WIP Wednesday: Summer social butterfly

You already know that I love routines.  Which can make me kind of a homebody by default, but I feel like this summer I've been a little more willing to venture out and socialize.  For example, this past Sunday I went to Gauge for a going-away party for a local yarn dyer who is moving to Colorado.  Sure, it consisted mainly of noshing on strawberries, chatting, and knitting, but that's the kind of fun I like to have.  I'm not looking for raging keggers.  As further evidenced by the fact that I went downtown yesterday, not to drink my way down 6th Street, but to go see 'The Third Man' at Paramount.  I'll have a post on that, and 'Guys and Dolls', eventually.

And now, I have an exciting Wednesday planned.  After the usual klatch and yoga, dinner plans will shift from Indian at Tarka to a summer salad at Panera so that I can also go and get my hair cut.  This may not be riveting to extroverted, popular people, but I've been looking forward to the Strawberry Poppyseed & Chicken Salad since last summer.  And I love my stylist.  She's super nice and is great with my hair.

I've also been watching most of the World Cup matches.  Not really with groups of people physically, but spiritually, emotionally....Twitterly.  I'll be holding my breath along with everyone else in tomorrow's match between the US and Germany.  I'm rooting for both of them to make it through the group, preferably with a draw or US win, because Germany has a goal difference cushion so I wouldn't have to worry too much about them.

All of these highly-social engagements have given me plenty of opportunity to knit, but not a lot of time to take pretty pictures of it.  So I'll have to keep you in suspense a while longer. But I am really enjoying my Twist of Death. Right now it's just knitting and knitting around and around, but the yarn is soft and pretty.  I'm toying with the idea of adding beads to the rib at the collar, but I haven't committed to it yet.

Maybe that's a decision for next WIP Wednesday. In the meantime, you can find more at Tami's Amis.

Inspiration Saturday: Free form lace

My inspiration is hot off the presses today.  I went to a trunk show at Gauge (after, of course, a tasty stop at Yogurtland) and got to see some really gorgeous pieces of free form knitting.  Here are some of the photos I took, the rest are in an article I just posted for Examiner.

The pink was my absolute favorite piece, the 'pattern' flows like a stream, with some stitches bunched together like a stone sticking up out of the water and yarnovers flowing around.

You can't see it, but the gray scarf has little beads all over it.  I think they were threaded onto the yarn before knitting, then pulled onto the active stitches whenever she wanted to add them.

You can see some of the stitches better in this picture, and I kind of love how it's been matched with the knit poncho thingy.

All of these were made by Susan Johnson, a local fiber artist who teaches classes in free form knitting occasionally at the store.  I won't get to join them for the class tomorrow, but I'm itching to learn more and maybe try my hand at it.  I love the idea of just knitting whatever I feel like as I go and ending up with something totally unique.

Have you ever knit free form?  Or are you a slave to your patterns?  For more inspiration, go to Woolen Diversions.

FO Friday: Fully en-Gauge-d

It's Friday yet again!  It always seems so far away on Monday, but then before I know it I'm serving up baked goods and eating Indian food on Wednesday, and from there it's a countdown to how many meetings I have until the weekend.  Today I just have just one in the afternoon separating me from the Friday evening ritual of frozen yogurt and grocery shopping.

Another Friday ritual that I don't always get to enjoy is posting about a finished project.  This week, it's my quick cowl, Pretty Pink Plaits:

Ever since I first saw the yarn and buttons at Gauge, they just went so well together I had to make something to show them off.  It didn't hurt that the buttons were half off, and I'm a sucker for bright colors, especially pink.

All in all, I'm happy with how this turned out.  The bamboo is so soft, it's perfect for keeping warm in the office without roasting once I step outside into the warm Spring weather.  The buttons and yarn are so complementary that it might be easier to see the buttons in a close-up:

You'll notice that the three buttons are in a triangle when worn but a row when not.  I didn't knit any dedicated buttonholes into the cowl, instead I'm using the holes created by the cables.  At first I lined up the first 'row' of holes with the buttons straight up and down, but because of the floppiness of the bamboo and the cables, I prefer playing around with it.  In the above picture, the top button goes into the top-second cable hole, the middle button is in the middle-second cable hole, and then the bottom button is in the top-first cable.  Does that makes sense?  The technical documenter in me feels like I should draw you a diagram:

I guess that's how you know it's not really the weekend quite yet.

But once it is, I get to meet a Ravelry friend from Canada who is in town for a wedding.  I love meeting other knitters that I know already.  My mom and I have when-we-win-the-lottery plans of going on a world tour to meet all of the fabulous friends we've never gotten the chance to swap stitches with in person.  For now, though, we'll take a fortuitous weekend and an opportunity to take them to Kerbey Lane Cafe tomorrow for pancakes and the just-released Tomato Menu.  Yum!

Do you have any fun plans for the weekend?  For more FO Friday posts, go to Tami's Amis.

WIP Wednesday: The end of a Crawl is just the beginning...

As if last weekend wasn't enough, this past weekend brought even more lovelies into my stash:

1. From Nan's Needleworks: Noro King in two colorways with nondescript names
2. From Happy Ewe: Wooly Wonka Arianrhod in Spice; and a pair of 60" cables for my Knit Picks interchangeables
3. From Gauge (yes, I had to come back again for more!): Hazel Knits Artisan Sock in Lichen and Nekkid
4. From Yarnorama: Rowan Fine Tweed in Monsal Dale, Beresford, and Leyburn; and a mystery silk noil wool fingering weight yarn on a cone
5. From WC Mercantile: Sport weight alpaca with angelina from Bluebonnet Hills Alpaca Ranch; and two skeins of sport weight sari silk yarn

First of all, I want to apologize for the different look of the numbers in this graphic.  I had to recreate it on another computer to make sure I could post today.  It irks me, especially since my day job is about documentation standards.  But anyway...

What are my plans for these?  Or, to put it another way, how did I rationalize buying them all?  Well, the Noro was just such an intriguing texture, made up of microfiber, silk, mohair, and wool.  And I love projects that stripe alternating colorways of Noro, so I'm thinking a simple triangle shawl switching the yarn every right side row.

The Wooly Wonka I just love, and this store is one of only four I think that has it in stock.  There were so many gorgeous colors, and fibers as well as yarn, but I really liked the chocolate-y-ness of this one.  And then I remembered that I have some really cute cupcake buttons, which seems only right for a yarn from Wooly Wonka.  Oh, and the interchangeables are to aid me in turning the Wonderland mini skeins from last week into a Mini Mania scarf.

For the next few, I have a very good excuse: good deals!  The Hazel Knits and Rowan were the special 25% off featured yarns for their respective stores.  I'm thinking of dyeing the Nekkid colorway of the Hazel Knits at some point, possibly after I've knitted whatever it is going to be.  The Rowan will probably actually be used to make the pattern provided by Susan at the store:

Color work and bobbles!  I wear fingerless mitts every day in my freezing cold office, so these will make me smile as I'm working hard at the keyboard.

WC Mercantile wasn't technically part of the Crawl, but they advertised in the passport, offering a discount for participants, and once we were at Yarnorama we were halfway there anyway.  I love the stuff they bring to Yellow Rose Fiber Fiesta every year, so this was my excuse to buy the exact alpaca yarn I coveted there last time.  Plus some sari silk just for the heck of it.

Whew!  Now it's back to real life.  Except that in two weeks we're planning a trip to Houston to meet up with another Raveler at another yarn store, and then after that it's Kid 'N Ewe Fiber Festival.  I just love fall, don't you?  The good news is that while we were driving I made great progress on my Christmas knitting, so I can finish that up soon and get started on some of these new additions to my queue.

For more WIP Wednesdays, go to Tami's Amis.

WIP Wednesday: Crawl in progress

I can't give you details on the knitting I'm doing for the holiday season, but I can give you lots of colorful details about what I've added to my stash so far because of this year's Crawl:

1. From Hill Country Weavers: Yarn Carnival Highwire 3-ply in Amaranthine
2. From Tinsmith's Wife: Malabrigo Worsted in Nostalgia
3. From Yarnivore: Frabjous Fibers Wonderland Yarns Cheshire Cat Fingering Multi-Pack of 10 1-oz skeins in Dark Rainbow
4. From The Yarn Barn: Lone Star Arts Armadillo in Ellie Avery
5. From her studio: Alisha Goes Around Panoply of Peacocks Fingering in Macedonia
6. From Lucky Ewe: Vice Paradigm in Serendipity
7. From Old Oaks Ranch: Henry's Attic Prime Alpaca in Bare and Black
8. From The Knitting Nest: Trekking XXL in 550 (aww, no name)
9. From Gauge: Little Green Finch Plumage Ltd in a nameless one-of-a-kind colorway I'm calling Cranberry Orange and Theodora's Pearls Theodora's Saphhire in Chartreuse Spritz

I have plans for a few of the skeins.  The Alisha Goes Around has been on my radar for a while now to create the Twist Pullover.  This is actually the colorway used in the sample that made the cover of Knit Wear, though it appears darker in the magazine.  I've nearly bought the yarn several times before, in yarn stores or at fiber festivals, but being in her studio, it seemed like I might as well take the plunge now.

The Wonderland Yarns were a revelation.  They are a new yarn which debuted at TNNA this summer, and I'm in love.  The colors were all so gorgeous, I couldn't decide on one for a full skein, so I splurged on the entire rainbow of smaller skeins.  I'm thinking that this is going to make a glorious technicolor Mini Mania.

The others, well, they were just too pretty to leave behind, and many of them were part of the selection of 25% off yarns that can be used to make the patterns that each store handed out.  That's how I ended up with two skeins of the Malabrigo.  Such a good price, I might as well see if I can make a medium-sized project like a shrug.  And I have so much black and white alpaca, I think that will supply several projects.  Some of the bare yarn might even get dyed.

So there are the results of my Crawl in progress, more to come this weekend!  And more WIP Wednesday posts are at Tami's Amis.

WIP Wednesday: You bind your left front off, you cast your right front on...

...you fold your back panel up and you carry it all around!  You do the knitty gritty then you sew it all around, that's what this cardigan thing is all about.  This weekend I finished up the left front panel on my Lexeme cardigan.  The knitting itself is still pretty boring, basic stockinette with shaping for the most part.

But there was fun to spare when I did some of that knitting while at a birthday party for a local yarn dyer here in Austin.  Dizzy Lettuce yarns have been my weakness at Gauge for yarns now, and she also teaches dyeing classes at the store.  So when she posted about having a little celebration in the store, Mom and I decided to stop by, bring some food, eat some food, and just generally be a little social.

I was only able to get a few rows done, because there was other less common crafting to be done: balloon animals!  One of the guests brought all of the necessary accoutrements and gave us a crash course.  It was interesting, I think knitting gave us all some advantages in spatial manipulation, but I still wasn't really comfortable dealing with the balloons.  I can't tie those knots in the end to keep the air in them to save my life.

Thankfully, I have my mom.  She helped me make my first animal: a pink weenie dog with gray pearl collar and leash.  I named him Pierre and gave him a Sharpie mustache.  Then, because she loves hummingbirds, I tried my hand at twisting up one of those, complete with flower.  Here is my rubber menagerie, along with the two completed panels of my cardigan:

See, don't those random shapes of knitwear-to-be look more interesting when paired with a couple of balloon animals?

While I was there, I also found a skein of Dizzy Lettuce that had to come home with me:

This is Argenbright in Rose, a fingering weight merino and silk blend with silver.  I needed it.

And if you need more WIP posts, check out Tami's Amis.

4KCBWDAY4: Breaking house rules

Here's the problem with me trying to describe which colors I like best: if allowed to continue on, I will eventually list all possible colors.  Because I feel like every color has a time and a place, whether it's an earthy taupe or a bright and sparkly pink.  I'm currently building a collection of fingerless mitts in my cabinets at work in every color, to match whatever outfit I might be wearing that day.  Because it's important to coordinate while I'm typing at my desk or taking notes in a meeting.

But between earthy taupe and bright and sparkly pink, I tend to be drawn towards the later.  I can't help it.  I might be a manatee, but I have peacock tendencies when it comes to color.  This becomes obvious when I go to things like the Yellow Rose Fiber Fiesta (I still need to show you my spoils from that!).  I'm always drawn to the most vibrant colors, with bonus points when it's a mix of multiple, hand-painted hues.  Sometimes this is to my detriment, as I end up with beautiful skeins and no idea how to turn them into knitwear.  Particularly when I have so many favorited patterns which have a lovely lace detail, which gets lost in a rainbow of colors.

Looking at my projects page can often be misleading, because many of those were made for someone else in a swap, but I do have a few examples of my taking crazy colors and knitting them into something crazy awesome.  Like my Fabulous Street Urchin Hat:

This yarn called to me during a yarn crawl stop at Gauge in Austin.  It's Dizzy Lettuce Cash Worsted, and I distinctly recall my fellow crawlers telling me, as I agonized over the pile of skeins I was considering, that this was the one they would leave behind if it was up to them.  But I couldn't leave behind the pink and purple.  It's a very simple knit, so the color and the scrunch detail really make it.

And this is a hibernating WIP, but I'm really loving the way a simple stitch is adding texture to the paintball-splattered colorway of this Schmutzerella creation:

The colorway is called 'Are you up for it?' and it was based on the movie '10 Things I Hate About You'.  I try to make my project names referential or witty in some way whenever possible, so this is my Up for Anything Cami.  Or it will be, once I finish it.  Not that I'm a bee, flitting from project to project or anything...

For more posts, use the tag '4KCBWDAY4' in the search engine of your choice.  And don't forget to visit Eskimi's colorful world.

How I Crawled: day two

The second day of the Crawl got off to an inauspiciously late start when we hit major traffic on the way to Yarnorama.  We had managed to come up behind some kind of accident, and got to sit there, inching forward for about an hour while it was cleared.  But eventually we made it to the oasis of fiber and yarn on the deserted highway towards Houston.

And thus, day two (again, a slideshow of all pics is attached to my Examiner article):

• Yarnorama: I found a braid of light green roving in a silk blend that I think is destined to be plied with a bright pink thread.  And there was some bulky Araucania on sale, so I had to.
• Hill Country Weavers: This was not my fault.  When you find locally-dyed awesomeness like Alisha Goes Around in the sale section, you have to get it.  The dark forest green is gorgeous, and I think I was influenced by the cloudiness of the day in the amount of gray I bought.  The Alpaca Sox also came from the sale bin.  The roving I have no excuses for, I was just really in the mood for spinning stash.
• Gauge: Not only was Dizzy Lettuce there with her lovelies, but a new dyeing artist, Green Finch, covered a table in the back room.  I ended up with a skein of bamboo in a shiny silver gray.  I think the stitch definition of the yarn demands some sort of cable, probably in mitts.
• Happy Ewe: You have to love a store where the owner's favorite color is hot pink.  Well, I do anyway.  I ended up with another color changing sock yarn, this one from Mille Colori, but it took forever to decide what would come home with me, they had a lot of nice yarns.  Including some possum yarn, which sparked an interesting dilemma for a vegetarian on the Crawl, who apparently was concerned with how humanely the fiber was obtained.

Pit stops were made at the Tea Embassy, because I'm currently in a tea-themed swap and I wanted to get my spoilee a special local blend, and at The Yogurt Spot, because they have the most amazing Taro Tart flavor ever.

And there you have it, two days packed full of broken budget promises and soft, squishy yarn in a variety of colors.  Next month: a fiber festival!