Glasses chic hits knits?

There are few things more annoying to me than people who wear glasses without lenses or prescriptions because they look cool.Having a disability isn't something you can put on and take off to look hot or perpetuate some ridiculous stereotype about women in glasses being restrained and conservative--until the right guy comes along and they take it all off!!

Apparently that's the new thing for knitting though now too.

For example, I give you this, this, and this. That's just from fall's Knitscene. I would *maybe* believe the models wore glasses if they weren't so inauthentically posing with them in every photo. Classic sign of douchey glasses wearing. Vogue Knitting also got into the trend, but unfortunately I can't get the site to work now. Suffice it to say, it's annoying. (Rav link here)

I can't see when I wake up in the morning and I'm infinitely more susceptible to macular degeneration and blindness. My consolation is that my glasses are a cool design.

Myopia: So hot right now.Krista is not amused.

Summertime ...

So a life update:
My thesis is so far, quite neglected...I've re-written the beginning 948234983 times and can't get happy with it. Le sigh.

I might....*might*....be getting a job offer soon. Cross your fingers for me to be the next linguist making language software.

We are just about fully moved into the new apartment. I love it. I have never taken to a place so quickly. There is just something about finally having my own own place that I don't have to move out of in a year, that I don't have to share with people I don't know very well or whose stuff is not my own. I love the neighborhood. I can still walk to the yarn shop. The bus route is super close. I live across the street from a bar and within blocks of two parks that will be used for outdoor knitting when the rain stops.

What's really been occupying my time though...
Here's Poochner. He's such a sweetie, and best of all, doesn't try to eat yarn and let's me dress him up in knitting with no complaints.

If it weren't for this miserable bout of shingles (self-diagnosed due to doctors being assholes) which is kind of debilitating in a lot of ways, I could honestly say that this is one of the happiest points in my life. Which is great because even two weeks ago I wasn't anywhere near saying that. And it's even better, because shingles goes away eventually :)

Second hand yarn

Here's my second hand yarn I bought from Savers. I usually give a cursory glance to the yarn at Savers, finding it usually to be half-used up skeins of Red Heart acrylic. However, I hit the jackpot when I was there the other day. I got two bags of yarn for $2.99 each. Only one skein was a Red Heart acrylic. The rest, while certainly used up, are all natural wools according to the burn test, with the exception of the black skein in the back, which is cotton. The yellow skein is the only one that has a label; it's Cascade 220. The orange ball, if I know my wools, is most definitely Berocco Peruvia. They're all worsted/aran. The greens/brown would probably make a nice striped hat. I'd like to make some kind of black and white striped shawl out of the others, but who knows?
Anyway, second hand rocks. We're getting all of our furniture for the new apartment that way. Goodwill just gave me a near brand new armchair for ten bucks. Hurrah!

Laceweight update day ? and designing thoughts

I updated my Ravelry page today with some new project photos. Among them, are Steph's mitts, which I cast on for last night. I hope she likes the design, bc it's a really cool construction and I don't often get the chance to do something different on DPNs besides boring stockinette and stuff.

The pattern is the Nautilus Mitts. They are worked by casting on 6 stitches and increasing. Then, doing the same for the palm of the mitten, stitching them together, and working a garter edging for the top and bottom. Cool.
This is also my first time using a linen blend yarn. It's 50/50 cotton and it feels really cool. I expected it to be stiffer, but its quite smooth. I think it'll feel nice on her hands. Also, the yarn is totally cool (in the literal sense) so it won't be awkward to wear them during the summer. Hopefully, I can finish these puppies up today or so. Shouldn't take long. Speaking of which though, Zindrizzle, email me your address so I can get them out to you.

Laceweight Progress:

I've been working off and on between this, Devin's socks (one of which is blocking and appears to have grown to a normal human size), Steph's mitts, and the scarf design of Andrew and I.

As you can see, the laceweight is huge for laceweight. I mean, we're talking about someone who has never got past 4 rows of laceweight previously. For the life of me I can't get a camera to accurately represent the color of this yarn. Suffice it to say it's greener than it looks above. I'd call it mint or something, but Water Green works I guess. I'm almost done with the increase, then I'll probably do the sleeves (on 9" circulars!!!) as per some ravelers' suggestions, because then I can make the body as long as I feel like without worrying about the sleeves being too short. (Also, I'm semi opposed to knitting sleeves with a full sweater on the needles--too heavy.)

Finally, here's my designing so far:
It basically looks like a sloppy, sloppy mess. Way too many stitches for the thickness of the yarn. However, I just got to the decrease section of the pattern, so I'm hoping this means that I can still see whether or not my planned decreases will give me the desired effect. The chart appears to be working well with the mirrored instructions I gave for it. However, once I finish this swatch, I can tell that seaming up the bottom is going to make it way too thick. Therefore, assuming I get the decreases/increases to work, if I actually submit this pattern as a design, I'm definitely going to consider doing it in fingering or sport yarn. That should be interesting, because I rarely see fair-isle patterns at that small of a gauge, especially for scarves. I've already discovered some problems with the stitch count, so if either of you want to swatch along with me, let me know and I'll tell you what needs changed.

Designing

I decided that since I'm not doing anything this lovely Memorial Day weekend, I'm going to work on the scarf design that Andrew and I concocted while I was still in the horribleness that was the winter and the education program. I was too stressed and sad at the time to really feel motivated by creativity, but Andrew designed the chart and I did manage to write out some written instructions for it. Which is good, because I probably wouldn't remember at this point what I had intended it to be like.

So I busted out some testing acrylic yarn, in a purple and white, and I'm going to just go through the chart one time to see if it works. I *feel* like it should, but who knows with knitting. If you ladies would like to give it a try now too, that'd be cool.

I'll post a progress report on the laceweight soon. I finished up one of the socks I was knitting, since I was really close and it was cooler today. It's a little small, but hopefully it'll block bigger. Otherwise uh, I guess it'll be for me. The laceweight is looking fantastic though. Almost done with the 31 increase repeat section.

Little Arrowhead Shawwwwl

My goal is to make this:

turn in to this:

using this pattern and this (Classic Silk) yarn.

I like the way the yarn feels. It has this rustic quality to it. I'm hoping after I block the shawl, it'll look more like the picture from the pattern. We shall see.

Clapotis 2

I realized I hadn't done a post about my second Clapotis, in which I used Noro Silk Garden.
Like I say in my project notes, I had 5 skeins of 1 dye lot, and 1 skein of another. Because I'm weird like that.

What I did to prevent it from seeming weird, was knit in the pattern with one full skein of the original dye lot, knit using a quarter of the odd-ball skein, then one full original dye lot, and so forth. I think it adds random spikes in the color that are pretty effective. At the very end, I used a tiny bit of yarn from my handwarmers I made out of Silk Garden. It's a weird collection of colors, but I like it. I had put in a lifeline, but figured, ah, what the hell? and I finished out with the old yarn (thank goodness I'm a yarn packrat). However, I would still suggest putting in a life line (I did for both Clapotises that I did) in case you're worried about running out of yarn. Since this is knit on the bias, it's a huge pain in the ass to try to figure out what the row looks like (they're crooked.) Ask me how I know this...

I wear this everywhere. It's a great summer shawl; bright colors, incorporates some of my old favorites plus some colors I usually avoid. Love it. It's warm, but not too warm.

Anyway, on to the photos!

This is my favorite way to wear this. I like the wrong side better. As you can see, I chose not to block this one. I like the waviness of it (actually, that's where the name of this pattern comes from, it's a French word which means wavey or something similar.)






Here she is in all her glory, very long and showing the range of colors. As you can see, it's long enough to just grab and wrap around my shoulders, or do the layering thing like I have above. Yay.


This is the right side of it. Also very pretty.