Yarny Prizes including Superwash Malabrigo Sock Yarn!

The prizes for Malabrigo March came in last week. Tobias and I had agreed on 20 skeins of their soon-to-be new Superwash Merino wool and 10 skeins of their fairly new Silky Merino. Aren't they generous? They seemed willing to donate more but 30 skeins is about all I can handle at the moment in terms of organizing and mailing. Plus, many of the Junkies were donating prizes as well. =)





20 skeins of Superwash yarn! Isn't that insane? I've never even knit a complete pair of socks yet... but, having Malabrigo sock yarn is definitely inspiring me to do it. Here are a few closeups as well:



The yarn is so new that the colors aren't even named yet!
Want some Silky Merino action too?



Yum!
The 30 skeins were not all that I found in the bag however...

They included 4 skeins of their limited edition Organic Cotton! I love the natural colors they used for this yarn. I haven't done much cotton knitting, but, of course, since Malabrigo has cotton yarn I might as well start. ^_^



A few days after receiving my package I found another notice on my door left by DHL. The tag said that the package couldn't be delivered w/o my signature... and that it was from Uruguay. I figured they were confused but the notice came again the next day, so, I called and it turned out that there was another box waiting for me. I went to pick it up after work and it definitely was from Uruguay.
I could already sense Malabrigo as I opened the box. It was packed with more skeins of yarn! Another batch of sock yarn, 5 3-skein packs of unnamed worsted yarn (which I later found out was from a new dyeing technique), and 3 full packages of their Merino Worsted in 3 colors... Hongos, Purple-Lime, and one I don't remember.

The first thing I did when I got home was send a message to Tobias to see if it was a mistake... but, it wasn't. He said that Antonio actually 'smuggled' the extra skeins of yarn for me to do what I choose. I decided that I'll be saving these for future Malabrigo celebrations. =)

I'll take pictures of this new batch of yarn soon!
For now, enjoy a bit more yarn pr0n:



Yum. =)

Still here!

I'm still here! I'm back from my very long 'hiatus'. That was almost 3 months of not posting! Working a 40+ hour week is really draining. I'm back though with a goal to post at least once a week. I'm thinking Sundays will become my official posting day.

A lot has been happening in my knitting life. Well, sort of. My main project since the last time I posted was the Uncle Argyle Scarf from Son of a Stitch & Bitch. I love how it turned out but knitting it was a long process. I almost quit until a random comment made towards Ivi resulted in a race between Nina and I to finish our longest projects. My argyle scarf and her yellow sweater. Who knows how far along I'd be if home made ice cream wasn't on the line. =)

Here are 2 pictures. One from the start and one at the end.





Twenty three whole pattern repeats = Fourty six argyle 'diamonds'!





Here are a few more Finished Objects:




My first Shifting Sands in Malabrigo




A buttoned neckwarmer for Idyl in cashmere




A scarf for Jazz in alpaca




A Noro Striped Scarf!

There are others but I think I've posted enough pictures. ^_^ You can find the rest on my Ravelry. I'm "simplethings" by the way.

In related news, in the Malabrigo Junkies group we're having Malabrigo March. Basically, there are loads of KALs and contests going on--the only requirement is that you use Malabrigo yarn. =) Many people were generous enough to provide a few prizes, Tobias (from Malabrigo) came through again and is donating 20+ skeins of their soon to be coming superwash sock yarn. I think I might just have to become a sock knitter and knit myself an actual pair. =)
Feel free to join the celebrations on Ravelry.

I'll have to spend some time now to read through my bloglines and catch up on everyone.

Almost done with number one!

I'm almost at the halfway point with my first mitten. It is taking looooooong. No major mistakes though, and my double knitting skills are definitely improving.



Aside from a simple 3x3 check this mitten is my first... foray into the world of color work. As well as my first attempt at designing color work. ... I swear it looked better on my Excel spreadsheet. o_O
Maybe it'll make more sense once I add the thumb and finish the rest of the body.



Yum. Don't the insides look all soft and warm? Mmmmalabrigo. =)
The brown stitch markers are the ones from EarthChick. They look almost like wooden beads. The pearly one on the left I purchased from Zero's etsy shop a while back.
Right now the brown markers are placed where the thumb should be coming out from and the white signifies the start of the main color work pattern. I decided that the back of the hand would have all the design and the palm would be very simple. I hope I calculated the stitches correctly.



I'm estimating another two days of good, hard knitting to finish this first mitten. And maybe the 2nd will go faster. Sort of like when you're driving to a place you've never been to--it seems like it takes forever to get there, but, when you drive back home it seems like the distance was cut in half. =)

On a completely unrelated topic... I've mastered the art of sounding awake when a phone call takes me out of a deep slumber. ^_^ It spares me the shame of people knowing that I actually wake up a 1pm. ... oops. I always thought the only person I wouldn't be able to trick was my mother, but, this morning she gave me a random wake up call and her first words after hello were, "I'm glad to hear you're already awake."
The only things that give me away are my one word answers, my excessive agreeableness, and the fact that I barely remember the call once I fall back asleep and wake up again. Most of the time I'll have to call the person back when I'm actually awake and have a real conversation with them. I've left a notepad by the bed though to jot things down during these dream-like phone calls. This doesn't always help though... I seem to write down really random words that obviously mean a lot while I'm on the phone but mean nothing to me when I wake up. For example, some of the words on my notepad are: period, kitten, olive garden, embarrassed, violin!!, general. Hmmmm.

Knit hard(er). =)

Mmmmittens

I started on my pair of double knitted mittens. It's my own design so I'm assuming there will be much trial and error. I'm only about half way up the cuff and already I think I might have to frog... the cuff seems a bit too wide.



The outside is Cascade 220 Tweed and the inside is Malabrigo worsted in Glazed Carrot. Yum. I tend to knit tighter on DPNs and ... I'm definitely knitting tighter here.. so tight that my fingers are sore. I feel like I've been knitting forever (I knit through The Waitress, an episode of: The Simpsons, Family Guy, and King of the Hill) and I only have these ~2 inches. o_O Double knitting is insane!



I'm planning a bit of colorwork once I get up to the main body of the mitten... I don't really know what I'd do though. My first idea was to have it look like the thrummed mittens... because those were my original inspiration for these mittens... but, I think I'd like something cooler. I plan to keep most of the outside in tweed and have the orange just be a pop of an accent color. I was thinking either diamonds or crosses with the middles left out. I guess I'll decide when I get to that part.



It's almost December... I really need to put more work towards my Christmas Gifts. o_O... yikes.

I see a lot of sleepless nights in the near future if I don't knit hard.

Still dark and cloudy

I forced my camera to take pictures today. He wasn't happy about it. The sky is still dark and completely overcast. We were supposed to get snow today but no sign of it yet. Definitely a lot of rain though.
I tried to get a few self-portraits of myself in my new Ravelry beta t-shirt but those turned out the worst. I'll try again when we get some sun.
I DID manage to get a few shots of the WIPs that I'm actually... wip-ing. ^_^ And also the yarn I bought the other day.

Let's start off with my current favorite: Shifting Sands.





Can you sense the darkness? hehehe. I had to push my table right up next to the biggest window in the room and pump up my ISO. Then I made sure to take at least 5 shots from each angle and hope that at least one of them turned out in focus. I ended up with about 3 out of 40 that turned out okay. Ahh, darkness... the enemy of the photographer.
I started my 2nd ball of Malabrigo--you probably noticed the lack of the cake's gaping void. Some yards before the 1st ball ended I started alternating skeins every 2 rows to add a transition just in case the two skeins were different colors. Luckily they're quite similar. The biggest difference seems to be that the white sections are slightly longer on this 2nd ball (about 5 stitches worth whereas ball #1 had 2-3). No big worry though.
You may have also noticed that the yarn is chilling on my Hemlock Ring. It makes a cool background. For some reason I'm unable to successfully use a round blanket. I think I need to find myself a similarly-awesome square/rectangle shape.




This is the diagonal knot stitch scarf. It's coming along slowly. I still can't get the purl side to work smoothly. It reminds me of my struggles with the purl side of My So Called Scarf. I managed to work through that and actually find a good rhythm so hopefully I'll be able to find a similar rhythm with this. On a positive note, I now memorize the pattern... not that it's much to memorize, but, every little bit helps. =)





I don't know how my camera does it but these colors are really close to the true colors of the actual yarn despite the overwhelming darkness. I had to ditch the Hemlock Ring for these pictures because the overall hues of the yarn were so dark the camera wouldn't even focus. So, I needed a brighter background to ... help it along. These are 2 skeins of Noviembre, a very fitting autumn color way. One skein will be a prize for the Malabrigo Cast On Week and the other will be going to a secret swap partner. ;)





These two yarns will soon become a pair of double knit mittens. I tried to develop a technique to get ribbing double-knit style.. but, it didn't work. I'll have to figure something out. I'm also unsure about how decreases/increases will work... but, I'll tackle that challenge when it comes time.





The orange skein is Malabrigo: Glazed Carrot. Delicious. =) My favorite color is orange... but, for some reason orange yarns never call out to me. The other day Mr. Glazed Carrot screamed "mittens" so I bought him.
The 2nd skein is Cascade 220 Tweed. He looks nice. Hopefully they become friends and work together in my mittens.

That's all for today. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving! Hopefully I'll have time to post. Oh! I recently received a HUGE influx of visitors to my blog... I'm curious about where they all came from... but, more on that next time.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Cabled DS Lite Case

People have been asking me for the pattern I used for my DS cases. It was my own pattern and I never really got around to writing it out until maybe a month ago. As I was figuring out what I did I decided I'd like to add a flap to the top as a closure to make sure the DS stayed in its lovely case. Sadly, I couldn't come up with one I loved so I'll just have to share the basic sock pattern for now. I don't think I'll have time to really develop a decent flap until after the holidays. Enjoy!

Cabled DS Lite Case

Yarn: Malabrigo worsted
Needles: 4 DPNs in US 8
Gauge: ... umm.... ^_^

Key:
CF3: Slip next 3 sts onto cable needle purl wise and hold cable needle in front of work, K3, P1, K3 off the cable needle

Pattern Round
Needle 1: K2, P1, K3, P1, K3, P1
Needle 2: K2, P1, K3, P1, K3, P1, K2, P1
Needle 3: K3, P1, K3, P1, K2, P1, K3, P1, K3, P1
The condensed version: [K2, P1, (K3, P1)x2]x4

Cable Round
Needle 1: K2, P1, CF3, P1
Needle 2: K2, P1, CF3, P1, K2, P1
Needle 3: CF3, P1, K2, P1, CF3, P1
The condensed version: [K2, P1, (CF3, P1)x2]x4

The Pattern:
CO 44 stitches divide on to 3 DPNs
1st needle: 11 sts
2nd needle: 14 sts
3rd needle: 19 sts
The stitches are divided this way to allow for easier cabling. Feel free to divide the needles as you see appropriate.

Join into a circle and begin pattern:
Rounds 1 & 2: Pattern Round

Main cable pattern:
Rounds 3 - 8: Pattern Round
Round 9: Cable Round
Repeat rounds 3-9 four more times.

Round 38-43: Pattern Round
Round 44: Knit

Divide stitches evenly onto two needles and graft shut.
Weave in ends.

I find that if you turn your DS case completely inside out and pull out the grafted corners as far as they can go and then flip it right side out it'll leave you with nicely shaped corners.

A flap can be added by picking up stitches along the CO edge.

The original green DS case I made actually had an even 3x1 ribbing. I found that it was too loose so I tightened up some areas and that's how I came up with the crazy 2x1, (3x1)² ribbing.

Meme?

Here's the 3 things meme. I 'borrowed' it from SavingNine. =)

Three Things
Three things that scare me:

• Heights!
• Tiny things that jump or move quickly
• The idea of moths invading my stash

Three people who make me laugh:

• Kevin
• Danielle
• Myself

Three Things I love:

• Induldging
• Quality
• Alone time

Three Things I hate:

• Crappy drivers (gonna agree with SavingNine on this one)
• Psychologically scary things
• Closed minds

Three things I don't understand:

• Everything beyond a basic-intermediate level
• Fire-what is it?!
• Water-these things seem so... arbitrary but when I think about them they don't make sense

Three things on my desk:

• Yarn. Malabrigo and some alpaca to be exact.
• Coffee. Grande soy with whip cinnamon dolce latte
• A thermos half filled with tea from this morning

Three things I'm doing right now:

• ... this
• Drinking coffee?
• I agree with SavingNine--this is a dumb question

Three things I want to do before I die:

• Own a condo
• Get into the best shape of my life
• Become semi-famous

Three things I can do:

• Knit!
• Listen
• Type relatively fast

Three ways to describe my personality:

• Introverted
• Naughty
• Sense-of-humor-ed. o_O

Three things I can't do:

• Talk to strangers with any sort of charm or finesse
• Gymnastics
• Dance and look good doing it

That was surprisingly difficult.
So, me knitting the Shifting Sands scarf is REALLY weird. My hands memorize the pattern more than my brain does. I actually couldn't write out the pattern for you if you asked but for some reason my hands know what to do. Knitting it actually makes my brain tired because I'm constantly trying to figure out if what my hands are doing is correct... but I really can't wrap my brain around it. It's weird and exhausting. Almost makes me not want to knit the scarf even though I can... and easily.

I took a bath yesterday and it was goooooooood. I broke out the trusty space heater to warm things up (because nobody likes to get out of the bath/shower into cold air) and... it was good. I didn't even do my usual prep. It was just the tub, a Lush bath bomb, and two episodes of How I Met Your Mother.
I just wish I had a bigger bath tub... At certain times during the bath I like to be completely covered by water, as a result there are all sorts of contorting going on. You should see me. ... actually... maybe you shouldn't. ^_^

Malabrigo is only about 26 projects away from passing up Lorna's Laces. Hopefully we have at least that many more people cast on. =)

A bit of Yarn P0rn to help you get through your day

The oh-so-irresistible Silky Merino came in on Monday. I have a habit of not showing extreme emotions like rage and excitement... I'm usually really good at keeping them in check. The excitement almost consumed me but I managed to hold it in and in doing so almost passed out from giddiness. I should let it out one of these days. ^_^

Immediately after opening the bag I dumped it out on my bed to feel it. I then proceeded to look at each hank and note the color names. And then I piled it back together and had the strongest desire to jump into it. I, as usual, held back and decided it was time for a photoshoot.

Come over and jump in, the water is silky smooth!



Oh how I wish I could keep it all... just to look at and touch and admire. I really have no idea what I would make with any of it... probably a nice sized swatch to keep in my pocket to fondle and appreciate. Sadly, ... and happily, it'll be going to winners of various contests and things during Malabrigo Cast On Week. It's not too late to join! So, if you want your chance at some of this delicious Silky Merino then Cast On a few projects in Malabrigo worsted and post in the Malabrigo Junkies group.

My mercurial desire to organize, order and inventory lead to this:





Oh yarn... I seriously think yarn is my favorite part of knitting... hmmm.
Well, I need to Cast On a few more Malabrigo projects this week so I'll leave you with a few more pictures.
Haven't hard coded a table in a while. Enjoy this one:




Row 1: Burgundy, Raspberry, Camote
Row 2: Sand, Spring Warter, Sunny Lime
Row 3: Ankara Green, Celeste, Turquoise
Row 4: Green Gray, Azul Azul, Light Hiacynt
Row 5: Bahia

Delicious, no?

A fun start to Malabrigo Cast On Week

I received a package from EarthChick on Saturday. She had a contest on her blog a little while ago and I had won. ^_^
Here's what I got:




Two skeins of Malabrigo in Indigo. Mmmmmm. It came just in time for Malabrigo Cast On Week. ^_^ I think it will soon turn into an Irish Hiking Scarf.

I also received these hand made beauties:



Stitch Markers! =) They're so beautiful. I actually used them right when I opened the box. The mittens I was working on required 2 stitch markers and I figured that I might as well break them in. Sadly, I wasn't able to take any pictures of them in use... so, instead, I CO for a new Scrunchable Scarf in Malabrigo for Malabrigo Cast On Week and I slipped the markers into my work, just so I could get a picture of them "in use."



They actually came with a tiny jewelery bag as well:



I was on a picture taking binge this morning. ^_^ I'll give more on my Malabrigo projects throughout the week. I also found out on Sunday that I received my Ravelry beta T-shirt as well, so, pics of that soon to come.

Blog hard!