Category: monthly wrap-up

Are we really done with May already? Yikes. At this rate it’ll be Rhinebeck season before I’m ready!

May was a busy month. I had two sisters graduate from college, one with a bachelor’s in nursing, one with a master’s in education. And then? I graduated! Behold, one Master of Library Science:

As you can see, it was pouring. Absolutely soaked, and I spent most of the day doing my best impression of a cat fallen in a well. It put a bit of a damper on my plans to take some traveling sock pictures — it was just too wet. But I walked, and I got to wear my fancy robes, so I am sure you will all bear up under the disappointment.

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LETTUCE SOCKS

Pattern: Thuja Socks
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock in Lettuce Knits
Needles: US 1/2.25mm
Notes: Sadly, I finished these too late to wear for Easter, because the colors are perfect for that, don’t you think? This particular skein of STR came from Lettuce Knits in Toronto, which I visited when I flew up to see my best friend J last summer. The color is named for the shop, so it seemed like a very good souvenir to me. I knit it up in my standby Thuja broken-rib stitch that I gravitate to for and promptly packed it away with the other socks for the summer. I did take this lovely picture of the eye-of-partridge heel first:

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MOM’S SHETLAND SHAWL

Pattern: Shetland Triangle
Yarn: Malabrigo Lace in Cactus Flower
Needles: US 5/3.75 mm
Notes: Written up here.

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VINTAGE VELVET KNOCK OFF

Pattern: Vintage Velvet
Yarn: Muench Touch Me in Burnt Orange, 3 skeins
Needles: US 8/5.0 mm
Notes: Written up here. So excited to finally have this done for myself!

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There’s a few other mostly-finished May projects: namely a tank top in a linen/cotton/rayon blend I picked up at Maryland last year, and a beautiful pair of Selbuvotter gloves for my dad. But the tank top isn’t quite satisfying me yet, and the Selbuvotter are a Father’s Day gift, so you’ll see both of those later.

I’m taking a tour tomorrow of the Library of Congress, so I will try to get a few traveling socks to make up for the rainy fail of my graduation day. We will make no mention of the fact that tomorrow’s forecast for DC is… rainy.

Ah, April. April went a little crazy this year. Temperatures jumping from 40 F to 90 F in a day, sunny (and then pouring all over May instead)… I think I’m glad it’s May, despite the rain.

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JO’S BRIDAL SHOWER SET

Pattern: Felted Oven Mitt and Trivet from Felted Knits by Bev Galaskas; washclothes in single crochet and seed stitch
Yarn: Knitpicks Wool of the Andes in White and Forest Heather; Sugar’n’Cream Cotton in Countryside and Summer Splash
Needles: US 11/8mm and US 13/9mm for the oven mitts and potholders; 5.5mm crochet hook and US 8/5.0mm for the washclothes
Notes: Exhaustive write-up here

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EASTER EGGIES

Pattern: Chick Egg Cozies by Derya Davenport
Yarn: Knitpicks Wool of the Andes in… yellow scrap
Needles: US 5/3.75 mmm
Notes: These were a quick little throwaway that I threw together for Easter. The pattern calls for using orange felt to make beaks. I did not have any orange felt to hand, but I had orange yarn, so I figured I’d just embroider beaks. I now have a pair of rather dementedly evil-looking egg cozies.

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COCHIINEAL SOCKS

Pattern: Basic stockinette.
Yarn: Knitpicks Felici in Cochineal
Needles: US 1 / 2.25 mm
Notes: I bought the yarn solely for the name, cast on 62, did 2×2 rib til I got bored, and then just went to town til it was time for the heel flap. They are exceedingly pink, but that’s what you get when you name your yarn after little dye-bugs.
Side note: I miss the old Felici with the different-sized stripes.

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BUSINESS CARD HOLDER

Pattern: Mine, all mine! [maniacal laughter]
Yarn: Knitpicks Dancing, from the stash.
Needles: US 1 / 2.25 mm
Notes: This was a quick little thing I knocked out in one night and promptly bragged about to the entire internet. At a event I was at a few weeks ago, someone suggested that you have two pockets or holders or whatnots for business cards — one for your own, and one for your collection from other people. That way you don’t get them mixed up and accidentally hand out someone else’s card. I had nothing like that. But I did have some free time and some stash yarn, so I made one to fit.
I’m super happy with how the little thing came out, and I am writing the pattern up because I can’t be the only person with an out-of-control business card collection.

May highlights cannot yet be discussed because it will ruin Mother’s Day birthdays things. Once all those things pass by then I can sing like a canary.

March was a pretty simple month for me: one crazy all-encompassing pattern of doom = startitis everywhere else.

HEDWIG SOCKS

Pattern: Basic Stockinette Sock with heel flap
Yarn: Opal Harry Potter sock yarn in Hedwig
Needles: US1/2.25mm bamboos
Notes: Written up here for your perusal.

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VIPER PILOTS

Pattern: Viper Pilots by Glenna C
Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy in the Chinatown Apple Colorway
Needles: US 2/2.75mm
Notes: Extensive write-up here.

Other than that, I cast on a few things (bridal shower gift for cousin, some vanilla socks), worked on stuff already cast on (February Lady Sweater, Dad’s Selbuvotter, a wrap), and tootled around the East Coast taking my socks on tours of fancy estates and to hockey games. Oh, and winning stuff! Winning stuff is fun, too. (Thanks, Philly Burbs Stitch’n’Bitch!)

April, I hope, will be a finish-em-up-and-get-em-out month. I have big plans. Big plans, mmhmm. (Can we say Maryland? Yes we can!)

Big plans.

Oh, February. For such a short month, you certainly kept me busy — busy enough that I didn’t even blog about some of the things I knit. Let’s go through the list of Finished Objects, shall we?

MOM’S LOCH NESS GLOVES

Pattern: Basic Glove Pattern from Ann Budd’s excellent Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns
Yarn: BMFA Socks that Rock Lightweight in Loch Ness
Needles: US1/2.25mm bamboos
Notes: I wrote all about these beauties here, although the picture here is a new one, demonstrating the gloves’ snowball-making capabilities.

MOM’S HOODIE SCARF

Pattern: Mimi Hooded Scarf from verypink.com (pattern found thru Ravelry)
Yarn: Knitpicks Wool of the Andes in Amber Heather, with edging in Lion Brand Polarspun, understandably discontinued
Needles: US7/4.5 mm circular (used my KP Harmony interchangables) and an H (5.0) crochet hook for the edging
Notes: Again, this was discussed previously.

LAWYER BABIES III

Pattern: Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Baby Surprise Jacket; Christine’s Stay-On Baby Booties by Christine Bourquin
Yarn: Koigu PPPM, colorway P511L, picked up from a Rav destash
Needles: US 4 (3.5mm) and US 1 (2.25mm)
Notes: Seems like I was actually pretty good about keeping track of things this month! The Lawer Babies are exactly what they sound like — the newly arrived babies of lawyers I worked with at my last job. I have a personal philosophy that every baby should start life with at least one hand-knit thing to their name, so I do my best to make sure that happens. This layette was written up here. Due date is any day now and I am eagerly awaiting word.

LILAC HAT

Pattern: Basic Hat Pattern from Ann Budd’s Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns
Yarn: Louet Gems Sportweight in Lilac and Charcoal leftover from my Endpaper Mitts. Picked up from a sale basket at Loop in Philly.
Needles: US 3/3.25 KP Harmony DPNs.
Notes: This was a quick throwaway project, both to use up my leftover Louet, and to have a hat that would match my Endpapers. Feeling a little contrary, I decided that I would knit it in regular stockinette and then turn it inside out and wear it with the purl side showing. So I did. I threw a single row of purl stitches after the ribbing, so that the switch from the charcoal to the lilac would be clean — it’s not a trick I’ve used before but it turned out very well, and I’ll be keeping it in mind for the future.
I am not sure that I’ll use the hat pattern as much as the others in Budd book. The decreases are stacked pretty close together and make a folded effect that worked in this instance — but sometimes you want your decreases to lay flat, and this pattern doesn’t work as well for that. For this project, though, it worked out well and was very handy to have during that lion-like snowstorm that blew in with March.

I am in the middle of test-knitting some impressively complex cabled socks by Glenna C at the moment, as well as some Selbu gloves for my dad, some socks, and restarting my February Lady Sweater. It was ripped out on account of my gauge being a lying liar who lied, and the yarn has been Thinking About What It Did. I think we’re about ready to start working together again.

Melissa posted an end-of-the-month update, and I thought that was an excellent idea. So I stole it. Shamelessly. Thanks, M.

I didn’t really many any knitting resolutions this year, except informally to try to knitdown some of the stash. But I did finish three things this month:
HULA MONKEYS

Pattern: Monkey Socks by Cookie A
Yarn: Some of my carefully hoarded, sadly discontinued Knitpicks Dancing, in the Hula colorway
Needles: US 1 (2.25mm)
Notes: These were actually started in October, left in Melissa’s car on the way home from Rhinebeck, retrieved from her house in November, abandoned in favor of Christmas knitting (and thesis) in December, and finally finished in January. Monkey is becoming one of my go-to sock patterns (easily memorized, doesn’t require my full attention) and Dancing is my favorite sock yarn. It’s not super-soft, but it’s like iron once it’s knit up, and bright happy colors like this one are good to have around you when you hit the post-holiday blahs. Very happy with these. Wore them today, in fact. =)

MAGENTA GEMS SOCKS

Pattern: Thuja, from Knitty Winter 05, by Bobby Ziegler
Yarn: BMFA Socks that Rock in a Rare Gems, bought at the Fold booth at Rhinebeck ’08
Needles: US 1 (2.25mm)
Notes: Love everything about these socks except for how much they bled when I washed them the other day. A nice bath with some vinegar seems to have taken care of that but scrubbing the pink off my tub wasn’t so much fun.
Thuja is my other go-to sock pattern, although I usually cast on 64 to compensate for using fingering (the pattern was written for aran weight). These were my traveling socks in Disney, and they were the perfect airplane knitting.

NORTHERN LIGHTS TAM

I discussed this happy little FO in the last post. Still in love, still plotting mittens.

In addition to all this I have another pair of socks on the needles, Kelly Porpiglia’s Oak Leaf Socks from last fall’s Knotions. I am telling you this because they are a bit more complex than my usual socks and so I am dragging my feet, and now I cannot ignore them since you will all be expecting a progress report. See what I did there, turning you into an surprise Jiminy Cricket?

There’s also a pair of gloves for my mom, a late Christmas present — I gave her the yarn and told her she could decide what became of it, so she picked gloves. Since Mom’s hands are as small as mine they’re going nice and fast. I’m also halfway through the infamous February Lady Sweater, a year behind everyone else, but that’s fine with me. I’m heading up to Vermont this weekend to visit my sister (and perhaps get in a quick visit to Kaleidoscope Yarns…) and I forsee lots of knitting time in the car.

So that was January. Let’s see what the shortest month results in…