Happy Accident

I had my second Kai-Mei from Cookie A.'s Sock Innovations just a few rounds of toe decreases away from being finished for several weeks yet it just sat by my chair, tucked out of sight. This weekend, I finally pulled them out and finished them.

Yarn is Cascade Heritage in some non-descriptive color number.

Today I wore the socks and looked down to realize that the shoes I had picked quickly before running out the door this morning showed off the pattern quite nicely.

See?

I was so taken by this happy coincidence that I even put the socks and shoes back when I got home after going straight to the gym from work. I needed the picture that much.

Venting Frustration

There is no picture of a finished Vine Yoke Cardigan in this post. There is a finished Vine Yoke Cardigan in my apartment. It is not a Vine Yoke Cardigan that fits me. To distract me from the failure, I decided to make the antithesis of a woolen, knit cardigan. That object is a cotton, crocheted potholder.



Double sided, started after eating dinner and paying some bills, I still managed to finish it in one evening. It fits in my hand. It is making me much happier than the Vine Yoke Cardigan. I may be going insane.

Now that I've made it through NaBloPoMo, I'm going radio silent for at least tomorrow if not through the rest of the work week. I hope to reblock the cardigan this week before I inevitably give up the ghost and frog it. I'll blog about it once I can properly address it. On the upside, I'm not as big as I thought I was.

Actual Knitting Content

I have been knitting, I swear. For whatever reason, I just haven't been able to motivate myself to blog about it until now.

Around the beginning of May, I started knitting a circular lace shawl. In one month, this is how far I've gotten.



Not bad, huh? I've got about four repeats of the last chart left before I start the border. I'm only on the second 50g skein of KnitPicks Shadow. Lace weight is amazing.

An even greater yarn conservation method is to knit with something that's not yarn. When sorting through some old shirts for donation or rags, I decided to cut some up and knit a market bag.



It only took me two nights which is good because it was kind of hell on my hands. Granted, I also stopped as soon as it was anywhere close to a reasonable size.

To make the strips, I cut the hem off the bottom of a shirt completely. I then cut around the whole shirt in a spiral ~1/2 in. wide all the way up to the armholes. At least, that was my intention. There's a reason most of the stripes are pretty short and it wasn't the shirt's fault. Fat girl=plenty of t-shirt material.

I used US13 needles. Instead of fiddling with knitting a handle, I cut three more strips and braided them together and then tied them through a yarn over on each end of the opening. I'm not entirely thrilled with it and might at least go back and knit an i-cord to fasten to it in a similar manner as the braid.

Belated Geek Pride

In honor of my new t-shirt coming and finishing a pair of Rose's Wristwarmers in the appropriate needle size (last time I used US3 instead of US4) and in a yarn closer to the original color, I'm celebrating Geek Pride Day a couple of days late.

In keeping with the theme, I must pass along a video that a friend shared with me yesterday.

Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!

I finished the plain socks that would not end.



I wore them today and they were pretty comfortable. My feet were very comfortable when I learned about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. I'm not certain how to feel about this. I like when people play around with Shakespeare (see 10 Things I Hate About You, Hamlet 2), I like retelling of classic fairy tales. It could make for a thrilling read. I'm going to go think about Colin Firth's head being ripped off and get back to you.

It's Something

Behold, my first finished object of 2009!



It's the same pattern I used to make myself a hat from Drops and I kind of love knitting it. I don't even mind doing the picot hem because I find the results to be utterly darling. This time, I knit it in Patons Kroy and I think the results came out quite nicely. I'm going to wash it and then send it off to my mom. She's excited.

Not much else is new. The job is going well and I'm glad that I decided to renew my lease for another six months. Even if I had found a place in time, I would have had to move in the bitter wind and cold that we have been experiencing in Minnesota.