Wednesday, November 14, 2007

many things have happened lately

1. I joined a knitting circle called Knitting Liberally. We meet in a cafe and knit for a couple hours on Tuesdays. It's fun! We chat about stuff. We're supposed to talk about liberal-type things, which sometimes happens. We are also organizing some charity knitting, which will be fun.

2. I participated in Sock Wars II. It's a KAL where everybody knits a pair of socks really fast and then mails them off to their "victim". When you get a pair of socks in the mail, you are dead and you mail your unfinished socks to your assassin, who then tries to take out your former victim. I got my dossier on a Friday evening, when I was totally unprepared. I went out and bought yarn on Saturday morning and had the socks in the mail Monday before I left for school. Then I waited about a week for my victim's socks to get to me. The second pair were less interesting, so I more or less dawdled until my own death came. Whee!

3. Rhinebeck was totally awesome!!! I went with a girl from my Finnish class, Colleen. She was looking for fleece for felting and I was looking for yarn. I bought some lovely purple tweed from Ginger Hill Farm for Roam. It's on a cone! I got some merino lace in a lovely gray and some green bamboo-blend sock yarn from Maple Creek Farm. I got five skeins of Morehouse Farm Merino for Cherie Amour. I got some angora/wool blend in a really pretty light blue from Oasis Farm Fiber Mill. That's going to be a neck warmer type thing, I think. Last but not least, a deep purple lace merino from Silver Moon Farm. It was totally awesome! I spent a ton of money but it was well-timed: I got my paycheck, including six weeks of backpay for my second job, the day before. We also went to the totally awesome petting zoo and played with tortoises, baby goats, kangaroos, and other awesome animals. I communed with some roving and decided that I really needed to take up spinning, but also that I probably shouldn't buy any totally beautiful roving before I knew what to do with it. We saw the sheepdog trials, which were really fun, touched some qiviut, which was craaazy soft and craaazy expensive, and ate fried ravioli, cheese fries, and apple crisp. It was a really good day.

4. I started a Dayflower Daydream shawl, but was quickly distracted by the test shawl.

5. I have been working on Snowflake's Saranac. It's getting huge and really close to done. I have a few more rows, then I just need to bind off, pick up and knit the collar, bind that off, sew the zipper, graft the armpits and sew the collar, and weave in the ends. Really really close. It's getting hard, though, because it's not at all portable any more.

6. I started Roam, but I haven't done much with it either.

7. I've been test-knitting a shawl. I started out sort of stressed because the thing is pretty big and I wasn't getting it done in a timely way at all. But then I found out that I had done triangle 2 (there are 4 triangles that make up a rectangle) totally wrong and I needed to rip it out. So I'm stalled there. The designer wasn't mad, and so now I guess I sort of have a break since it's obvious I won't be finishing it any time soon.

8. I've been listening to lots of knitting podcasts recently! So far, my favorites are Stash and Burn, Lime & Violet, Sticks and String, and Knitters Uncensored. Podcasts are awesome.

9. I've noticed that if I don't knit enough, I get a little testy. I've advised my housemate to tell me to knit some more whenever I get grumpy.

Ok that's all for now!