Mandi Knits   » Knitting, spinning, crafts, and being a geek.

Obviously this isn’t knitting-related, but I had to share anyway.  My good friend Erica and her husband Alan “ferret-sat” for me the other day, and Erica (who’s a talented photographer) took some great pictures of the boys while they stayed with her.  Here’s a couple of my favorites:

Bink with a stuffed chicken.

The little old man, Shenanigans, chills on the sofa.

I finally cast on the She-Knits Melly Bag. I’ve had the pattern for quite a while and I’ve been meaning to knit it up forever, but just never got around to it. I think it’s the cutest bag! And size/shape-wise, it’s exactly the type of bag I love. This is also going to be my first attempt at felting, so wish me luck for when I get that far.

Gidget seems to be quite fond of this bag too. She hasn’t left me alone since I started knitting it. Tonight when I tried to photograph my progress, I turned my back to grab my camera and when I turned back to snap a picture, this is what I found:

Perhaps this is Gidget’s way of telling me she wants me to knit her a kitty-bed next?

Anyway, I’ve managed to run out of the yarn I was using (substituted yarns and didn’t calculate properly) so I need to make a trip to the yarn shop (darn!) before I can keep knitting. So I’m going to go back to my socks till I can get to the knit shop on Saturday.

I’ve had it in my head that I want to work on designing my own pattern. I have a pretty good idea of what I want to make but I’m experimenting with mixing in some cables from the stitch dictionaries in my library:

I just got my copy of The Vogue Stitchionary Volume Two: Cables in the mail today. It’s beautiful. I’d only flipped through the first two pages of the “Easy” cables section when I started exclaiming to Nick how amazing the book is. (Surprisingly, he thought it was pretty cool too…) Now I want to get the other two volumes on color knitting and various knit/purl patterns.
Anyway, not sure when (or if) my attempt at design will be ready for primetime, but I’ll post it here when it is.

Saturday was the sock workshop with Antje Gillingham at The Neighborhood Knit Shop. She was there to teach her technique for knitting two socks at a time, from her new book Knitting Circles Around Socks.

I was lucky enough to be asked to come help with the class because I’d gotten the book already for Christmas and had knitted a couple pairs using her method. (Which I adore and will never go back to doing socks the old way…)

The class was really large but I think everyone was able to get plenty of personal attention and help when they needed it. Antje was an amazing teacher and was so sweet and funny.

The project for our class was a pair of baby socks (pictured to the left), knit out of Cascade Fixation.

I’d never worked with Fixation yarn before. It’s a cotton-blend, I believe, and it’s extremely elastic. I think a lot of people weren’t too fond of it, but I thought it was kind of fun (at least for something different).

The booties are turning out quite adorable too. By the end of the workshop, most everyone had picked up their gussets and were working on the decreases to the foot.

I got Antje to sign my book too:

The workshop was from 9 till 4:30 and I think I hung out at the knit shop after that till 6. It was a long day. I picked up some yarn to finally make a Melly bag. I’m extremely excited about that! I also picked up a ball of Berocco Comfort to play with. I have an idea in my head of a sweater I want to try and design and I’m thinking of using that yarn for it. I’m working on some swatches with it right now.

Sunday was my 26th birthday. I wound up sleeping in till 1 o’clock. (For shame, I know!) I went out for a late lunch with Erica to Logan’s. Then she and I went shopping at some of our favorite places: Jo-Ann’s and Office Depot. (What can I say? I love crafts and office supplies!) Jo-Ann’s had a lot of cute stuff on sale: I got a cute coffee mug that was 70% off because it had the word “Love” on it and was in the Valentine’s clearance. I also got some rubber stamps 40% off that say “Designed by:” and “Handmade by:” — I thought they’d be nice for making tags for some of my knitted things.

Nick got off work at 4:30 and came home with a frozen custard cake from Ritter’s. (Mmm!) Erica hung out for a while and had cake with us. I opened cards and presents. All totaled, I got $125 toward my spinning wheel! Nick also got me an iTunes gift card. He said I could use it for audiobooks because he knows I like to listen to them while I knit. His parents got me lots of goodies — his mom has the most amazing knack for finding fun stuff. She managed to find me a calendar that has a different knitting pattern on every single day!

So now I’m recovering from my busy weekend. It was a heck of a good time.

(a.k.a. The entry in which I gush about the lovely people I am lucky enough to call family.)

My mom called this weekend to tell me she finished her socks! She posted a photo to her Flickr page but set it as friends-only viewing. I asked her why and she said because she didn’t think anyone would be interested in seeing them. I disagree.

Aren’t they lovely?! (Click to see a larger version of the photo.)

I can’t believe those are her first pair. I don’t think my first pair of socks looked nearly that good. If I remember correctly, she used Wool in the Woods Cherub and the pattern was Heather Strips and Stripes.

One of these days I’m going to get my mom to start blogging. (I’m currently working on setting up a site for her custom embroidery and quilting at UnbrokenThread.com.) I’d love to see her share some of her beautiful work online and get into the whole craft-blogging “scene” too. I mean, look at what else she finished over the weekend:

I wish you could see the detail of the quilting. It was the first project she’s completed on her long-arm quilting machine. I’m telling you, my mom is a crafty wonder-woman.

Then Nick surprised me over the weekend when he interrupted my knitting and audiobook-listening to ask if I had some scrap fleece around.

He wanted to make… get this… a radar detector cozy. Seriously.

Well, perhaps “cozy” isn’t quite the right term. More of a little sack to put it into so he could safely tuck it under the seat in his car out of sight… or something. (I don’t really claim to get it.)

I was so pleased that he wanted to do something (*gasp*) crafty that I was more than happy to put down my knitting and help. Not that he needed much help, really. He was in luck because I had some leftover blue fleece from the bedding I’d made for the ferrets not long ago. So he set to work crafting himself a little bag for his radar detector.

He wielded a rotary cutter like a pro and seemed as “at home” at the pedal of a sewing machine as he is at the gas pedal of his car.

I had this weird sense of pride watching him work on this project. (He’d probably think I was nuts if I told him that.) I just think it’s so cool that he can tear apart cars and rewire electronics but that he can also sew if the mood strikes him. He’s a pretty impressive guy.

Yesterday was so NOT my day for knitting. After finishing my Monkey socks (pictured), I was feeling pretty confident about my knitting prowess and thought I could cast on just about anything.

So, I decided to cast on for this vest. And I was psyched — my first “big” project!

My local yarn shop has had a sample of this vest on display for quite some time, and every time I go in, I’d admired it. Then when I was there on Saturday, Toni had just finished her version of the vest. After seeing hers (which was so perfect!), I decided I needed to knit this vest.

I bought 5 skeins of Cascade Nikki in Chocolate Twist for it. I came home, wound the yarn into lovely little cakes, and started knit-knit-knitting along on size 10.5 needles as recommended in the pattern.

It was really starting to look quite lovely:

I knit quite a bit more, joining the second ball of yarn after the first was used up, and decreasing to knit the back of the vest. I’m not sure what finally made me stop halfway through that second ball of yarn, but it suddenly occurred to me that I’d never checked my gauge. And I’d substituted yarn. And this vest was looking awfully small, despite the fact that it was ribbed and would stretch.

I grabbed my measuring tape. The pattern specified that I should be shooting for 12 stitches in 4-inches. I had something like 18 stitches in 4-inches. *headdesk*

I’m thinking I may pick up some Cascade 220 in a solid chocolate brown today, and knit it together with the Nikki to try and balance out the thick-and-thin nature of that yarn. I think it might make it a little easier to get gauge. (Or I may be completely wrong… I don’t know.)

Anyway, I abandoned my vest project temporarily and decided to work on knitting the second sock to the pair I’m knitting for sock club.

The first sock of the pair (pictured to the right) turned out quite lovely). The yarn is Schaefer Anne, a lovely yarn made from 60% merino wool, 25% mohair, and 15% nylon. (Keep that mohair part in mind.)

I love this yarn. I love it so much that since I knit that first sock, I bought two more hanks of this same yarn in different colorways. It’s soft and fuzzy and feels amazing on your feet.

I’d cast on the toe to the second sock a week or so ago, but I’d abandoned it when I got into working on the Money sock. I decided to get back to it tonight. The next direction on the pattern was to snug up the stitches where you’d done the figure-8 cast on. Okey dokey.

I started working across the toe, snugging up the stitches. Now, mohair, lovely as it may be, loves to stick to itself. So of course snugging up those stitches got a little difficult at times. But I’d tug and work the yarn back and forth a bit and eventually it would snug up and I’d move on to the next stitch. At some point halfway across the toe, I hit a particularly stubborn stitch. I tugged gently. I picked at it a bit. I tugged some more. Finally I yanked…

Um. Crap. That certainly wasn’t what I’d intended.

There’s really no salvaging it, and being that I’ve only just started this sock and I have more than enough yarn still on the ball, I think I’ll just start over. But not right now.

So that was yesterday’s knitting. A mess.

I’m planning on going to knit-night at the local yarn shop here tonight. Maybe I’ll pick up that Cascade 220 to see what I can do with my vest. In the meantime, I’ve decided to start an entirely new project that hopefully won’t give me quite as much trouble. Heh.

So I started a pair of socks for my grandma. I’m using the Pomatomus pattern by Cookie A. (’cause her Monkey socks rocked) and I’m using the Paca Peds sock yarn that I got a couple days ago. I’m hoping they’ll be super cozy and warm.

So I’m knitting while listening to Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off on audiobook and when that’s over I’m going to start listening to The Friday Night Knitting Club. (Yay Audible!)

Let’s hope today’s knitting is more successful than yesterday’s…

Sign-ups for new participants in Sock Madness 2 began today. You better believe I sent my sign-up request in. I’m a total glutton for punishment, apparently. I’m not entirely sure what I’m getting myself into or if I’ll be able to keep up with it. But I’d really like to try because I think this will push me to try some new things and expand my knitting skills.

Then there’s Sock Wars III which starts in May, which I also want to participate in. ‘Cause ya know… “assassinating” targets with socks?! I’m so there. (My husband is going to think I’m nuts though.)

Ya’ll, I better start knitting like this woman, pronto.

Anyway, I rushed home today so I could get a picture of the monkey socks in natural light for you all to check out:

‘Cause all the prior photos I took of these (in crappy lighting at night) just didn’t do them justice at all. I’m actually hoping that I might be able to finish these tonight. I’m getting faster and faster with the lace-pattern repeats, so I think it’s entirely possible. Besides, I have lots of goodies on the DV-R to watch while I knit!

It’s not that I want to get them done because I’m tired of them — quite the contrary actually. I really like the Monkey pattern. I think it’s the first sock pattern that I’ve knit that I would be entirely willing to do a second time over (and I just may do that, because this pair is a gift and I’d like a pair for myself). I just really want to get these out in the mail to the person they’re being made for a.s.a.p.

… and ya know, I have piles of sock yarn that I’m dying to knit up!

I’m really not a big fan of Valentine’s Day. I don’t mean to be a stick in the mud, or a traitor to the female gender… but I’m just not a fan of ooey-gooey romantic, mushy stuff. It all makes me kind of uncomfortable and squicked-out.

Therefore, I told my husband yesterday to not do anything special for Valentine’s Day. He and I agreed not to exchange anything. But of course, when I came home from work today, we both had cards for each other and he got me a box of chocolates that we’re sharing (he likes the milk chocolate, I like the dark — it works perfectly).

We’re both terrible with this. I hope this isn’t setting the precedent for our Valentine’s Days to come — agreeing not to get/do anything but then getting/doing things anyway. Silliness.

Anyway.

I also got a package with Loopy-kisses from The Loopy Ewe today! Here’s a picture of the fibery goodness in this order:

The top skein is Paca Peds from The Alpaca Yarn Company and the name of the colorway is “Singin’ the Blues”. I’ve been eagerly waiting for this yarn to come in stock at TLE. It’s for another pair of socks for my grandmother. She likes wearing her hand-knitted socks to bed because her feet get so cold. So I thought alpaca, warm as it is, would be perfect for the next pair of socks I make for her. She’s also a blue-jeans sort of lady, so that’s why I picked this particular colorway. I can’t wait to cast this on. I’m going to have to find the perfect pattern for it. (Suggestions?)

The second skein is Spritely Goods Sylph in “Sage”. I picked this color for myself. Purples and greens are pretty different for what I typically pick for myself (normally I gravitate toward blues and pinks). The way the muted colors mix together really appealed to me and I thought they would make a lovely pair of socks for springtime.