Jumping on The Bandwagon

I finished my Clapotis just like 13,157 other people. I resisted the urge when it first came out in 2004. I actually thought it looked stupid and boring. Then I saw a few in person and they were pretty cool.

This September everywhere I looked people were knitting them. 3 were being knitted at the knitting guild meeting, one was being knit at my knitting group, and they all looked so nice. When I saw this sock yarn but I didn't want to make socks I knew right away what I did want to make. I bought the yarn and sat down on the LYS couch and asked for a print out of the pattern. The knitter sitting next to me just whipped hers out of her bag and handed it to me.

I started knitting it and I showed it off at my spinning group and the next thing I know they are showing up at show and tell there too. The bandwagon is making its second turn around.
These are perhaps my worst photos ever. It's so hard to capture the purple/green color of the yarn. Cameras have a hard time with red and, apparently, purple/green.
Look at the ripples. According to my French to English dictionary clapotis means lapping. The lapping waves of the sea.

Just look at it.

So I thought it would be fun to pull out my other bandwagon knits. This is fitting since the Swallowtail of the last post is very much a bandwagon knit. I have a few more on the needles right now.


FLS (February Lady Sweater, so popular that it's no longer spelled out). What a sweet knit. It's in time out because this is an easy sweater to make too big. I knew that and I think I over compensated and made it too small. I'm not ready to deal with that.
Monkey socks. This is my second pair. Bandwagon knits are usually popular for being charming. Monkey fall directly in that category. Fast to knit, hard to put down, and just difficult enough to make a knitter feel cleaver without actually stressing any brain cells. Perfect. Perfect enough to knit twice. The yarn, however, is not perfect. These are in time out for splitty kinky yarn that is fiddly to handle. This yarn is for the epitome of the bandwagon knitting, Rouge. One of these days I'll cast on.

The Best Knit Ever

Girasol is finally big enough to go on circular needles.
To get those needles I had to finish this.
Swallowtail Shawl out of my hand spun silk.

I kept on running out of yarn and having to spin more. That lead to the variation in the color and the reason that it took a year and a half to knit. The actually knitting took very few days. It's impossible to put down.
It's so soft. It's not very lustrous because the base fibers are bleached tussah, but the shawl flows around my body like water. There's nothing like silk.
Every time I look at it or touch it my insides fizz with happiness. It's that good.

Random Acts of Kindness

Look what surprised me in the mail today!
Someone I barely know, that has never met me, but knows I'm having a hard time right now sent me yarn and some smiles. Right out of the blue! I'm amazed and touched she took time to make up a package so nice and pretty for me.

Thank you, bluecanary. Blessings to you and yours. (((hugs)))

that's 1600 yrds of laceweight merino dyed with onion skins

2 Hours of Knitting

That cute little triangle shows 2 hours knitting
I'm taking a class at The Studio and we are knitting a lace project together. Girasole by Brooklyn Tweed in Silky Alpaca.
I learned a fiddly new cast on that will make the center hole disappear. I learned that the pattern works out at the end of the row stop and count anyway. I got a good ways in and counted for the first time since casting on. I had a lace repeat too many. The 8 stitches I was off there would grow to about 64 stitches off in the final piece. Add to that the fact that other facets of the shawl wouldn't fit I chose to rip it out and start all over. That means I had to take another 5 or 6 tries to get the fiddly cast on to work.
The ruined pink sweater is now very nice non-ruined pink yarn. I can't wait to knit it again. I guess I need to reset the stash counter. Hmmmm.

Another hmmmm. I have poison ivy on my neck. How does a person get poison ivy on their neck in October? That's a rhetorical question. I can think of many ways a person could get poison ivy on their neck in October but I didn't do any of them.

@*#& Moths %#*

We grow moths big and furry around here.
Look what Sumi-e did to my sweater.
And here too. This sweater made from a nice minimally processed wool yarn, Beaverslide, that was innocently sitting in my hand wash laundry basket.
Bad kitty. Bad, bad, bad kitty.

Good dogie sleeping in the sunny yarn pile. Joey's never ate a sweater.
My Winter Hoodie out of Eco yarn that I started last year is all knitted and blocked. I hope it's dry by tomorrow (I washed it 3 days ago) so I can take it to knitting and learn how to sew in a zipper. I have big plans for this sweater. I love this yarn. It smells like raw fleece when it gets wet. I love that sheepy scent.

I've picked up my EZ Nalgar again. But it's no longer a Nalgar. I was thinking that the fair isle band I wanted to do would be too bulky under the sleeves in an aran weight yarn. So it was put into time out. I received new inspiration from Made in Brooklyn and I only had to add a few stitches to turn it into a Huron. Since I picked it back up a sleeve is done and it's time to cast on the second.

Lately I've caught myself thinking. I'll do that tomorrow or I'll do that when I move or I'll do that when I'm working. With that change I'll change me too. I've gone through many life changes. Such thinking rarely works. It turns out that the move or tomorrow or a new job is hard enough to deal with on it's own and after all it's still the same me. So instead I took those things I wanted to do but later and did them today.

The most photographic is the top shelf of my waiting to be filed papers. It used to look like the bottom two shelves. Now it does not.

Chilled

It's late and night and pouring rain. I have Joey in my lap and everything feels right. My craft fair is over. Sales were good the company was better and the weather was cold but not as bad as it could have been. It was a nice way to spend a weekend.

I came home cold to a chilled apartment. It's October and for as long as I have been paying bills October and April are the two months I live without heat or AC. It's a fun little game that makes a huge savings in my bill, but last night I would have loved to crank up the heat. My apartment fell to 65 but since I only heat to 62 turning it on would have been pointless. It's going to get colder and stay that way. I'll get used to it but something about the first cold night is extra hard.

Last year I turned on my heat on the first day of winter. I'm thinking about this year. It will be harder since I'm home looking for work. Last fall I was in a heated classroom 10 to 12 hours a day. Also, I just know that this year is going to be a cold one. Picking a date could be bad planning. So instead I'm thinking about going until the inside temp reaches something low like 50F. That might be too extreme. 55F might be cold enough. But I don't need to decide until October is over.

I finished my Circular Shrug. It looks fantastic. I'll see if I can get some photos up.

Day 3 of being sick

And I'm now at my favorite place of being sick. A friend made a grocery store run for me and picked me up more Tylenol and Rocky Road ice-cream (thanks sweetie). I took the Tylenol and it's knocked my fever back to 99.7 and got rid of all joint aches.

It would irresponsible for me to leave the house but I finally feel well enough to knit again. So after sending out 2 more resumes with my generic cover letters (I don't feel that well and the jobs aren't that great to write them new ones) I am going to curl up on the couch and knit for the rest of the day.

Now is a good time to do a check up on the stash.

I finished the Nutkin socks and gave them to their new home.

In exchange she gave me 6 balls of yummy yummy Noro Silk Garden.I'm knitting it into a Circle Shrug. It's mindless knitting and very close to done so I might finish it tonight.
Scored from the 50% off shelf at The Studio 10 balls of Classic Elite Countess.
This yarn is slated for a shawl color sweater suitable for Sean Connery in Hunt For Red October but in a purple and pink, cashmere and angora, yarn.

So the tally is one ball of sock yarn out sixteen balls of yarn in.

Thankfully, I don't keep score like that. It's one project out, two projects in. That's not getting me any coser to my goal. But, wow, what yummy yarn I have now.