Wordless Beautiful Socks Made with a Retired Colorway (but you should totally check out the colorways that are available, they're all beautiful)

Twisted Fiber Art

Mostly Wordless Sunday- Spinning

Self striping- I'm spinning the matching hank now.
3.7 ozs, 243 yds

Restocking the BT'oKT

Somewhere along the line, I thought I had an extra week before I headed out to Asheville for the Winter Retreat. Imagine my surprise when I actually looked at the calendar and counted those little boxes... It's a good thing that I got all of my workshop materials mailed last week.

One of the things I did notice in December, as I chose hats from the Big Tub 'O Knitted Things, is that I'm obviously not drawn to masculine or neutral colorways. Only one or two of the three thousand hats that I knit last year even came marginally close to being Man Colors (and yes, I know, there's no such thing... but a great many men still do not want to wear pink. It is what it is). So one of my jobs this year is to stock the Tub with some Manly Hats.

 This one comes close. It's all made from teeny little balls of leftover yarns- I used up an entire baggie of them. Woohoo!

I'm pretty sure this one doesn't qualify, but boy is it pretty. It's from some Twisted Fiber Arts bamboo yarn (I don't remember the colorway, but it doesn't matter, EVERY Twisted Fiber Arts colorway is beautiful), and I'm thrilled there was enough to knit a whole hat with the single yarn (and not just because there were no ends to tie in).

The hat I'm working on now is all Neon Pink, Yellow, and Green, so... nope... not Manly, but it's awfully pretty too. But if maybe one out of every five hats or so is sort of neutral, I should have enough for my guys come next Christmas.

Adventures in Smarty Pants Phones, and other stuff

My phone service provider merged with AT&T a long time ago, but it wasn't until this morning that our service actually switched over, and I was able to use my new iPhone. There's going to be a learning curve with this thing, I can tell. Not the least because the keypad is QWERTY, which should be easier for me (given that I, you know, try to make a living using a keyboard), but I've been texting with an ABC setup for about 4 years, and the transition is going to be bumpy. And I'm scared silly of the auto-correct function. I read Damn You Auto Correct, and I know what horrors can ensue (!!WARNING WILL ROBINSON!!- this site is absolutely and totally NSFW, and it is even less safe for the young ones- bad words are everywhere- so click at your own risk. Also, put your drink down first).

I am also afraid of what this is going to cost me- I signed up for the plan with an extra 200MB of data downloading, but I have a sinking feeling that I'll run through that in the first week. I'd better hie myself to the store and upgrade my contract. Sigh. The first app I downloaded was Facebook. The second, was Kindle. The third was RunKeeper, which unfortunately confirmed what I knew already: I am slow and terribly out of shape. It also told me something that I didn't know: my route isn't as long as I thought it was. What I assumed was a 2 mile run is actually only 1.85miles, which means that my usual 3 mile run (which I am building back up to), is probably only 2.5. Sigh. Working on the assumption that public humiliation will speed me up and keep me honest (not that I've ever fudged on the running- not on purpose anyway), I'll let it autopost my stats to Facebook every day. That'll show me...

Next up: getting some iTunes. I made a deal with the devil last year to download Crystal Bowersox's American Idol recordings, so I already have an account. I hadn't gotten any of Casey's songs this year, but I'll do it now, since an iPhone is also an iPod (and a computer, and, for all I know, a 3-speed blender).

And I suppose I'll succumb to Angry Birds.

But all that was this morning. Before that, I did some jewelry making.

This set is for Sister #3.

And I did some knitting. I finished the Bobble Leftover hat.

These yarns are Twisted Fiber Arts Playful- Netherfield, and whatever solid green came with Firefly.

I had about exactly enough yarn to complete this hat (with about 15 yds of Netherfield left-the green ran out before I could finish the final band properly). I have had a hard time getting clear close-up shots lately, and this one is so nice, I just had to include it. BTW- the Knitting Back Backwards Bobble is one of the techniques I teach in my Little Tips and Knitting Tricks class.

One of my knitting friends is going through a rough health patch, so these socks are for her. This yarn is Twisted Fiber Arts as well- Kabam (bamboo/wool/nylon), in the Valkyrie colorway. The flash really picked up the sheen. It's wonderful yarn, and I'm truly knitting love into every stitch.

I do intend to work today, but maybe first, I'll figure out how to take movies with the new phone...

Traveling Woman, and Netherfield has been let at last

I had a lovely time at knitting yesterday, but was distressed to find that sitting and talking for 3 hours with great friends, surrounded by good coffee and yarn fumes, left me shaky and exhausted. I guess I have a ways to go before I can call myself recovered.

I did finish knitting the Traveling Woman Shawl on Thursday night, so I could show it off yesterday.

As with all unblocked lace, it looked pretty pitiful, all wrinkles and blobs.

Ah, that's much better. Though I discovered the drawback to knitting lace with a totally inelastic yarn- it doesn't stretch (duh). I really wanted to block the edges into scallopy points (as I've seen in many of the bazillion finished Traveling Woman photos on Ravelry), but even though I bound off with needles 2 sizes larger than what I used for the knitting, I simply could not shape the edge into anything but a straight line (not that those are straight edges, but you know what I mean). It's certainly pretty, but not what I had envisioned. Final dimenions: 52"x 19"- a perfect little neck warmer for chilly mornings, and it's light enough to wear as a scarf over a nice sweater indoors.

I also learned what most lace knitters already know- brushed mohair is not ideally suited to lace. It's gorgeous, don't get me wrong, but I lost a whole lot of stitch definition by using a fuzzy yarn for this project.

On the other hand, a little fuzz is a good thing. Since this was a very fast project, I think I'll knit it again, with a wool yarn, just to see the difference (maybe with some beads along the edge).

But even when I'm healthy, I can't knit anything that requires concentration (and even easy lace has to be paid attenion to) while I'm at my knitting group. So I dug through my Twisted Fiber Arts Stash Box (yes, it has, and deserves, its own box) and finally decided to wind up my skein of Netherfield (in the Playful base- a heavy fingering weight, my absolute favorite yarn for socks). Netherfield is the colorway that I coveted the most, back when Twisted consistently sold out their entire stock 15 minutes after opening up sales. It took me several months to score a skein, and it's been sitting in the box, waiting for inspiration ever since. I finally realized that this yarn doesn't want fancy stitches, or patterning. A plain vanilla sock is the perfect display for the amazing dye work of Meg from Twisted. Look at those colors! Worthy of the name, no? Can you not see Jane and Bingley cavorting among the flowers? (and at least on my monitor- those colors are exactly what the yarn looks like in person).

And as a special treat, after knitting, I stopped at the Starbucks in the Target store and had a Salty Caramel Hot Chocolate. I am not given to initials in all caps often, but OMG!

(side note: it's just as well that I didn't see the nutritional info on that little cuppa until just now... again OMG!)

Traveling Woman Shawl(ette)

My friend Pat asked me to look over the Traveling Woman Shawl  (Ravelry link) pattern because she was having a hard time following the chart, though she freely admitted that she had a hard time with charts in general.

I said I'd download the pattern and check it out (it's a free download) for her, and we'd get together on Friday, before our knitting group meets, to see if we could figure out what the problem was.

I saw immediately what her problem was- though almost 5,000 Ravelers have this project in their queue, and 183 pages worth of them have posted pictures and comments, and though I didn't read them all, I could see that very few had any trouble with the instructions whatsoever- I thought the instructions and charts were a little hard to follow too.

I'll grant you that I'm no lace expert, but every lace pattern I've knitted (or designed) with a chart, has ALL of the stitches for each repeat right there, on the chart. For this pattern, every row begins and ends with K2 and a YO, but those 3 sts are not on any of the charts, which confuses my brain mightily. When I follow a chart, I don't want to have to memorize additional stitches- I want them all on the chart in front of me.

Even more mystifying, Row 2 on both the A and B charts are basically *not there* except for the center stitch, even though every other row is represented fully. I cannot for the life of me figure out why that row wasn't drawn and charted like every other row.

Now, these are very small criticisms, and experienced lace knitters will have no problem whatsoever following the instructions or charts, but I can see why Pat was having trouble. The pattern itself is lovely, and the lace is easy (it's a variation of the Horseshoe Lace pattern, which is funny all by itself, given how obsessed I've been with that repeat for the last month), and the shawl is easily enlarged from a small neck-decoration to a full-sized shawl. I do recommend the pattern, as long as you can remember to add those uncharted 3 sts on every row, and you can just work Row 2 without further instructions.

It's a very quick knit- I started it mostly because I thought that would be an easier way to help Pat, but I've really enjoyed working on the shawl. I am on the final chart now (the openwork border), and may actually finish the knitting tonight (I decided to make the small version, even though I have plenty of yarn).

The repeat is gorgeous, and the yarn is even gorgeouser. It's from Twisted Fiber Arts, one of the yarns from the Luxury Yarn Club from a year ago or so. The yarn is Fluffy (90% kid mohair, 10% nylon), 450 yards, 120 grams, the dye pattern is Subtle (softly mottled), and the colorway is Vixen. Like all Twisted yarns, this is amazing stuff- incredibly soft and fluffy (just like the name), and the colors (red, orange, gold) are fantastic. This sort of brushed mohair isn't perfectly suited to lace knitting, but it's coming out really well (you don't want to have to rip this out, but so far, I've not made many mistakes) and it's going to be totally gorgeous.

And I'll have more than enough yarn when I'm done to knit a scarf (or maybe a really fuzzy doll sweater...)

Side note: this yarn and colorway do not appear to be available at the moment from Twisted, but that doesn't mean that it won't show up on the roster again sometime

Look what came while I was in North Carolina

My copy of 101 Sock Yarn One-Skein Wonders!

Like all of the books in the series, this edition is chock full of wonderful patterns and designs, all using a single skein of yarn- in this case, sock yarn. Of course, I jumped at the chance to contribute these:

I used Twisted Fiber Arts yarn, in Playful (the wonderful heavy fingering weight superwash), dyed in the Scorched colorway. I don't think Scorched is on the roster at the moment, but any of the wonderful Twisted self-striping colorways would knit up to the same effect.

I have recently been reminded that winter is on the way- so I'm glad these gloves are back with me, because they're mine! All mine!