First FO of the year!

But unfortunately the picture is blurry (and unblocked...)


It is blocked now and the squares don't look all drunk anymore like they do in the picture. I cast on last Wednesday at knitting night, and I'll be wearing it tomorrow night back to knitting night. Yay!

I knit my first sock, but I am stalling on finishing the second. I knit the heel way too long on the first one, but it fits okay so I don't want to frog it. So I am not enjoying knitting the second one very much. I am however looking forward to starting on a new, mistake-free pair of socks. Probably for Craig. And maybe toe-up. But I promised myself I wouldn't start more socks until I finished the current socks. Makes sense I guess. Taught myself magic loop (thank you knittinghelp!) to do them which I love, and am very proud of. Used it for the top of the hat too.



Now I'm watching American Idol, and going through my huge collection of knitting magazines and queuing patterns I like in ravelry so that I'm actually more like to knit them one day.

Nearly there

I am *thisclose* to being done all my xmas knitting! For Craig, his mom, dad, sister and niece, I just have maybe 2/3 of a pretty quick scarf to go until I'm done. Yay! I also have most of my cookie gifts baked already too. And all with a week to go still!

Got some Martha Stewart wrapping paper on sale at Michaels for the gifts, and tins and cellophane at the dollar store for the cookies, piles of ribbon, and I'm all set.

Reason #578697 why Ravelry is awesome...

Progress bars!

That right, little bars over on the right there tracking my knitting progress through the awesomeness that is ravelry. I was lucky enough to be online early enough on a Sunday morning to get myself on the progress bar list, and I am so so so happy about it. I even decided to make a little donation to Ravelry. I figure I donated to Craftster and I think I :heart: Ravelry even more so it only makes sense.

Now I just need to get a little "progress bars thanks to ravelry" button or something to go under them. And figure out how to get pictures of the projects to show...

Or maybe I'll just enjoy them how they are :)

More Voting!

I entered my pink pony costume in the contest on craftster. If you'd like to vote for me (or anyone, there's some pretty cool costumes) check it out here.

I'm the pink pony!The rest of the photos are in the photoset here.


We picked names for Secret Santa at work today. I am totally knitting slippers, I know that's what Judi wants!

Where my stitches at?

I am thoroughly amused by the debate over that phrase on ravelry. I didn't find it *that* funny, but I did order the only t-shirt that doesn't have the phrase on it. I ordered the "I swatched ravelry" one, because really "where my stitches at?" just doesn't say "I was on ravelry before it was open to the public cuz I'm such a cool hard core knitter!" So yeah, ok, onto craftier things... craftier things with pictures!

My newest WIPs! Everything is on ravelry, so I'll put the links to my ravelry notebook, but for now they'll only work for other ravelry beta testers. I guess they'll just work normally after ravelry goes public. Maybe? Ok, here goes:

Noro striped scarf, but not in Noro. It's in Patons SWS. Surprisingly I couldn't find anyone else on ravelry who'd made the scarf out of this yarn, but it is turning out beautifully so far. The pattern (if you can call it that) is here. And all the details for the project are here. It is a christmas gift for Craig, part of my goal of giving only handmade gifts this year at the holidays.




Pictures of the two colourways I am using for that one:







I also have a Branching Out on the needles, from Knitty. For Craig's mom. Details here. It's blue, a Debbie Bliss yarn that I don't love working with. It keeps splitting whenever I try to psso or k3tog. At least the pattern repeat isn't very long, so I can just do an inch or so at a time then put it down pretty easily.


I've also been working on Halloween costumes. More on that later.

Score!

I decided I would go looking for yarn before work last night. I went into Liquidation World, not really expecting to find much. I was hoping for cheapo acrylic, but instead I found a wall of sparkly ribbony rainbow eylashy fun fur yarn. The kind of yarn you look at and wonder what anyone could possibly make from it. And there's a big sign in front of it that says that its all 50 cents a ball. Except for the one ball of greenish yarn sitting there with kind of a nubbly texture. I look closer and it's a brand name I actually recognize (Classic Elite, the yarn itself is Commotion), and it's a natural fibre! Well mostly, it's about 80% wool, the rest is nylon. And it's 50 cents! So I dug and dug, the rainbow yarn was flying off the shelves, eventually I came up with 18 balls of it, and they are all the same dye lot! I also found three balls of Duchess, which is even nicer. It's a blend of merino, viscose, cashmere, nylon, and angora in a bulky weight. I got a nice burnt orange colour, which is perfect for making some Halloween pumpkins. Though I'll probably save most of it for a scarf, since it feels nice against the3 skin. Not itchy! Grand total was eleven dollars and change for the whole thing.

I had to look up the retail price of the yarn, just so I could know how awesome of a deal I got. And they're both around $10 a ball original retail price. !!! I just got 21 balls of yanr for the price of one! That's over two hundred dollars worth of yarn for a little over ten bucks!

Lots o' pink fun fur - Halloween!

Before Burning Man I bought a bunch of cheap fake hair.I started making dreadfalls but it was taking forever with my poor weak kettle. So I still have a ton of it left, mostly in pink, but also some blue and a maroon-ish colour. A pony tail seemed like the obvious thing to make,so I decided my Halloween costume would be a horsey. A pink one, with blue accents, due to the the colour of the hair.


So taking a bunch of pink hair in my pocket and holding it up to different fabrics, in many different fabric stores,I must have looked like a lunatic. I originally wanted something with a smoother texture, sleek like a horse, but I think the fabric I got is great now. The colour is perfect, and it has the texture of a horse in winter. But softer! :) For the accent colour I went with sparkly blue, which turned out not to be so brilliant to line the top with. It makes me sparkly. Oh well!



The costume also will probably go to Burning Man, and I've been keeping that in mind while making it. When finished, it will have lots of parts: there's a top, skirt, legwarmers, armwarmers, four hooves, tail/belt, and headpiece. I've been working a little on each part, I don't think any one part is totally finished.


The top is from a pattern (except the straps), everything else is just straight out of my brain!