Get out your old Weezer albums!

Greetings at the start of Winter Storm "My Name Is" Jonas!  It's blustery outside, and the city has decided to shut down.  What does that mean?  Well, it means I got to leave the office at 2pm today!  YAYYYYYY!


via GIPHY

I decided to spend my newfound free time providing a quick update on the blog, since I missed this past weekend.  I had a very good reason for missing this weekend - tasty homemade dinner with some friends, and then a rousing game of PANDEMIC.  It's a game where the whole point is to work together to save the world!  HOW AWESOME IS THAT?  We unfortunately didn't succeed, but next time... we got this.

In actual knitting news, the hat has been mailed to my dad, so here's hoping he receives it soon!  I lost the receipt, so I hope it doesn't get lost in the mail!

I went to Fibre Space in Alexandria last week as well, because they said they had Sweet Georgia yarn.  Lo and behold, they did!  And I bought a lot:

Well I mostly just bought a lot per my usual standard.  This is for my mom's shawl, and since I'm not sure what exactly I am making yet, I decided to err on the side of caution.  And it's pretty, so I'll find other uses for whatever is leftover.  And yes, I did wind that one cake with the winder dad made me.  Worked just as well the second time!

I enjoyed walking through Fibre Space.  It's much roomier than Looped Yarn Works (but LYW is in Dupont and an old townhome and has the same amount of variety, so you can't really fault the size).  I looked at the samples they had there, looked at the difference between fingering and lace, and decided to stick with fingering.  I may end up selecting a lace weight pattern, but I wanted to knit something a little bit heavier.  I hope she likes the color... she wanted more of a navy, but I didn't see anything I liked, so I went with a more modern blue-grey.  But the yarn is super smooshy and I love it!

I also have decided I want to learn how to knit Continental, because I am working on a double knit dishcloth, and it is taking FOREVER.  It takes almost 10 minutes to do one row!  And it's only 60 stitches!  So I'm hoping learning Continental will help the speed factor.  Maybe it will also just help the general gracefulness of my left hand.  It's pretty clunky.

Alright, I think today is a short post.  Will write more later, as I am snowed in this weekend.  

Jyoti

A slow week

This week was pretty slow with the knitting, but I did three fun things:
1) Undid the bind-off on the Simplicity Cowl.  It was actually easy.  I used this tutorial .  She made it really easy to understand, and even though I had a 'suspended' bind off, I still managed to understand I only interacted with the same stitches she was.  I was very proud of myself, but no pictures, sorry.  Maybe I'll do a tutorial just for that, but how do I get the camera to only look at my hands?  Do I need a tripod?
2) I bought new yarn.  And LOTS of it!  Lots for me, at least!  I knew I was getting ready to cast-on for another project, so I went to my LYS, Looped Yarn Works, and pet every yarn in sight!  Haha.  I forget how expensive yarn can be, and my naturally frugal (miserly? nah, I don't think I'm that bad, I have some shiny things) nature won over, so I bought Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine in the Cobalt Mix colorway.  Still not the cheapest, but isn't it so pretty?

And then, on Friday, this popped up on my Facebook:

haha!  Frugality FTW!

ooooo, KnitPicks clearance??  I must investigate!  And investigate I did.  I ended up with several skeins of their Imagination hand-painted (socks for me and mom), two skeins of wool of the andes for the bf's scarf, and a couple of Bare skeins to try out some food color/kool-aid dyeing!  I'm so excited to get them!  I'll post more about them with photos when I receive!

I have never bought so much yarn, and it cost so little with the Knit Picks sale!  I'm really excited to try new patterns and techniques, plus using new yarns and needles (I still haven't used my circulars)!  Yay!

3) I was out in Pittsburgh this weekend for my bf's friend's wedding.  It was so much fun, and the food was super delicious - the bride's dad is a chef!  Omnomnomnom.  Not to mention, site-seeing in Pittsburgh involves seeing this:

It looks like Mr Rodgers trolley!

and this:

   

 

Rubber duckie, you're the one...

...plotting to take over the world! Muahahahaha! ::ahem:: 'scuse me.

All-in-all, a super fantastic weekend!  Unfortunately, it left very little time for knitting, and my cowl is still not finished.  Time to get cracking, have a great week!

Oop, you're on fire!

Hey all -

Sorry for the late post, we went camping this weekend, and I needed to decompress before I did anything!  This weekend was super duper fun, with lots of food, smores, improvised tools and just good times with good people.  We headed out the Cedarville State Forest, which is only an hour drive or so out of DC, and then spent the weekend enjoying some beautiful weather!  We went on a hike that was maybe 6 or 7 miles and saw some gorgeous scenery and plantlife!  I also got some work done on my Simplicity Cowl and I am only one large repeat away from done!

Working on Simplicity by the glow of the Honorable Eustace Fairbanks Bojangles, the 3rd (Ireland) & 4th (Wales), Esq., Marquis de la Cedarville.  Yes, we named our campfire.  He was a good campfire.  :)

I was hoping to be done by tomorrow, but that's definitely not going to happen.  After I finish, I need to figure out the best bind off for sewing the two edges together, and then I have to block and sew.  Hopefully I will be done soon, because I may join the Deep Sea Wanderer KAL with bear-ears den on Ravelry.  If you notice, this is a pattern from Lit Knits by Audry Niklin, which I referenced in an earlier post.  I ended up buying it, because I really want to do these patterns:

Avonlea

Motoring Madness from Frog and Toad

Down the Rabbit Hole

Deep Sea Wanderer (of course)

My first knitting book purchase ever!  wooo!  The only other knitting book I have is Vogue Knitting, which I received as a gift from my good friend in Calgary.  It's a great reference book for sure, but not a cool fun pattern book.  Although, I think Lit Knits is waaaay above my skill level.  But everything looked so pretty and clever, and it combined books and knitting, my old favorite hobby and my new.  I had to get it!  Let's see how long it takes me to make something instead of just looking at the amazing photos (oh yeah, another reason I bought the book: the photos are GORGEOUS).

I was thinking of maybe going to the Fall Fiber Festival and Sheep Dog Trials next Saturday, but I may not be able to.  It's about 2 hours away, and I don't own a car, so we have to zipcar, and the costs can just add up.  Plus the time it takes...we'll see.  We're also going to a farm on Sunday with some friends, so I should probably do something at home this weekend, right?  Sigh.  I know, I lead SUCH a difficult life.  "Do I have fun here, or here?  So many hard problems to solve! Woe is me." :)  haha.  And at work, I'm only in the office two days, on site the other three.  Those will probably feel like fun too!

Well, back to LotR with actors commentary as I finish knitting this cowl.  I've been hankering for the movies for the past couple weeks, decided to make it so.  Have a great week everyone!

J

Halfway done!

I'm working on the Simplicity Cowl at a steady clip (at least for me), and I am halfway done!  The scarf can wrap around my neck once as is, with no stretching/blocking, plus, when I actually weighed the yarn, I have used 50g, with 60g remaining.  I am good to go, wooo!  Sorry for the "It's 11pm-and-all-I-have-is-this-incandescent-lamp" photo, but see below for progress.

Doesn't this look like raw ground turkey?  Ahh, incandescent light with pinkish yarn.  Tasty.

I'm pretty thrilled about it, and pretty proud of myself.  I actually worked on it a bit at work one day, since I had to work late waiting for the engineers to send us something.  It was a little surreal.  My friend did comment on my knitting style - I think it's English.  I wrap the working yarn on my right hand and completely remove my right hand from the needle to work the stitch.  It doesn't seem very efficient, but it works for me.

In other news, bf and I did some shopping.  He was successful and looks very dapper now, with super professional shoes and bag.  I was not so successful, but I did get some amazing turquoise Cole Haan flat shoes for $30!  woo hoo!  This weekend also included an always-fun festival at the Botanic Garden (the Junior Botanist Festival), where I saw some ferns that gave me some pattern ideas with their sporangea; and weiner dog races.  And what could be cuter than weiner dog races?  A weiner dog race where one of the contestants is wearing a lobster costume!  ("of course," you say.  "That was exactly what I was expecting.")

The lobster dog also did a little dancing trick during the trick competition.

Okie dokie, short post today.  See you all next week!  I may try and post again during the week, but we'll see how work and other adventures play out.  Bye!