Tastes like Cotton

I gained 6 lbs over the weekend. Yikes. I was surprised 'cause I kept pretty active all weekend... I did, however, indulge a bit on the eating side on Saturday and Sunday. Oops.

Well, I have more pictures for you. =)
I mentioned before that Deb @ Fishbed was having a Summer sale which mainly consisted of cotton yarns. I really don't use much cotton in my knitting. I did that one Coachella top in cotton but that was the only thing. .... actually... now that I think of it... those crochet bookmarks could be cotton. Hmm. I'll have to check.

Anyway, I was at her store for hours trying to decide what to buy. I could have skipped out on buying anything since I had no pattern or project ideas in mind but it was a sale! ... It wasn't just a sale it was a damn good sale. The yarn was 40% off!

I spent my whole afternoon there. I got in around 10:30 and stayed until 4:15 (with a lunchbreak in between).
I ended up buying this awesome cotton from Araucania.



I originally was drawn to the variegated. The colors looked so smooth. So, I grabbed a couple skeins and pondered for a while and decided on a granny square afghan. I figured I'd throw in a few other colors so my first instinct was to grab some browns or blues. Unfortunately none of the browns and blues in the Ulmo worked with the yarn I had. On a whim, I grabbed a skein of the purple and it just worked.

I played around with colors a bit more and decided I needed a 3rd... so, picked up a skein of red and it balanced everything out.



I still haven't decided on the exact squares I'm going to use. I 'swatched' the variegated in the traditional granny square and I'm kinda digging it. There's another square I want to try out where the only open spaces are the corners of each 'round' so you create an X of open spaces rather than a checkery-grid thing. I'd rather have the variegated be the more.. dominant color so I think the more solid X square would work best and then I'd use the traditional granny square for the solids. We'll see. =)



Knit (and crochet) hard!

This butter is really yellow

I seem to be on some sort of blogging binge. I just can't stop updating! =) Hopefully this trend continues.

As promised, I have some pictures to share. First, here's my fairly large Malabrigo purchase from Loopy.





Like little bundles of love. On the subject of love, I LOVE the color. It's called Olive. Very fitting.
Oh, Malabrigo. I e-mailed them the other day. I started this group on Ravelry called Malabrigo Junkies. We were discussing our favorite colors (Charrua!) and someone mentioned Little Lovely. I have not had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Lovely but she seemed to be quite coveted. The possibility of her being retired came up--a member may have read it somewhere I think, so, to finalize the matter I e-mailed the people up in Malabrigo land and asked them about their color cycle and retirees. (I also oh-so-shamelessly promoted Malabrigo Junkies). I got a reply in two days from Tobias who said that they've only retired a few colors and that Little Lovely (as well as Charrua) were still on the color card. He also mentioned that he'd be happy to link our group to the malabrigoyarn.com website. Mmm.
Just for that we'll celebrate with another picture of this delicious yarn:





I'm really churning out those bookmarks. They're really quick and easy. They'll probably serve as backup Christmas gifts.
The pattern calls for a 1.25mm crochet hook, but, unfortunately the store I bought the Malabrigo lace from had a 2.5 as their smallest. I purchased it anyway. On my way home I stopped at a Hobby Lobby and picked up a 2.0mm and a 1.5mm. 1.25 Just seemed to small for Malabrigo's thick&thin-ness. It turned out that the 1.5 was too small, I couldn't even hook the yarn. The 2.0 worked but the resulting bookmark ended up tight and lost a lot of stitch definition after I ironed it. I tried the 2.5mm and it worked perfectly.





Yay, tassels.
Crochet is surprisingly easy (and fast!) once you get a good feel for how to angle the hook. My tension is still a bit all over the place, but, I think it's becoming steadier as I continue to pop out these bookmarks. I love that there's only one live stitch, it's easy to drop it and pick it back up again. In knitting, when my needle falls out, I stop breathing and move as slowly as possible as not to disturb the now live stitches who's seemingly only desire is to drop. And then painstakingly re-inserting my needle, making sure each stitch is facing the correct direction. Tedious!
While, I AM growing a certain fondness towards the hook, I will always prefer the knitted fabric to the crocheted.





My sweater finally dried. My room is no longer filled with the odd scent of wet wool. The sweater though smells sweet and natural. I actually don't smell the Soak on it at all--I may not have used enough. The directions say one cap-full for every gallon... I soaked my sweater in my bathtub... how many gallons is that? I naively guessed 2 gallons because I ended up only using 2 cap fulls. ^_^ Oops?
Mr. Seamless Hybrid wasn't dry before my photoshoot, so, I'll have to take pictures of him another day.

I'll leave you with Branching Out. This scarf has been waiting patiently underneath my desk for me to finish the sweater. He's finally getting some pattern repeats knitted and is looking good, albeit a bit oatmeal-y.





I'm giving tassels a chance.
Knit hard!

A sweater in less than a month

The sweater is ALMOST finished. Today I finished basting the neck hem and weaving in all the ends. I gave it a soak with Soak and blocked it. Blocking is magic, it really evened out all my weird stitches and made the fabric lie really flat. Certain aspects of my sweater are a bit scary though.

• The sleeves are too long. Which, isn't too bad, I suppose.
  
• The bottom edge is flaring out. Even though I put in decreases in the hem it's still flaring out a bit, I think I'll have to run some elastic through the bottom to keep it in check.
  
• I'm not fond of the shoulders. They're a bit big and oddly shaped. Maybe now that everything is blocked it'll fit me better.
  

So, now I'm just waiting for it to be dry. I definitely plan to give the hems a good pressing with a hot iron. They're a bit thick and could use some flattening out. I can't wait to start my next one.

Speaking of next one... I hit up Loopy on Thursday with prodigy student Danielle and my cousin Ryan (who I recently taught the basics of knitting). My birthday was September 3rd and my friend Kevin generously gave me a $50 gift certificate to Loopy. It was time to spend it. My first grab was a pair of Lantern Moon needles. I love them. And after more searching there were no yarns that were calling out to me. I decided I'd just grab a hank of Malabrigo (my usual go-to purchase) ... and then I thought to myself, "I have $50 to spend solely on yarn..."
I ended up ditching the needles and buying 7 beautiful skeins of Malabrigo in the Olive colorway. Sweater number two, coming up! =) Pictures of my mountain of Mmm soon. I'm still deliberating on a pattern.

I've been craving the Malabrigo lace. Danielle got a free mini-hank of it from the Malabrigo booth at Stitches Midwest and I've been coveting ever since. I never bought it though because I really have no desire to knit lace... but, I ran into this awesome fan bookmark pattern for crochet a while ago... I decided this would be the perfect project for some lacey Malabrigo. I drove 20 minutes to Wool & Co. Got myself some lace and a tiny crochet hook and I was on my way.





It's in the Polar Morn color way. So soft and delicious. The fan pattern is pretty easy too. I'm totally cranking them out now. Pictures of these will be up soon as well.





Had my first yarn dyeing experience the other day. After the trip to Loopy, Danielle and I spent a few hours knitting. I was working on a bookmark and my Coach knock-off scarf (see below) and she decided to knit a cupcake. She chose yellow for the cake part and white for the frosting. The pattern included a cherry on top but she had no red yarn, so, we decided to dye a bit of the white yarn with food coloring.
Overall it worked. We based it on some of the theory I picked up through reading about knitting. Our process was putting water in a pot and boiling it. Adding plenty of red food coloring and a drop of blue... and then cooking the yarn. After a quick check on-line we realized vinegar was an essential ingredient so we added a splash during cool down. After a good rinse we hung it to dry for like... 10 minutes... Danielle couldn't wait so we ended up taking a blowdryer to it. In another 10 minutes it was completely dry.
Good times.

Here's my Coach knock-off scarf, btw.




The Alpaca is SO soft and great to work with. Sadly, though, the colors just aren't doing it for me. I really wanted the middle brown to be more of a tan or camel color. I guess it works though, and, who can really argue with Misti Alpaca Chunky. SO SOFT!

I'll have to stop myself from starting my 2nd sweater and get to work on Christmas gifts. I've already been getting requests. x_X
I'll have pictures next time of my completed Seamless Hybrid Sweater and the really cool fan bookmarks.

Blocking is magic.
Knit hard!