Here is the weather from yesterday:
Temperature: 99.1°F / 37.3°C | Humidity: 16% | Pressure: 29.91in / 1012.8hPa (Steady) | Conditions: Clear | Wind Direction: SE | Wind Speed: 5.4mph / 8.7km/h
How freakin’ disgusting is that? I wouldn’t be surprised if we actually didn’t top that for the rest of the year! Our average temp is 68F. I say we got that beat! It’s better today, only 81F right now. That’s liveable.
Okay, so in the kitchen I just knocked my camera off the counter and it won’t work. Lots of clicking & whirring noises. I suppose it’ll have to be sent in this time. I could use an old camera to take pics of the finished sweaters & hats. sigh.
I also suppose that means I am not worthy to have my dslr. I could knit a cozy for it so it’s got a little shock absorption.;o)
I finished 2 of the Drops Garnstudio Sweaters. One using Rowanspun Bulky in a dark green and one using Patons Shetland Chunky in Earth Brown. 4+ balls each. Not much yarn considering how fantastically it fits!
I finished the green one first, after reknitting the back 3 times to get the size/gauge correct. In my stash of vintage sewing items I found a set of 4 buttons that were perfect!
This is the true color of the yarn. I love it! I will get some better outdoor pictures soon hopefully.
The brown one is finished but I am waiting for my buttons to come from Etsy.
This sweater was so fast to knit that I completed all pieces on the 9 hour drive home from our Thanksgiving in Reno. Had it sewn together that night. Now it’s just the buttons. I can’t wait for them to arrive. 
On to other projects.
I have finished another zeebee (or 2).
This one I used Patons Rumor yarn that I got on sale at Michaels.
The gauge was so large that I only had to cast on 26 sts and do 5 wrapped sts. It’s large enough for the largest head with the negative ease. Into the Christmas pile it goes!
I have to say that I am worried this Holiday season is going to go by too fast. I love the Holidays. I love Christmas, the parades, the shopping. This year we will be spending our week before Christmas in Disneyland. My birthday in Disneyland! I am so excited for it I can hardly wait. We’ve never taken the kids when the Park is decorated for Christmas. That will be fantastic to see with them! I need to make us matching beanies. We decided that it’ll be easier to find & keep eachother if we all have matching hats. I am thinking Zeebees in red/white/grey. The only thing is that I am not sure the stripes will look alright. I would like to do stripes every 2 rows I think. We’ll see once I get one going. I may end up doing a simple knit striped hat, JCrew style.
I teach my last class of the year tonight, the Zig Zag Modular Scarf. It’ll be a fun class, it’s a fun knit!
I finished the Sahara sweater on Saturday and am very pleased with how it turned out. I dropped it off at Knit & Pearl in SB so it’s there as an example for the class I’m teaching next month. Once I get it back I will try to get some pictures with it on. I love how the Cotton Fleece feels all fitted like this.
Julie did put it on for me, it’s just gorgeous on!
It is nice to have it finished. It’s going to be a very wearable sweater in our climate & I am so pleased with my bead choice!
Overall I would put this pattern at an intermediate/almost advanced pattern. It takes a lot of attention to detail even though it’s mostly stockinette there are still more advanced techniques like the shaping, the short row shaping, the provisional cast on at the back of the neck, the placing of beads, etc.
For the sock class I am teaching I didn’t want to do the boring ol’ ribbing for 2″ then stockinette sport weight socks. So I bought some 6/0 beads last night in a teal color and used them to do this:
Keeping the front of the sock in 2×2 rib I decided to do the back with a simple 2 stitch twisted cable every 4th row with a bead. Clog sock heels really. From the front all boring & blah but on the back, wham! All kinds of busy-ness happening! At first I thought it was just too much but now I am really liking how crazy it all looks together. Only half an inch more on the legs then to the boring stockinette foot.
Mouse asked, Suzanne asked, I will give in to popular demand!
Since last I showed you shoe enhancement photos there have been more buying opportunities I could not pass up. Last nights bogo purchase first (btw, total $17 for both pair)
cream linen peeps just in time for the 4th! Not that they are beach-wear but I love how 40’s patriotic they are!
black patent platforms, American Eagle brand
brown suede, more for winter but only $19 & I love them! Apapazza from Endless.com
Sorry the picture is a tad fuzzy but I wanted to show the fantastic heel on these brown patent leather & suede peep toes. I love the colored suede! And, they have the most amazing sueded footbed that is a dream to walk on. From Ross of course!
These I have been looking for for a long time. Neutral, superstrappy, almost nude sandals for the summer. Ross, again.
Chocolate brown ballet slippers with a box gathered toe.
It was so frickin’ hard to get pictures in good light in my bedroom! But I had no patience to do all this outside so you will suffer ;o)
So yeah, you all think I have a yarn problem. You now all may think it is surpassed by my shoe problem. It’s true, I admit, shoes are an addiction! But when you can get so many different styles and never have 2 of the same shoe, who can pass them up??? NOT I!
dont’ judge me, I just love shoes
34 mph average winds, power outages (or surges as the kids call them), gazebo’s blowing over (and top ripped completely off, beyond repair, lame!), shingles flying off roofs (yes we still have cedar roof shingles), recycle bins blowing down the street. That was the last 24 hours here in lovely Goleta. We don’t get snow, but it’s pretty much garaunteed that we will get a great windstorm sometime around new years. A little too unsettling for me. I kept finding myself spinning faster when the wind blew harder, slower when it calmed down. I had to just stop & read my Robert Jordan books (finished book 3 yesterday).
Today, a lot less wind, 12 mph average it says. Sunshine but a little nip to it. The kids actually moved all of the gazebo frame pieces off to one side of the yard for me. They were happy to see it down only to be able to ride their battery operated race cars around & around in circles without banging into the corners of the gazebo.
Knitting tonight, Java Station, be there!
I wouldn’t exactly call it yarn. I might call it sheepwool becomes lumpy art. or lumpy crap. Either way, I got the wheel all spinnin’ round.
First up is a full bobbin of Emerald Garden roving from Copper Moose on Ebay. I bought this over 2 years ago when I learned to use my drop spindle so I am not sure how much I bought but when I held up the ball of roving next to an 8 oz ball that I hadn’t touched yet it looked like the same size.
Now, what you don’t see is the first layer of yarn on the bobbin that looks nothing like this here finishing layer. Bad, lumpy, scary, yarn. I got the rhythm down, tension adjusted, predrafted the roving just right and voila!
Then I started some merino that Karen sent me. There has to be at least 6 oz there to spin. It’s so soft and the fiber staple is so different than the corriedale green that I had just finished that it took me a little while to readjust the tension. I flipped the bobbin around so it would spin faster and get a more thin yarn. I am happy that I am actually understanding the mechanics of how the wheel works and how to adjust things so it does what I want it to do.
It is still coming out as a worsted weight single but I am not having much breakage during spinning.
Let’s see what else? Oh yeah! I finished the green lacey hoodie from Rebecca 32 on MONDAY. Woops. I forgot to post about that, sorry.
Most of you saw it at knitting on Thursday night but I gave it a bath yesterday and now she’s dry.
I kinda liked how it faded out to dark on the bottom, if you got a problem with that, too bad ;o)
(the bottom is just straight with no shaping anyways)
I love how the hood is constructed on this sweater, brilliant shaping. They used decreasing and then short rows to get the top to turn, much like a heel of a sock. I will be using this method of construction on hoods in the future I am sure. If you really want to read how it’s done you can buy the Rebecca 32 magazine, it’s well worth the $17. And you can use your 40% off coupon at Craft Essentials here in SB to buy it too! yippee for that!
Now I am working on the sock for my sock class I will be teaching (go sign up at Knit & Pearl people). And spinning. I am going to run out of fiber here in the next week so I better get buyin’!! Not too sure how much George is going to like the expense of my bday gift but oh well!
I am going to finish this fan & feather shawl if it is the last thing I do. So.close. Only 10 rows to go but man are they some serious rows! I timed myself on row 171 of 189 and was knitting at 31minutes a round. Not so bad for over 1200 sts a round. The pattern rows are the killers. Over an hour because I am triple checking my stitch count after every yo & decrease section. Last thing I need is to drop a stitch or make a mistake in the 11th hour of this shawl (knock on wood). So, hours will be spent knitting around & around in gorgeous merino single spun handpainted yarn. Darn.
I really wasn’t too concerned with getting balls of yarn all perfectly spaced to not have color changes. The yarn is handpainted/kettle dyed and a one of a kind 3 hank batch. I wanted it to be kind of raw moving from hank to hank. I like it a lot!
So in a completely selfish mood I decided to stop by Knit & Pearl this afternoon, before getting the kids from school, & purchase a pick me up in the hopes I would be motivated to complete the shawl & move on to something colorful & new to work on.
3 hanks of Patagonia Araucania yarn in shades; reds, oranges & blues. They will go with the emerald/blue that I already have on hand (all 9 balls) and become a large shawl. Triangle or spiral circle I am not sure yet. I was going to make a cardigan but have since decided that I will use a cotton shawl more. I already have a dozen knit cardigans that get passed over when I get dressed.
1 more ball of misti Alpaca lace for another shawl. I am slowly collecting the yarn for this shawl since I need over 3000 yards for the pattern.
And 1 ball of DB cashmerino aran yarn to make myself a pair of Fetching gloves for this winter.
And a sample of Soak (her prices are better at knit & pearl than online), a new wool wash that Julie had samples of. It smells so good…so good…
Oh & I did start a project the other night at a really late hour when I wasn’t thinking straight.
Woolease granny square blanket from Lion Brand.
I am using all the same colors as in the pattern pictured above. So fast. It’s an easy set-it-aside-pick-it-up-whenever project. Inexpensive & washable. Can’t beat that!
Let’s see, what else have I got going on? I have more sock yarn calling my name than I know what to do with. It’s almost worth staying up 72 hours straight & knitting socks just to use some of it up. Not a good idea you say? Shucks. Oh! And I started a Filatura Di Crosa sweater from the fall 2005 book. Gorgeous sweater. I will get a picture up once the shawl is done & I get past the 7inches of ribbing.
Now if I could only get some spinning in sometime….
The computer/dsl modem went kaput on me Saturday morning so there would be no WWW activity for me! Instead I finished Tracy’s second trekkingxxl sock! Yay! Done!! I will let her do the honors of photographing them & posting pics.
I also used some handpaintedyarn bulky merino wool in verde esparanza (out of stock right now) to make the one skein scarf out of the new Happy Hooker book.
I had enough yarn left over that I decided to make myself a hat to match. It is a typical single crocheted beanie but I started the top with a bit of an open shell pattern.
Then I moved to the single crochet for the main body of the hat. For the last row across the forehead I used the shell stitch in half double crochet, moving to double crochet around the back half of the hat. Then I worked back and forth for three more rows in shell stitch to make the back long flap.
I love how it comes down to my collar!
I did start the norsk sweater and I am working on the ribbing. I also realized that I had promised one of my sisters, Christi, that I would make a blanket for her living room. I sent her the yarn samples to choose from in January & then we both kind of forgot about it. So since we are seeing eachother in 2 weeks, I thought I would get on it & finish it so she can take it home with her. Using size 11 needles, super bulky cotton chenille in a brick red,I am making the pinwheel blanket pattern. It’s super simple and fast with such thick yarn! I have a picture but for some reason it won’t load, eventually I will get it up. Maybe after it is finished!