Golden Woods

Hello friends!  (this probably will be centered again.  Blogger is terrible)

We spent the weekend in Jim Thorpe, and we discovered that there are a lot of yarn shops within 45mins of town!  There is also one lovely shop in town, called Hooked on Yarn, and the owner, Diane, is a fantastic lady.  I didn't buy any yarn, but we talked to her about her life, Jim Thorpe, and our lives for almost an hour!  It was the best way to spend time in a small town, just hanging with the locals.  I also loved the weekend because we didn't really have anything planned.  We knew we wanted to go to the yarn store, go hiking, eat a nice meal, that was it.  We did all of those things, and the next day went to a couple of wineries!  Wineries!  In Pennsylvania!  Who'd a thunk it?  We went to Mountain View Winery (amazing logo, right?) and Sorrenti.  Mountain View was better.  They exaplined their wines, had a distillery "tour" - it was mostly the owner standing in front of the still and explaining how to make moonshine - and they make tasty chocolate truffles imbued with one of their dessert wines!  It was great.  

I also made a lot of progress on my yellow hat.  I do knit slower than I thought I did, though.  I've finished the brim and 1.5 repeats of the pattern.  It's taken me quite some time to do just this little amount!  I'm still worried about how much yarn I have though.  I hope I have enough to finish!  If not, I'm making a trip to Purl Soho this Thanksgiving to get some more!  It might not match, but I may just have to make it a completely different color!

The cascading leaves pattern.  The pattern repeats three times around the hat.

So what else is happening?  I mentioned a few project ideas last week.  Let's talk about number 4:  "Unknown custom pattern for mom, in Unknown yarn, in either dark blue or wine color".  My momma is hitting a big milestone in her life in April - she's turning 70!  She has asked me a couple of times to knit her something, and I just haven't.  I started on some socks, but they failed and stressed me out, so those got frogged.  Last time she was in town, I showed her my shawls, and she requested one, in either dark blue or dark red/wine.  I've decided to make this happen.  However, it can't just be any pattern.  It must be large enough to wrap, and have nice decorative elements - some lacework, and some stockinette or garter stitch.  I found this peacock shawl, which is gorgeous, and mom does love peacocks, but I want to do some more research before I buy a pattern, especially a $10 pattern!  It does deserve the $10 though.  Also, based on how slow I'm going on this hat, I may need a long long time to make it!!!  I don't want to try something super crazy and only have 6" ready for the birthday!

As for yarn, I really need to start researching some yarn.  Knitpicks is having their sale now, but all of the yarn I've bought from them I've been rather "meh" about.  I like the yarn, but I don't think the colors are as vivid as I would like them to be.  I will probably buy some of their yarn to try some more socks and maybe bulkier hats.  Wandering Wool always has lovely yarns, and I've never knit with Madeline Tosh but EVERYONE loves it.  I'll take a look at the stores, see what I can find.  I need to purchase by EOY I think.

I leave you with this lovely remixed Mr Rogers.  It's all about learning who you are and feeling good about what you are doing.  It's also a nice tune.

Hat Update

It's going to take me a while to be consistent with this "blogging" thing again, but I've got to start somewhere!

Hat Update:

Look! The brim of a hat! Unjoined, but will be joined in the next round!  Woo!

Ignore potato quality yellow light.  It gets dark here early!

But let's start at the beginning, shall we?  In our last episode, I was deciding between NINE (9) different stitch patterns for my hat.  I ended up selecting this one, called Cascading Leaves:

It knits up very nicely.  How do I know this?  Well, I knit a swatch!  I knit it in the "round", with a 24 stitch cast on.  The cast on itself was different for me, as it was a tubular cast on.  I followed this video by Ysolda Teague.  Once you get the hang of it, it's very rhythmic.  However, if you stop paying attention, you start getting the knits and purls confused!

Front of swatch

Back of swatch

As you can see, I didn't do a full swatch in the round, I did one row, then loosely held the yarn and went to the next row.  However, I didn't cut the back to lay it flat.  I'm concerned about how much yarn I have, since this is only 160yds total, and I don't yet understand how much yarn is used up by each type of stitch.  I then pinned out my swatch, loosely, to see what measurements I got.  Turns out my pattern width is approximately 3".  

Based on that 3" measurement (which is 14 stitches), my cast on for the full brim of my hat is 96 stitches!  I cast on the first three rows using the instructions from the tubular video on size 8 straight needles.  The next row, I put the knitting onto the size 7 circulars on a 20" cable, and I re-organized the stitches into a k2, p2 pattern.  My next row, I will join the brim in the round and begin the real knitting in earnest!  I'm excited!  :)

Other Knit Items:

Even modular men need mittens!

I wanted to do a quick knit, so I made some tiny mittens.  I'm thinking they may be cute gift tags, ornaments or keychains to give as gifts!  If I make them smaller, they could totally be earrings!  Rav link here.

Future Projects:

I'm heading to Vegas for a week-long conference, right after Thanksgiving (Oh, and I'm also going to be in a car for at least 8 hrs driving on the way to Thanksgiving), and I'm optimistic this hat will be done or almost done before then.  I've started thinking about other projects I want to do, that I could work on in all of this travel time.  Below is a quick list, that I will extrapolate on in another post.

1)  Tutu, in KnitPicks Duchess Heather

2)  Kai Mei by Cookie A, in Copper Corgi Midnight

3)  Unknown custom pattern for me, in Wandering Wool, Udaipur Fingering, Cranberry Bog

4)  Unknown custom pattern for mom, in Unknown yarn, in either dark blue or wine color

Other News:

I'm doing pretty well on my P90x endeavors (I say this as I skipped today, and only did Ab RipperX yesterday).  I'm impressed that I've kept up with it, and I actually enjoy parts of it.  Enjoy it enough to WANT to do it!  It's so weird, especially for my lazy, slow-moving butt.  ha!

I've started reading a book called The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything.  I struggle a lot with enjoying what I do for a living.  I don't have many goals, never really had many in life, other than to be happy and comfortable.  I'm understanding that may not have been the best of goals, and now I am starting to look into what do I really enjoy, enough to make a career out of it.  I know I have many interests, and many places I would rather be than at work, I just need to prioritize and figure out which of my many interests I could pursue more.  It's rather confusing, as I've never really been one for solving problems.  I'm good at pointing them out, but solving them, that's a whole other story!  I can definitely talk to other people when they have concerns.  It's much easier to work out a solution when it's not your own!  There are too many thoughts in my brain, so making sense of them really does take quite a bit of effort!  I think I'm going to spend some time with that book now, before I head to bed.

Thanks for reading!

J