealing yarns in my stash, taking a trip to the mall for Christmas presents and going back to fulfilling my sweater fantasies straight on through winter break.

This morning I added a picture to my opening post, and I guess I may as well talk about it a little. That's my cat - his name is Dreif and he too has a thing for yarn. The item he has commandeered is my first ever knitted sweater. I finished it a few weeks ago and the picture was taken a few hours before its completion, when I took a quick break to do some homework (because some college students actually do a bit of academia from time to time)

As you can see, the sweater is a giant orange hoodie . . . knit in what has become one of my favorite yarns - Berkshire by Valley Yarns. That's the WEBS brand, by the way, and OMG if you haven't been to WEBS and you live in New England, well, I am so sorry.

Anyway, it came out pretty well, I guess.

Casting On

So here's my new blog. I've got another one, but this one's a better idea, since it documents something I actually care about - that being my hobby. Now that I've reached my first year aniversary, it's time to tell the world about my escapades.

You see, I'm a knitter, and this is my story. ;)