This.is.why.I.knit

This sweater. Right here. This is the reason that I learned to knit.

A perfect blend of Malabrigo and lace detailing on the hem and button bands.

When I first started this sweater, knit from the bottom up, (oh, it's Talia on Ravelry btw), I started with the lace hem, and was hooked. It's a bit fiddly, but o so purty, and I started having dreams of it.

I know I haven't shared in a while, been super busy loving being off work and playing at Crafty Planet, because, let's face it, working at a yarn and fabric store really isn't working at all. It's playing.

A F*(& ton of acrylic yarn

I had a mission for this week, to purge the acrylic yarn and organize the stash. Little did I know that this was to be a mission of extraordinary proportions, one which made me ponder just how many grandma's had to pass away for me to acquire this huge amount of acrylic yarn????

The before picture:

I actually thought I would only need this one bin for the acrylic yarn in my stash.

During:

In which I realize I need more containers, and that my yarn addiction has most certainly gone way too far.

Hey! There are some empty containers there!

This is the end result, all of my lovelies that I actually love and use put away all nicely in their bins.

Please note, this picture is only reflective of half of the closet. The other half is just as nice, and just as full of yarn. Please don't judge me.

This is the actual amount of acrylic yarn leaving my house.

Seriously people, how the fuck did I get 4 garbage bags and 1 huge tub FULL OF ACRYLIC YARN!!!!!

Xmas gift preview

I got on a large Subversive Cross Stitch kick, so everyone gets one this year

Have you looked on top of your fridge lately?

Holy crap guys, how the heck does it get so dirty up there? Honestly, all I do is put stuff on top of it, it's not like I stand on a ladder and cook up there or anything. Even the cats don't go up there (I think).

As you can tell I got on a bit of a cleaning bender today. Since I've been home, I have started to notice things. Like the dust buffaloes roaming the dessert of our home and the cat hair that is collecting into little kittens all over. I don't even mean to spend 3 hours cleaning, it just kinda morphs into this "lets sweep, o crap look at all that dust, lets dust, lets pull everything off the shelves and rearrange, lets mop, o look now this room looks so much cleaner than the other room now I have to do the same to that room" and that gradually escalates into me on a stepladder with 409 cleaning the top of the fridge.

God help us all when I get to the basement.

I leave you with kittehs sleeping through it all as if the mess had nothing at all to do with them

I missed October

I have no idea what happened, but October just didn't exist in my blogging mind. Oh, lots of things happened, but for some reason the blog didn't get blogged.

I'll try to catch you up now, starting with today. Today I did a very adult thing, I had a physical exam for life insurance screening. Hopefully you're all saying I'm way to young for life insurance, but with this whole I don't have a job except for the lovely work for yarn set up I have over at Crafty Planet, I realized that if something happened to my husband, I would be living in a cardboard box with all of my yarn trying to knit scarves to sell for my Miller Genuine Draft Lite habit. And that just made me sad. So I convinced the hubby we needed life insurance, which also entailed an exam by an extremely young medical assistant. The hubby offered to come home from work to help supervise the exam in case it was "weird", I think he had visions of me propped on the dining room table with my feet in stirrups and Dexter trying to get the lady to play ball. Thankfully, it wasn't that weird. Though it was weird, don't get me wrong. The teenager was way overly made up for the appointment, didn't wear gloves or ask to wash her hands before drawing blood, and the whole urine sample thing was just strange.

But there were no stirrups. Maybe I should tell him there were so he can be freaked out for his own exam?

I've also been in a bit of a stretch of knitting scarves. I love scarves. Really. I love matching them to my outfit or mood or mismatching them depending on what Mulder looks like when I show it to him for his approval.

This one is a neckwarmer that buttons in the front, it's pretty, but it looks a bit odd on. Maybe it will be better with a jacket?

This was done in Noro Silk Garden, cast on 280 sts and knit sideways garter stitch until it was wide enough. I love this one!

This one was a bit of an obsession. Crafty Planet got a bunch of Malabrigo Rasta in that was gorgeous, but a bit expensive and low on the yardage, only 90 yards for $22. But then a coworker worked up this scarf and I instantly had to have my own! It's so lovely and smooooshy!

This last one kinda kicked my ass for a while. There are 24 rows, but only 23 are written out. So naturally, I knit about 2 feet of the scarf knowing the whole time that the cables looked off, but hoping that knitters hope that if I kept on knitting it would look fine magically when I knit the next row or the next row, and eventually I just gave in and looked at the pattern again and lo and freaking behold there was the 24th row. I had knit for 2 feet losing a row every 23 rows. Those cables were off my friends. I'm secretly happy I didn't take a before pic, because it really is stupid how off those cables were and I just kept knitting and hoping and knitting and watching Hawaii 5-0 distracting myself with Alex O'Laughlin's oh so lovely shirtless self. The blame isn't entirely my own.

But it sure is lovely now

The last pic is of what I think is the 2nd part of my Mom's Xmas present. Yep, it's still yarn. Technically it has been 6 different scarves, but I didn't like any of them, so they are all yarn again. Maybe wrap the box of yarn with an IOU for when I finally decide on a scarf pattern I like for it?

Sweater kick

I am on a serious sweater kick. Maybe it's because I actually got a sweater knitted that fit me, or that it's getting colder, but I just finished another sweater, the Mondo Cable Cardi from Chic Knits, knit in Cascade Eco Duo, a lovely lovely yarn that is 75% alpaca and 25% merino which makes it oh so warm and oh so soft and drapey. I knit a little shorter for the body as called for because alpaca tends to stretch, and I didn't want it down to my knees. The top photo is pre-buttons, and the second is after the buttons were added.
This photo shows the nice color of the yarn better, it does have a very subtle striping effect that isn't too weird.

Now onto the next sweater, you'll have to wait and see!

Just a few things

Just a quick post to update you on the things I've been knitting since leaving my job:
A pair of fingerless mittens: Pattern Endpaper Mitts from Ravelry

A pair of socks, pattern Crevasse on Ravelry

A baby sweater, pattern Baby Yoda on Ravelry

A sweater (yes, THE Sweater) that turned out lovely btw, pattern Cassidy on Ravelry

A blanket, pattern Modern Log Cabin on Ravelry

And a few hats, can't for the life of me remember the pattern name, but they're on Ravelry too.

I've also been working a bit here and there at Crafty Planet on Johnson St. in NE Mpls. Please come by and see me on a Sunday afternoon! I can't tell you how awesome that place is and how much I love working there! Finally, a job that feeds my yarn and fabric addiction!