Slacker

I haven't had an opportunity to post in a while. I have been fairly busy with various projects, and I was abroad in the UK for a week or so to visit a friend.

I'm more than half way through the Tubey sweater from the knitty.com site. It wasn't very hard, but just a bit tedious. I'm knitting it in Lion Brand Wool Ease, which is cheap & warm. I didn't want to spend a lot on my first sweater if it was going to come out poorly, plus I'm all about the convenience of machine washing! Imagine my dismay, though, when I got off the airplane on my return from England and discovered 75˙F weather (it was in the 30-40˙ range when I left). I thought knitting a wooly sweater would be a futile pursuit, but now the weather is rapidly & violently changing back to wet, cold, mid-30˙ temperatures, so I can resume knitting my sweater. I will hopefully finish it and wear it before the weather finally decides it's really spring.

I found a set of bamboo double-pointed needles from US size 0 to 15, along with a set of circular needles in the same gauges on eBay. Considering they usually sell in craft stores for about $4-7 a pair, these were a really good deal. The big drawback is that they are coming from CHINA, and I've already been waiting almost a month. Admittedly I'm rather impatient, but I have 2 projects that I want to start that involve smaller gauge dpns and circulars. Socks and scarves!

The socks are going to be knit with Lion Brand "magic stripes" yarn. It's a 75% wool/25% nylon blend, but I don't think they will be wintery. I wear wool socks (♥ smartwool™) all year round, and I find them very comfortable. Again, cheap yarn—it's fairly cute, and this is my first foray into sockdom. At some point, I'll spring for nice yarn from Knitpicks.com or helloyarn.com and make fancier socks. I really love socks. It's almost a disease.

The scarf I have planned I guess isn't really a scarf. I guess it's a shawl by all accounts. Or a stole. I'm using Eunny Jang's "Print O' The Wave" pattern in a lace weight wool yarn that I got on eBay for a song. I'm going to take the opportunity to try out Koolaid dyeing at the same time, and try to acheive an obnoxious cherry-pinkish-red color. I think that sounds perfect for my style aesthetic. ;)

And speaking of Eunny—she is now editor of Interweave Knits. I've been reading her blog & drooling over her patterns ever since I figured out that I could knit. Granted, it's not been that long, but it always makes me terribly happy to see people get their amazing dream jobs.

Pictures soon.