Chef Messy

Rainbow Brite Jaywalkers

Yay, I finished them.  So, there's not a lot that can make you giggle while you're out running around doing your errands like wearing a pair of crazy socks like these.  It's like crazy underwear.  Only less scandalous.  Probably also more likely to be seen, unless you're one of those exciting underwear-flashing types.  We'll stick with socks around here.  Anyhoo...

Now I just need to track down those go-go boots...

Knitting has been good for me lately, so I've been doing a lot of it.  It's almost a shame that it's going to start getting warm around here.

Specs, by the way, for the knitting crowd:  Jaywalkers by Grumperina (free Ravelry download), 2 balls Fortissima Socka, Size 1 dpns.  They're a little big around the ankles on me, but some of us just have chicken legs and are therefore used to baggy ankles.  If I made them any smaller, I wouldn't be able to get them around my heel.  Anyway, good pattern.  Lots of fun to knit and great with the stripey yarn.

But they are fun.

I'm trying to channel my inner Rainbow Brite.

Knitters will recognize the pattern from the famous Jaywalker craze of '05 (Magknits is gone now, but you can get it free from Ravelry).  One down, one to go.

Slouchy. Very slouchy.

So, I finished Relm.  Actually, I knit this thing twice.  I finished it the first time and looked like Princess Mushroom, so I decided to try it again on smaller needles...

 

...and....

I still don't like it.  It's too slouchy.  Maybe (probably) I used the wrong yarn (Cascade Indulgence, not the recommended yarn but the lady at the shop told me it would work).  Maybe I needed to use even smaller needles.  Maybe I'm just not a slouchy hat person.  Maybe I need twice as much hair.

So now I have to decide if I want to knit this thing again (I do love how it looks in the magazine) or if it's time to give up and move on.

May Winter Never End

Lots of people seem a little disappointed about the groundhog's news that there will be six more weeks of winter.  Not us.  After spending three years in a fairly winterless (by our standards) place, we are happy to be back in the snow.  We took Matthew on his first sledding expedition this week, which was a big hit.

There was a little trepidation in the beginning, which is usually the case with anything Matthew tries...

 

...but we tossed him down the hill, which is the way we usually deal with things that Matthew is initially afraid of.  We occassionally get horrified looks from onlookers because of this method, but 95% of the time he has a great time.  Besides, if we didn't go about it this way, I don't think he'd ever try anything new!  (Takes after me, I'm afraid.  We're the cautious, worrying sort.)

Maggie, whose greatest joy in life is to herd anything that moves into a corner, also thought sledding was great fun.

 

She isn't the only dog that has to go along on every family adventure...

Meet "Flower," the family pug.  Flower is a boy, in case you were wondering, and has to go everywhere that Matthew does.

 

So, I never bothered to blog about this, but I made another Koolhaas hat.  I finished this a year ago, but am just getting around to showing you a photo.  Typical, right?

 

It's been so long that I don't even remember what the yarn is.  But I love the pattern!  This has been my go-to hat all winter long.

I have a secret crush on Jared Flood.

Soooooo, lots of knitting going on around here.  It's cold, and I have been catching up with Season 4 of LOST! on DVD.  I finally gave up on watching them on T.V.  It's so much less confusing when you don't have to remember what happened a week ago, and a week before that.  It's going to be confusing one way or another, so why complicate things any more than they have to be?  Get them out of the way in a marathon session with no commercials, that's what I say.

Have you all seen Knit.1 magazine's new look?  So exciting.  I usually just flip through Knit.1 to giggle about the designs (this one being a prime example), but this issue had some really great patterns and a nice new layout.  I'm currently working on Relm by Jared Flood of Brooklyntweed fame.  He has about a dozen designs that I'd like to knit.  For this one, I'm using a merino wool/mohair blend and it's coming out really nice...

 

Vauxhall: A Place in London to Party or a Chunky Scarf

My little sister Shanda is in the thick of scholarship application season, and we've been spending a lot of time helping her out with her essays and portfolios, so I've been a bit too busy to do much blogging lately.  I can't believe my baby sister is almost off to college!  So weird.  Yesterday we took a trip up to the greatest university in the world to turn in some of her applications, and it was great fun to give her a tour of campus and introduce her to some of my old favorite professors.  It's really amusing to watch her walk through a crowd of college boys.  They won't know what hit them next year.

I also finally got a chance to take a few photos of the Christmas gift that I made her, which I think will come in very handy in the cold Cache Valley winters!  Maybe it will keep her warm while she's sitting in the cold waiting to become a true aggie.

 

This is the "Vauxhall Scarf" from Wenlan Chia's Town and Country Knits Book.  I'm never quite sure how I feel about Chia's designs.  They're cute, but they're sortof designed only for teeny-tiny women and/or eight-year-olds.  But I do love her scarves.  Anyone can use a chunky scarf.  Vauxhall, in case you are wondering, is a neighborhood in London, and also a place where all of the characters of Vanity Fair go to party and get drunk.  There's your random tidbit of info for the day.

Anyway, I knit this scarf out of Brown Sheep Burly Spun, which is yarn about as thick as your wrist, so it came together in a matter of hours.  Definitely my kind of knitting project.  I think the color is "Lotus."  (If you've been around awhile, you may recognize the yarn from the tragic incident of the 2006 Winter Knitting Olympics.)  For Shanda, it couldn't have been anything other than pink, so I was glad I had this yarn on hand.

Pomatowhatamus?

So, I'm knitting this pair of socks from a Knitty pattern called Pomatomus, which was all the rage among sock knitters back in winter of '05.  I know, I know, I'm a little slow with the trends.  Anyway, I've got one down and one to go...

 

This pattern is FUN.  Isn't it cool?  It looks like fish scales!  I'm fairly fascinated with it.

But just what exactly is a Pomatomus anyway?

Little Knitting

It's been forever since I finished a knitting project, and I still have several things that I've started but never finished, but I was feeling the bug to do a little project.  I get a little fidgety at family gatherings, and knitting is a good way to pass the time. 

Little knitting that gets done quickly is especially gratifying after not finishing anything in forever, and Matthew has been pestering me forever to make him some socks. 

 

I figured this "bumblebee yarn" (from Opal, but I believe the colorway is discontinued) was the perfect thing to go with his Transformer fixation (to those of you who don't have small transformer-obsessed people in your house and have no idea what I'm talking about, Bumblebee is usually in the top three of the "favorite Transformer list" for most of these small people).

Anyway, I didn't use a specific pattern for these, but the sock instructions from Yarn Harlot's Knitting Rules were very helpful.  The magic formula for Matthew, who is a slightly skinny but otherwise normal-sized five-year-old, seems to be 44 stitches on size 2 dpns. 

I originally tried the method from 2-at-a-Time Socks, where you knit two socks on one really long circular needle.  Honestly, that was about the most ridiculous, tangled mess that I have ever encountered in all my time knitting.  I definitely don't recommend that book at all!  I had it figured out and kept plugging away at it thinking it would speed up eventually, but once I realized that I could have knit an entire sock in the time it took me to untangle two inches worth of cuffs, I ripped the whole thing out and went back to dpns.  I'd rather deal with one-sock-syndrome any day than that mess.

So, once I switched back to my usual way of getting socks done, I finished these in less time than the number of days he's been wearing them since.  I keep telling him that you're kindof supposed to wash socks after you wear them for a day, but I keep finding him in them, so I guess that means he likes them. 

His favorite thing is that they are really slippery on our wood floor, which is all well and good until he slips and lands on your foot and your pinkie toenail turns black.  I'm just saying.

Itty Bitty Hat

Thought I'd share a little tiny knitting project I recently finished for my friend Heidi's baby Ty.

Isn't he a cute little guy?  He was a very welcome arrival at Spencer and Heidi's house (you can read all about it on her blog), and we have been so excited for them!  Thanks, Heidi, for sending me the pictures!

This hat, for some reason, reminds me of Dr. Suess.  Here are the specs, for anyone who wants to make one of their own:

Pattern:  Stocking Cap from Itty Bitty Hats
Yarn: Rowan Cashsoft, small amounts of 3 different colors (this stripe combo has four rows of green, four rows of blue, and then two rows of red)
Needles: Size 7 circular and dpns
Very easy, fun pattern

WIP

Guess what.  I am up to the armpits on my Tangled Yoke Cardigan.  If it seems like this is moving rather slowly, that's because this is my second time getting to this point.  The first time around, I spent up to the armpits in denial, but then realized that, yes, my gauge was too big.  Can you believe I'm knitting this thing on size 3's?  It calls for 5's.  I am a loosey goosey.  Is that a bad thing, do you think?

And then I needed a break from the cardigan, so I cast on for Koolhaas.

I've also been doing a little stitchin'.

Treats, yes?

And also a little carvin'.

This is a stamp for a letterbox that Matthew and I are going to go out and hide near an old abandoned section of mining track.  This stamp-carving is a lot harder than it looks!  But, for my first attempt, I can't complain.

Whee! I'm in Knitty!!!

Wow, I really feel like I've hit the bigtime today.  I am in everyone's favorite Knitty Magazine!

Nope, I'm not a designer.  (Yeah, I am definitely not that good at the knitting, and definitely not that good at the maths required to design knitting!)  That would be my fabulous friend Miriam, who is probably most well known for Icarus, which half the knitting world has already knit, and the other half is planning on knitting someday.  I actually met Miriam not long before she started charting the whole thing out, and it was really fun to watch the design process--from scheming, to charting, to knitting, to submitting--and then to see how it expanded across the knitting world once it was in print.  I was really excited that Icarus made the cover of Best of Interweave.  It's so nice to see a good friend seeing such success.

Anyway, Miriam asked me to do the photos for Juno Regina, which was this issue's "Knitty Surprise," and I was more than happy to help her out!  As my knitting skills are limited, it was the only way I was ever going to be involved in Knitty, so I was really excited about it.  I had such fun doing her photos, and I think she looks just gorgeous in every single one!  I'm so excited to hear what she has to say about it!  Thanks again, Mim, for letting me "shoot" you!

Tangled Up With Yet Another WIP

The WIP list continues to grow.  I got a pretty good deal on a decent sized pile of Rowan Felted Tweed and was so excited when I opened the package that I couldn't help myself from casting on for Eunny Jang's Tangled Yoke Cardigan.  This seems to be another one of those projects that half of the knitting world is working on right now!  (Do you know I only discovered Eunny's patterns after she was made editor of Interweave Knits?  I have seriously been missing out.)  I worked on this for a while while watching Ocean's 13 (funny show) with some girl friends last night and made some decent progress. 

I've really had a thing for green lately, which is funny since I'm usually more of a red girl.  The colorway shown here is "Avocado," and I hope it will make my eyes look really cool!  This is the first time I have ever treated myself to a whole sweater's worth of the "good stuff," and I am really enjoying this knit so far.  The yarn is very tweedy and very felty, and the pattern is fairly easy to follow.  Hopefully it will fit!  That is always my biggest fear with sweater knitting, because it's such an investment, and you really have no idea until it's done.  It's not like sewing clothing at all!  (Would this possibly explain my lack of finished sweaters?)  Oh well, I'm 10% there.  One ball down, nine to go!