SNOW

Finally.

FINE.A.LEE.

It's snowing here!

squeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

 herringbone pattern

fluffy puffy snow!!!

solitary leaf

I just love snow. It's been snowing all day. I will try to take more pictures later, when it stops.


xxx

little somethin' somethin'

I made this a while ago, and I guess I forgot to post it! Shame on me!

cuuuuu-hoot!!!

It's a teensy tiny mitten to go on my keychain. It just worked out that the cuff (plus a round or two) is a different color than the mitten body. Happy accident!

Isn't it adorable? I just love it. I want to make like 1,000 of them.

Well, maybe not that many.

A few more, anyways.

Anybody want one? If you leave a comment, I'll make you one! Your choice of color!!!

For some reason I've been bitten by the crafting bug. All of a sudden I want to craft, like, everything! I cast on a new cowl for myself, I'm still making a baby blanket and of COUrSe hexipuffs. But I want to do more things! Like quilting (English paper piecing, to be specific) or sewing. Or making candy wrapper purses or something. Though I don't have a bazillion candy wrappers to use. I'd have to cut up newspapers or magazines.

Yes, I contemplated cutting up newspapers to candy wrapper size! Insane!!! 

I've slipped into insanity.

Get the glue and glitter!


STAT!


xxx

Electric Blue

Whoa.

It’s a good thing I decided to hand wash my socks after I wore them instead of just throwing them in with the rest of the laundry. These socks.

My ribby stitch socks

They kinda bled while washing.

pretty, huh?

The water was so blue. Like Kool-Aid blue. Electric blue. I don’t know if it would have made everything else in that load of laundry blue too, but I’m glad I didn’t have to find out.

Side note on these socks: They’re huge. I wore them, and by the end of the day they came off my foot with my slippers. Easily.

How do sock knitters do it? How do they make socks that actually fit? Do they just make a whole lot of them first? I knew in theory that if socks were made a little smaller than you thought they should be, that’d be better, but I didn’t think that was the reason. That the socks stretched out so badly when you wear them. I did so many tests too, before knitting my first pair. But none of them were actually wearable as socks. Maybe that’s where I went wrong. I was just trying to figure out how many stitches to go around my foot. Not really knowing how those stitches would translate into wearability.

Sigh. Perhaps I am not meant to be a sock knitter. There are so many cool patterns out there for socks, and I keep looking at them thinking “ooh, I’d like those!” but... my results are just not satisfying. They are at first! I’d bind off the cuff and thing “Hey! They are sock shaped! YES!!!” But then I wear them, and then it goes downhill. Do I keep trying? Ending up with a whole bunch of socks that are kind of unwearable? Is that what all good (experienced) sock knitters have? A drawer full of bad socks?

I need more practice.


Read: moar yarn!


xxx

January Blues

The holidays are over. I'm taking down the decorations this week. That always makes me sad, removing the lights, the cheer.

The January Blues.

Though the punks in the neighborhood seem to have forgotten what day it is. They're acting like it is New Year's Eve again and setting off their fire crackers. Not the ones with the pretty displays of lights high in the sky... the obnoxious ones that just produce a huge echoing bang. They think they're so cool. Hmpf.

I've been doing a lot of knitting lately. Here's some newly finished socks:

Ribby Stitch socks on Ravelry

They turned out pretty good. I did this pair two-at-a-time, so I don't have the problem of one sock being larger than the other one! That's a good thing, right? The heel looks a little funny in the photo above, but they fit nicely. yay! I might take a break from socks though. By the end of these, I had finishitis. I couldn't wait for them to be done.

I am also working on a capelet of sorts. I am always cold this time of year, so I wanted some sort of poncho/cape/warm covering. I didn't want anything complicated, I'm sort of just winging it.

cabled capelet

It's a light pink, almost peachy, kind of skin-tone pink. I put a 4x4 rib on the bottom, just to keep it from rolling up. It's knitting up much more quickly than I imagined it would, too. Since it's so big, I'm able to do it in the round. That means no adjusting the loops (like you have to do with Magic Loop), you just knit around and around and around. Every now and then doing a cable stitch. I thought for sure I'd get bored with this project, doing the same stitch on the entire thing, but I am kind of enjoying the mind numbingness of it. Maybe that's why it's going so quickly.  I'll eventually do a kind of raglan shoulder on it to decrease at the top. I'm curious to see it finished!

I'm also working on a cowl for my mom, but since it's a birthday gift for her (that she requested), I can't show it here yet. After she gets it, I'll post it here!

So that is how I've been dealing with my January Blues. Knitting up a storm.

What do you do to beat these dark depressing days?


xxx