And the winner is...

Aunty-Marion of the UK!

Please check your e-mail/blog and I'll get your mailing details.

YAY!!!!!!!

(number chosen by incredibly scientific random number generator at random.org)


Tomorrow: Actual knitting pictures. I promise. Maybe even one of the tea cozy in progress.

Tea Cozy

I have started the first of the tea cozies. Once I got going (as usual) it is zipping by pretty quickly. I'm pleased about that. Starting to knit in the round on DPNs is a little scary, however I only had to rip out once, so that's a major plus. Also, I found that I can't knit through the back loop on the first few rounds of M1s, so there are some lovely (evenly spaced) little holes around the bottom. Ah well. At least it looks nice. Plus the bottom gets two layers, so they probably won't be noticeable at all.

Bruce's sweater (Terry's Pullover)

I'm most of the way through one sleeve, which is great. The other sleeve should go quickly. I'm still having a problem with the transition between knit and purl on the right edge of my ribbing. Just that one stupid stitch. It doesn't matter how hard I yank the sucker down, it is still a little loose. I'm not sure how to fix that problem.

Ella's Cardigan (Featherweight Cardigan)

Still on hold. It's going to take some more gumption to get to the point where I want to complete (what seems like) acres of stockinette in laceweight. Ugh. I'll get there. I promise.


...


I don't know that I'm going to be posting every day for a while, as I'm kind of madly knitting at the moment. But hopefully I can borrow a work camera and take some pictures in the daylight of my projects in the next few days.


Oh, and of course, I'll announce the winner of the Ysolda drawing tomorrow. :) YAY!

The Koolhaas is done!

I wore it all weekend. Well, except for Saturday when it was raining/snowing. I like a brim to keep the weather off my glasses on days like that.

Anyway, the Koolass (still cracks me up, Janey) had is done, someday when I'm near a camera and sunlight all at the same time, I'll post a picture.

Also, I'm about halfway through a sleeve for Bruce's sweater. The sleeves are going superfast.

I got lots of good knitting time in this weekend, mostly because we went to Brooklyn to Sunday dinner at a friend's apartment last night, and that was a good two and a half hours of subway time. There really isn't quite anything like happily knitting with your daughter asleep in your lap.

Although I did, at one point, have a slightly crazy guy sitting next to me asking incessant questions and then mimicking the motions of my hands for a few stops. Snort. Gotta love New York, right?

So that's about it for an update. Can't wait to post pix of the Koolhaas...

So many blessings!

Wow. I had a ridiculous response to my giveaway yesterday, (yes yes, to ignore my blather and enter the giveaway, the post is immediately below) due in no small part to Ysolda herownself who tweeted about it. I think I am in danger of becoming a slavish fangirl. (ok, yeah, not creepy, at all, right?)

Anyway, THANK YOU Ysolda. You rock. But we already knew that.

It's been super cool to see hits on my blog coming from all over the world. ESTONIA, represent! It's the total map geek in me that loves looking at all the weird town names, and occasionally using google earth to peer down into the various little towns and imagine what it would be like to hang out there and knit. Is there a good yarn store there? Decent beer? (or wine. I'm not picky. really)

Though honestly, I am fully aware of the fact that to most of the people coming to my blog, the Bronx is about as exotic as it gets.

1. Nobody comes here unless it's for Yankees games.
2. It's got a wee bit of a bad reputation. Oops.
3. It's the most misunderstood borough.
4. It has the biggest collection of art deco buildings outside of South Beach in Miami in the world.
5. It is the home of the Bronx Blue Bedroom Project, one of the coolest things ever (and just happens to be run by a fiber artist.
6. Also the NY Botanical Gardens (my own personal backyard)
(oh, and there's the zoo. And Woodlawn. And Wave Hill. And City Island. And Orchard Beach. And Poe Cottage. And Arthur Avenue. And...)

Here's my favorite sculpture at Woodlawn. It's done by Piccarilli for his nephew (I think) who died in WWI (again, I think). Piccarilli is known for such things as the Maine monument in Columbus Circle and oh, a little something called the Lincoln Memorial in DC:

Picture Courtesy of my Awesome Husband

So, on to actual knitting talk

The Koolass (koolhaas) is almost done. I have one more regular round and then the decreases start. This pattern. Is. Awesome! Thank you Jared Flood (J, you should check out his blog. He's a great photographer).

Bruce's sweater (Terry's Pullover from some recent issue of Interweave) is coming along. I discovered that a lot of my problems with switching between k and p stitches come from stitch markers that are too big. Go figure. And here I thought i was going insane.

Ella's sweater (Featherweight Cardigan) is still on hold for the time being. I'll finish it eventually. I swear.

Currently the Noro for the tea cozies is calling for me. Viiiiiiiiirrrrrrrgiiiiiiiiinaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Knit meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

A Giveaway!

Yay! It's about time, right?

Anyway, because of my own silliness (stupidly accidentally ordered two hard copies. Not sure how that happened.), I have the opportunity to give away one of Ysolda Teague's Whimisical Little Knits 2 books, SIGNED by the author/designer.

(sorry for the lack of a decent photo. Stupid nighttime)

So. The rules are, leave a comment on this post by Tuesday December 8th at midnight (Eastern time U.S., or GMT -5.00. Ok, I'm not good at figuring this stuff out. Just leave a comment by the end of your Tuesday, wherever you are), and I'll use the magical random number generator thingy to choose a winner.

If you don't win, and you don't already have a copy of her book you should go here and buy one, or order one from a Ravelry download thingamajig. She's an amazing designer, and an independent, and we should support the heck out of her!

Plus, you know, she looks cute when dressed as a dog.

The Tea Cozy

Here's the very sexy Noro that I bought for the tea cozy(ies) that I'll be knitting soon.

Shade 163 (top) and Shade 147 (bottom) Again. Sorry for the craptacular photos. Taken at night. I gotta work on this camera situation. It blows. The colors are much sexier than this. I promise.


Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww yeah! Are you feeling the sexiness? (well, ok maybe not. The are going to be tea cozies after all... but but but, NORO!)

A Commission!

I've been asked by one of my dearest friends to make a tea cozy for her mother for Christmas. I spent a lovely day searching out patterns on Ravelry, and have narrowed down my search to three or four. I spent some time reading the patterns, to get a feel for them, and to maybe figure out how long it will take me to knit the pieces.

It's a win-win. I adore my friend, I think her mother is awesome, and, hello, KNITTING! I've never made a tea cozy before, so this will be a fun project. I'm thinking her mum might get more than one tea cozy if the first one knits up quickly. To the yarn store!

Other Knitting

I still haven't finished the body of Bruce's sweater, but I did start a sleeve today. I have been knitting on circulars (needles, J) so much recently that I'd completely forgotten how awesome it is to knit on straights (still talking about needles, J, get yer mind out tha guttah). It's a nice change. I find that I hold the needles completely differently with straights than I do with circs. Anybody else do this?

The Koolass (Koolhaas) is coming along slowly. Plus, I'm not knitting this evening so as to give my poor sore fingers a break.

A Cleansing Breath

I need to step back and take one from work and... well, work mostly. It's pretty stressful right now, and I am not going to go into it, but my dear husband is my saving grace. I think sometimes that if it weren't for him I'd be off picking nits out of my own hair living in a mud hut in the furthest reaches of Alaska. It's good that I have somebody around to help me deal with my hermit tendencies.

I'm also having one of those weeks when I'm starting to wonder about my own sanity. For the most part I'm a fairly go-with-the-flow person, and have been able to deal with the bizarreness of living in a foreign country (if you think the Bronx is not a foreign country... then you've never been here) where the customs of the locals are so amazingly different from my own. But lately I've been so much on edge that things that I used to be able to ignore (or sleep through) are causing me to enter a state where I'm so enraged I can barely function. One example: Loud music. I'm not talking just slightly obnoxious, I'm talking about so loud that I can't even hear somebody talking to me when they're standing right next to me. Just writing about this is making my blood pressure go up. Which is weird, because my blood pressure is usually as close to dead as somebody can get without actually being dead.

I'm off to read some Byron Katie (she's pretty amazing, and exceedingly helpful for me to pull myself out of my own b.s.) and calm down for a while. I think the stresses I've been under for the past year are catching up to me right now.

Now, with 100% more pictures!

So the thing that really sucks is that I get home after dark every day now (December 21st can't come too soon) and I can't actually take any pictures except on weekends when I'm usually running around doing other stuff. Also, our camera sucks. I need to get a new fancy pants camera and learn how to use it. I figure that will be the next phase of my digital knitting life (sometime next year).

Anyhoo, here is Bruce's (Terry's Pullover) sweater as it stands right now:


I swear, this thing is shrinking as I knit it. The body is supposed to measure 16.5 inches. I measured last night, and I got 15 inches. So I wasall excited, thinking I only had 1.5 inches to go. Which is easily done in two subway rides. I measured tonight when I got home, and I had 16 inches. Wha? Then I knitted 4 rounds, which per my row gauge is .5 inches, and re-measured, and got 16 inches again. ARGH. THIS SWEATER WILL NEVER BE DONE!

It's also hurting my hands a little bit. I think because it's so heavy. I might say screw it and just start on the sleeves for my subway project tomorrow, because of the weight issue.

Speaking of hand pain, here's the Koolass (thank you, Janey. I've had to rename this one now):

It's an extremely enjoyable knit, however I'm so paranoid about my cables getting all bloopy, that I'm cranking down on my gauge and yanking the yarn tight. The cables, as you might (or might not) be able to see, are not bloopy. This is a good thing.

The incredibly slow progress, and the likelihood that this hat will be too small for Georgia is not good. But it is fun practice. And I'm sure she has a doll somewhere that this hat will fit.


On a final note, my daughter has been obsessed with being a "poppin hairstyle girl" - whatever that means. In order to achieve the perfect look, she places a dishtowel on her head, her winter hat over it, and puts on her sunglasses. To wit:



Hat: Children's Place
Dishtowel: Crate & Barrel
Sunglasses: Winnie the Pooh
Poppin Hairstyle: All Georgia