Victory!

I've finally finished knitting Kyoto!!!! I cast off the sash about half an hour ago and promptly celebrated with a dish of Ben & Jerry's Dublin Mudslide. Now all that's left is to seam the whole thing together. I'll have Mom help me with that this weekend.

And I started on the Cascading Leaves sock pattern that my wonderful SP4, Nederlass, sent me along with the olive green Regia Silk sock yarn. I've got the heel gusset decreases done and am working my way down the foot. I don't know why I was so scared of top-down socks. They're actually pretty easy. I guess that I just liked the fact that I know I won't run out of yarn for the toes with my gigantic feet. I'll post a pic when the first one's done.

Pinwheel baby blanket is into it's second skein. I just need to keep plugging away at it.

Haven't touched the FMB or the HP scarf at all. Really need to get going on those two. I want them done very very soon so I can get going on more Christmas presents.

Got my Knitpicks' order today. Lots of fun to be had with that, but it'll have to wait for other projects to get done.

Off to bed with me now.

I was bad...

I didn't work on Kyoto this entire weekend. It's not exactly something I can take to work and I didn't feel like working on the HP scarf or the FMB. So I started not one, but two new things. The Round/Pinwheel Baby Blanket for my cousin who's expecting in January, and the Cascading Leaves socks that my wonderful SP, Nederlass, gave me along with some Regia sock yarn in a wonderful olive green color. Pictures this next weekend when I'm a little further along.

Goal update

Things are progressing slowly, but surely with Kyoto. The shoulders are seamed, the neckband picked up and finished and I actually took the sleeves off the blocking board! However, tonight starts my three-night weekend of work, so Kyoto is once again on hold. I'll pick it up again next week. But it will be done! I just hadn't realized exactly how much double seed stitch I had left to do on the sash....only 5 more inches to go. Sigh.

I have been faithful to my promise though. I have not knit on my HP scarf (and even left it lying out in plain view to tempt me), or mom's FMB, or started any new projects. Branching out has had a +2/-6 week. I was knitting on it Thursday morning in bed and hadn't moved a lifeline up for about 6 pattern repeats. Sure enough, I messed up on row 7 and couldn't figure it out to save my life. RIIIPPPP!!! Since then I've gotten two of those pattern repeats put back on and have been dutifully moving my lifelines up.

I also found out this week that my cousin's baby is going to be a boy, so I went a little wild at Knitpicks. Got three balls of red Crayon to make the baby sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, then needed to reach the $30 mark to get free shipping so I got two different sock yarns (one in Dancing and one in Simple Stripes) and 3 hanks of Shimmer in Tide Pool to do a leaf lace shawl pattern from Fiber Trends.

Then, of course, last night at sit and knit (we missed you Erin!) I went a little crazy again and got 3 skeins of Koigu for a scarf, 2 skeins of Manos for a felted bag for me, and some Clover tapestry needles. Must stop buying yarn.

I may cast on a new project this weekend. Either the pinwheel baby blanket, or some socks. Haven't decided. Will update on Monday.

goals for the week

Or maybe I should just say "goal". I only have one major goal and that is to get the blasted Kyoto done. This thing has been the bane of my existence for the better part of 3 months (or is it 4? The soul-sucking sleeves made me lose track) and I just want to be done with it.

Mom helped me seam the shoulders together over the weekend. Now I just need to pick up the stitches for the double seed stitch neckband and after 20 rows or so I'll be able to finish seaming the top part and move on to the sash. So my goal...

*holds up right hand* I won't work on anything else (except for one repeat of Branching Out before I go to bed) until Kyoto is done.

Photoshopped HP uniform

Sylviatx from the knitty boards was nice enough to take my cruddy picture of my Hogwarts uniform and photoshop it onto a nice background. Here it is!


In the purging of the closets, I finished with all of the boxes in my spare room. Now it looks slightly more organized.

And I just finished blocking out the top pieces of Kyoto. Hopefully those will dry by tomorrow night otherwise I'll have to wait until Thursday to work on that again since I work Monday through Wednesday. Oh well. At least it will give me something to do at sit and knit.

It's time....

...for a major purge! I'm talking about clothes, junk, and basically everything that I haven't unpacked since I moved into my townhome 15 months ago.

I started going through boxes in my closet tonight and ended up with 2 very full trashbags. Now I've got to hit my hanging clothes and then it's on to the closet in the spare room. I couldn't believe how much stuff I had from my first year of college!

Oh yeah...and those patterns that went missing when i wanted to make my Harry Potter costume? Found them in a bag in the bottom of my closet. What they were doing in there, I don't know. So now I've got two copies...lovely.

I've been wanting to do this purge for about the last 6 months, but finally decided to start. Mainly because my parents, one of my mom's coffee buddies and her husband, and the coffee buddie's penpal from Scotland (with her family) are coming down to visit in a week and I've got to make the place look presentable before then since they'll want the grand tour. Yikes! I've got a lot to do!

At least my greatly-enhanced stash is now organized. I finally emptied out the last of my stuff from my old dresser, moved the dresser into my spare room, and stuffed it full of yarny goodness.

Now I've got to go finish clearing stuff off my bed so I can get some sleep before going to the post office with my last SP box and a birthday present for a friend.

Kyoto sleeves complete!!

The neverending sleeves are done!! I finally decided just to sit down and finish the dumb things the other night. So what if I didn't make them the 20" they were supposed to be to fit my orangutan arms. They're about 19 1/2" and I wasn't going to tie on a new stinking ball for each sleeve to make up that last 1/2". I just need to block the fronts, back and sleeves, seam them together, then pick up the stitches for the neckband. After that's done I'll finish the sash part that I started....hmmm...about 4 months ago.

I completely lost any love for this sweater about 6 inches into the sleeves. It may have even been sooner than that because of the blankity-blank GGH Mystik. I will never, repeat NEVER, work with this yarn again. It feels lovely, but it a pain in the butt to knit with. When Kyoto is done, all unused balls will be returned to String of Purls ASAP. There will be no lingering in the stash for this demon yarn.

That's all. I'm going to bed now.

The aftermath...

After the yarn vacation was over, I went back to my hometown in northern Iowa to recuperate and completely forgot that RAGBRAI (that's the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa) was coming through town. Lovely. Here's a couple of the riders that I met in the coffee shop the next morning. They were part of Hill's Angels.


And I finished a Sophie bag, done in Cascade 220 and Crystal Palace Squiggle, for my friend's birthday.

Also finished my second Booga bag. I like the colors on this one much better.


That made me realize that I never posted the pictures of my first Booga. Here's the much better picture of it.

The rest of my yarn vacation

I finally got around to taking pictures of the rest of my yarn from vacation, so here it is. First up is the yarn I got at Lambspun of Colorado the second day we went there. This is a 70/30 wool/silk blend that they overdyed at the shop. It's going to be a sweater from the Fall IK.

We weren't originally planning to go back to Lambspun. Mom and I were going to stop at another shop called My Sister Knits, but they were closed for the whole month of July, so rather than waste that time, we went back to Lambspun and spent more money.

We were really just killing time until Textiles A Mano opened. This is a great place that the owner runs out of the basement of her home. It's kind of hard to find and out of the way in a subdivision with no really clear sign to mark it, but it's well worth the effort to find if you're in Fort Collins. The owner, Laura, hand-dyes almost all of the yarn in her shop and it's amazing! Here's what I got...

...two hanks of a 50/50 wool/silk blend. Beautiful colors, like Lion and Lamb, but 660 yards for $38 (compared to $30 for 190 for L&L).


Next is one 700 yard hank of wool in teal, green, blue and purple. I hate how my flash washes out these yarns. They're actually very vibrant. And yes, all three of those balls came out of one hank of yarn.


I also got two hanks of a superwash wool in two different colorways. These are destined to become mini-sweaters/boobholders, so I picked up some coordinating yarn at my LYS.



And finally, after a very very very long drive across Kansas that involved waiting out a nasty storm in a Starbucks, we got to Yarn Barn in Lawrence, KS. I wasn't as impressed with this store in person as I am with their catalog. Could be because I was actually almost to the point of being "yarn shopped out" as my mom put it. Here's some of what I got.

The silvery/white cotton thread is to try some bead knitting with. I actually got 5 skeins of the Lamb's Pride Bulky and made Cleeves from Knitty out of 4 of them. The two Lamb's Pride Worsted are destined to be a Braid and Bobble Hat from Fibertrends.

And that's everything from the trip! A few post-trip pictures will be in the next post.