Thank Youuuuu!

To my new friend Cheriwan (real name Jillian - rechristened "Jennifer" don't ask) who vvv generously sent me the following in the recent Ravelry swap:

Don'tcha love opening mystery boxes with wee individually wrapped presents inside?? Some lovely yarn (have always loved working with Crystal Palace yarns!) in pink (looks more red in pic), v. handy looking stitch markers, skull yarn notions bag (love.it.) funky bubblegum girlie card and bookmark - candy! And 2 patterns!! Yay She even went to the trouble of ordering me things from etsy - have included the links.

Thanks again Jillian!

Busy night ahead...

I say this every year, and yes it's a cliche, so shoot me. I Love Christmas. It's The most wonderful time of the Year. From the reliable "Christmas is not just about shopping and eating you know" sermon from the parish priest, to the emergence of more and more lights every evening driving home, to the 'what on earth can I get for my father this year' dilemma*, just love it all.

And this year - we are home in our own house - for the first year ever! Usually we spend it with in-laws (Florida) or my folks (Ireland) - neither of which are bad options let me add, but I always feel like I miss the fun in our own neighbourhood. Grandparents coming up to share in festivities for Christmas week, adding their Boston Terrier to the mix. I predict a good snorty time...

And the fun starts tomorrow night, with a cookie swap. Making about 8 dozen cherry chocolate cookies tonight for a swap with neighbourhood ladies. And then the next night, another cookie swap with my knitting friends, about another 8 dozen. That means I need to make about 200 ~ 17 dozen cookies tonight, at least...

I didn't pick a great recipe (will post later - if successful). Bucking the usual trend the recipe I chose from a random cookbook (bought when newly married and planning to cook/bake a lot - ha!) turned out great the first time, so I passed it on to TulaBug, hostess extraordinaire, who is again hosting Wednesday's shindig.

Subsequent efforts, however, resulted in 1: tray o'crumbs; 2. tray o'hockey pucks. No room for mess-ups tonight so fingers crossed...

And my yarn swap loot arrived this weekend! Separate post coming on that as soon as camera cooperates, grrr.

*this year - donation to charity. So he's getting that, a sock keychain, and pictures of his grandson :)

lovely stuff

Got some lovely knit gifts this week - a book I've been wanting to read for ages, from my lovely friend Celine, who I haven't seen for 2 years and miss lots, and got myRavelry May Day International swap gift all the way from East London, thanks Estieknits :)
Yay! Gorgeous yarn in my very favourite colourways, some organic black chocolate mmmm and a notebook for knitting notes - much better than the backs-of-receipts I generally rely on :)
Finished one of the hiking socks. It looks real skinny but fits me pretty well - Himself is not here so I measured the foot against one in his sock drawer...And here's my little girl...

Another pair of socks

Finished!

Picture of my gaily clad feet.
Yarn: Schaefer Anne
Needles: Size 0 Bamboo
Pattern: Cable Rib - Interweave Knits Favorite Socks.

10 days from winding to wearing - not bad eh :)

A very Good Friday

Good Friday was a big deal when I was a child in Ireland. I went to Catholic school all the way through (otherwise known as "school" - secular schools very much the exception). By the time I was coming through the ranks the numbers of nuns was dwindling but there were enough of them around to have a pretty heavy influence on the favour of our education. "Holy Week" - of which Good Friday is pretty much the climax - was a very prayer/mass-heavy occasion. Also it's about the 38th day of Lent, so by now every cell in your body would be crying out for chocolate/biscuits/crisps/sugar in your tea. Most significant of all (as I got older anyway) this is the one day of the year that all bars close in Ireland. We'd always host/attend a big house party instead (not to be denied the ~25% of our nutrition that came from alcohol back then), but still.

But not here. It's a regular work day, something that I always find odd, even after 9 years in the US.

The Internets is acting up something terrible. I keep having to reconnect to the wireless connection, and about half the time I get the message to "contact the person who manages your network". You mean, me? Grr. Add to that my work e-mail connection is down and so today, working from home, I have to catch up on reading...not talking about the latest Marian Keyes here, you understand, but 30-page somnolents on industrial sanitizers and the like...

To answer Knitty McKnitknit - I can't knit at work, not exactly, but I can knit on the metro to and from, and while on conference calls if I'm doing something straightforward. I am very lucky.

I've been having fun the last couple of days putting together 2 swap packages and 2 birthday presents. The HSS3 sock swap is about ready to go out, once the blocked socks dry. I made 4 stitch markers last night, (and while I had the beads out I made myself an Eastertime necklace.)The sock swap also required a Harry Potter-related knitted pattern to be sent. Hmm. Couldn't decide what to do here as there are so many free patterns out there that my swapee could download herself. Then at the end of February this little guy popped up on the pattern-a-day calendar: So I decided to make a Hedwig kit, and sent my copy of this pattern, with a cover sheet about Hedwig and all the yarn needed.

How good is your Friday?

hi YAHH

(Insert Miss Piggy karate kick sound here)
Looing good eh. One flutter-by sock down, one to go.

Don't know what's up with this last picture, I hope it's the camera angle and that I haven't actually knit a size 15 sock...

Getting down to it

Hogwarts swap socks done! Done done done, yay... Not blocked yet, but still pretty good :)

Back to purple cardi. Been a few weeks now - I had a couple of rows done on the second front (the one with the cable) before I realized I forgot to leave selvedge stiches on the side. Rip & do over. I still like this - but I'm noticing that the colour of this yarn is different depending on the lighting...

That Friday feeling

Well - not yet. Still got a few hours till quittin' time (though it is 5 o'clock somewhere...)

Sip n Knit was fun as ever on Wednesday. Lynn spoiled us again by bringing us lovely yarn samples from a wonderful etsy seller who generously donated them:

The Christmassy one (called Kwanzaa, actually) I saved for Twiceknit at Lyn's suggestion - to persuade her to make another cute Christmas garland this year. (Ravelry link). It's never too early.

The other, a lovely fingering wt. yarn, is called Parrot. I may just have to go to etsy to buy loads more...

I spent my time at Sip n Knit working on the Hogwart's socks.

I will be so glad to see the back of these...my purple cardi hasn't had a look-in for nearly 2 weeks :(

Four hour's knitting yields...

In my hotel room in WV, with no distractions apart from an audiobook (Prision Diaries, by Jeffrey Archer) I got almost to the heel of the second sock:This time the spiral pattern faces the other way. Hope to make a final push at Border's Sip n Knit tonight.

I did make the time to go for a walk, in the lovely long evening. It's so pretty out here...

The glass is half full!

One sock down. You can't see my v exciting and imaginative pattern too clearly, but I think it's turned out well. Am trying to cast a critical eye over it, and decide if I'd be happy to receive it from a stranger. I think I would. I mean, who wouldn't like to open a mystery package full of yarn-related stuff?

It occurs to me that the colour of the wall is probably closer to the bronze I should have paired with blue for Ravenclaw house colours. Oh well...

Socking along

Almost to the toe of the first Hogwarts sock. It's going to be blue and yellow, only. The Ravenclaw colours are blue and bronze but this is as close as I could get, and have already invested quite a bit (of time, effort and $$) in these socks. After faffing about with different patterns last week I finally settled on the simplest possible pattern that is not just stockinette: the body of the sock is k3 p1 around, with the purl stitch moving one ahead each row to have sort of a spiral effect. You'll just have to imagine how lovely it as, as my camera is all out of batteries.

Went to see "Miss Pettigrew lives for a day" at the weekend, on a rare date night with DH. It was very sweet, set in 1938/39 before all hell broke loose in London.

Off to West Virginia again, to do some training. This probably means there will be some sort of weather emergency in the next two days in the Washington DC metro area. You have been warned...

Another Monday

Purple cardi officially half done!
OK well the pieces are half done - still have both sleeves and one front to go. And the button band, blocking, and sewing... Once I finished the first front I put the purple aside and started on the Hogwarts Socks. I got some knitting graph paper and graphed out a simple diamond-within-diamond pattern, using my 3-shades-of-brown=bronze idea.
Silky tan colour for the cuff - CO 64, 24 rows. Started on size 2 dpns and transferred when enough rows were done so that it was stretchy enough. Then I introduced the other colours to the mix. This is when things got tricky.

I guess I'll try this a little longer, at least see if I can get one diamond done and then reassess - what you can't see is the approx. 30 strands of yarn tucked into my wee sockling there. And these 4-5 coloured rows took longer than the preceding ribbed 24....let's see how it progresses tonight.

On writing news - for the Knitting Poetry competition I have so far managed one fairly lame haiku. It's so difficult when you are restricted to just their words - the word to isn't even there...

And I'm not one of the Amazon.com breakthrough novel award winners :( I guess that would have been a lot to ask. But hey - it's an honour just to be nominated right?!?

Ravenclaw socks

OK - need to get cracking on these socks. Other Hogwarts swap folks have their boxes ready to send - eek. I went to the yarn store yesterday (they now know my name - probably a sign I've been there too much lately). Here's what I've got to work with:I think I'll make the main colour blue, with some kind of pattern - yet to be created - made out of the other colours, collectively imparting a bronze pattern - maybe some 3-d effect cubes? Hmm must go dig out some graphing paper...any good pattern suggestions are welcome!

KnitPicks delivers!

A box of yarn from KnitPicks came this week. Happy Days! Here's my Ravenclaw/Hogwarts swap sock yarn:

Eek! Now I am starting to panic - these colours are not at all what I wanted - and yes I know, I did order them myself and the colours are as described...I thought the variegated yarn would be more blue/brown. Instead it's blue/violet...off to the lys this weekend I guess (darn ;) )

I also got 10 balls of this: Palette in Rainforest Heather

Which is going to be the Printed Silk Cardigan from the current Interweave Knits. That's the plan anyway...

After I opened my lovely KnitPicks box I was inspired so I went along to the Sip n' Knit at Borders. Deb and Lyn had also got yarn in the mail and were similarly stoked. This was posted near the cash registers - now we're official!

I love my knitting group. If you live anywhere within a 50 mile radius, come join.

While there I volunteered to make a wooly pully - helmet liner for the troops. Cascade very generously donated 10 balls of Cascade 220 to our group for this project. Here's my progress:

Purple cardi is still on the go of course. Inching my way up one front. I got to the decreasing part and called it a night at Border's.

I do find it hard to concentrate on knitting/crocheting just one thing at a time. Here's my Noro Transitions scarf I made last weekend:

I like it...but it may get frogged. I don't like the way the ends are very small bands of colour compared to the rest of it. And I have come to dislike the alpaca bits a lot. Too hairy and fuzzy. Maybe I'll make this into a striped vest along with that creamy coloured aran I got in Ireland? Still looking for just the right pattern.

And here's what happens when Mommy is so busy knitting that DS's bedtime sneaks up:

Fell asleep on the kitchen floor, playing with his Lightening McQueen. Ahh.

Phew! OK Knitpicks it's up to you...

Finally got the sock swap sorted out, and found out my swapee is a Ravenclaw...so I ordered some blue and light brown sock yarn from Knitpicks, hopefully that'll come close to the blue & bronze House colours. I tried to stay away from variegated yarn in the hope that maybe for once I'll knit a patterned sock with a visible pattern.

My purple cardi is coming along. Yesterday I did 30 rows or so in Borders in a bonus holiday Monday Sip n Knit session, then I went home to concentrate on the armhole decreases. So far so good...I think.

I've also been working on something supercute (according to me anyway) for the babysitter, who turns 16 this weekend. Unfortunately, as her age (and competence) advances, so does her social life. May have to start looking further afield, the thought of which almost makes me want to stay in till DS is a teenager.

That's right, no pictures, again. DH took my camera on a business trip. He has to take pictures inside a -20°C freezer. I told him if he comes back without that camera, don't bother coming back (unless he brings yarn as peace offering).

Hogwarts Sock Swap

Hmm, very worried about this...I signed up for the ongoing Hogwart's Sock Swap after reading about twiceknit's encouraging experiences...and heard nothing. Ah well, I thought, missed the date or something. Then I got an e-mail yesterday from someone busily knitting socks for me - midway thru the 2nd one actually - and as I never heard back I assumed I was out and haven't as much as cast on - eek!
Guess I should enable my spam folder? I've only participated in one swap ever and it was fun - I'd hate to be a swap reneager...

Wednesday night knitting

Last night I went along to the local knitting guild instead of to my usual perch at Lynn & Denises' Sip n Knit in Borders. Some Sip n Knit ladies had been chosen to positions of power in the Guild (Needle Beadle, Lady Kitchener) and invited us - with the promise that not only would it be the usual knitting fun, but also there was a swap, providing the opportunity to offload all the yarn, notions and patterns you were done with. I offloaded two big carrier bags full - some acrylic but also some nicer stuff - and several issues of Crochet! magazine (subscriber beware). I resisted the temptation to take a knitting book from 1982 - totally worth it for the hair and make-up... and I scored this:

pink+black+ sock yarn=happy camper.

I actually have no socks on the go right now - I'm knitting something cute for Mum, which I hope to have finished before Saturday (more when finished), and this scarf for me:

Pattern from One Skein wonders - very simple. I'll update later with the designers name. I've been knitting this on the train while commuting, and on conference calls at work :)

More cookies, more yarn, another gift

Cookie swap # 2 tonight. I mis-counted the number of people, or the number of cookies, or some damn thing. So some people are getting 5 cookies. With cranberries instead of raisins. Ah well.

WIP: I've become the 975th person to start the Knitty Fetching pattern. Sooooo pretty. I'm also putting the finishing touches on the knitted Salmonellae for my co-workers (I am a microbiologist ye see). Can't link just now for some reason but both patterns on the wonderful Ravelry. Pictures coming.

Also augmented the yarn stash at the KnitWits Boutique sale (509 Main st Laurel, MD) this weekend. 15-30% off everything! I was very restrained, considering. Got some teeny tiny size 0 sock needles, and a couple of other circular pairs, 4 skeins of sock yarn, and the makings of a huge scarf - 9.5ft long!* Very nicely laid out store, friendly folks working there (aren't they always!) The sale goes on till Dec 31 - go on, treat yourself!

*The yarn harlot was right - crochet is 3x faster than knitting - but takes 3x more yarn. Four balls of yarn it took to make this scarf. But it took maybe 4 hours! And its lovely and twirly. And did I mention it's 9.5ft long??OK neither of these are great pictures, but trust me - it's long, and a cinch to make. Here's my (own) pattern:

MC - Gray Encore Mega

CC - Reg/Gray di.Ve Starship.

Size P/15mm crochet hook.

Make a chain 180 of stitches with MC. Make a treble crochet in the 4th stitch from the hook, and make treble crochet in every stitch to the end. Cut yarn.

Make 2 double crochet in each treble crochet with CC. Cut yarn.

Make 2 double crochet of CC in the base of each original treble crochet. Now there is a ladder of MC with thinner ladders of CC on both sides.

Add single crochet MC to each double crochet CC. Weave in ends.

No need for tassels - this scarf is long, and twirls because of the difference in tension between the foundation chain and the crocheted stitches.

Wrap round and round your neck and keep warm!

Ravelry Swap loot

Look what was waiting in my mailbox yesterday, from katanknits in Philly -

Over 500 yards of beautiful sock yarn...I may make something other than socks from it actually - a cardi from this yarn would be wonderful!

Thank you katanknits!!

cookies and knitted hats and more yarn

Firstly, hats off to Stacey for hosting a very fun cookie swap on Wednesday night. Instead of terrorizing the local Border's the Columbia Sip n Knit group all went over to her house. She never told us she was Martha Stewart's cousin; the place was beautifully decorated, holiday music playing softly, comfy seating, punch, coffee, and cookies on every surface...

There's me in the red stripes (these are Pheelya's pics from the Meetup.com site, thanks Hon!) Stacey even made up cookbooks of all the recipes -I have another cookie swap Monday, I may use something from this book instead of to my usual recipe which is :

Raisin Ginger Cookies

Ingredients
3/4 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup dark Karo syrup

1 egg
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
1 cup raisins, washed

Directions
Cream together butter and sugar and then add Karo and egg. In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients and then add to creamed mixture. Blend well. Stir in raisins. Roll dough into 1 inch balls and then roll in brown sugar. Place on ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 325 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Makes 30-36.

These went quickly, which was very gratifying, till I remembered I packed them in handy wee snowman bags which also could hold cookie overflow.

So between eating, drinking and chatting I finished up the hat I was working on (for FIL) and started another (for MIL).

I will model them another time - I think these may actually fit the intended recipients though! I also went home with a great big tin of cookies (tin also supplied by the wonderful Stacey) and an overflow bag.

In other news - this week I was the lucky recipient of a sweater's worth of yarn from my neighbor -
Paddy is keeping guard. The yarn is from the UK, a Paton's brand, named Wendy. Black with flecks of color, absolutely beautiful. So once Christmas knitting madness subsides I am going to (drumroll) knit myself a sweater.