On The Move re-released, and my cat is cute

Point 1 – On the Move (previously called Felted Camera Case) is back up. It’s been HUGELY expanded, and will hopefully be much more clear. If you get the pattern, make sure to read through so that you can print just the pages that you need. If you are doing one of the prewritten sizes, you can choose to not print the pages about customizing your own size, and vice-versa.

Point 2 – My cat is adorable.

And mischievous. That’s the garbage he’s trying to get at!

We’ve decided to keep Neko. Koshka was far too energetic for a small apartment. The SPCA website seems to say that he’s also found his forever home. I hope that it is big enough for him!

Cats!

Koshka has trapped Neko

Sooo, I have cats! 2 of them! They are being called Koshka and Neko for the duration of their stay here. We’ll be keeping them for 2 weeks, giving them lots of love and medicine, then sending them back to the SPCA.

They are absolutely adorable and soft and warm and full of purrs.  They both have a bit of a cold and goopy eyes, but the SPCA gave us the medicine to fix them up.  They came from a litter of three, and the third one has already been adopted.  I already know that it’s gonna be REALLY hard to give them back after they are all better!

(Finally!) Prada Mitts & a SALE!

Hey guys!  So sorry for the long disappearance there!   Busy busy summer :P  But here I am, back & alive, with some news for y’all!

First off, I finally got off my butt and formatted my Prada Mitts pattern and put it up for sale! Like all my for-sale patterns, it is available as a PDF download for only $2.00.

These are a long, elegant pair of cabled fingerless mitts inspired by the socks in Prada’s Fall Ready-to-Wear 2010 collection. These mitts feature a contrast color cable on a 3×1 rib background.  These mitts use a bit of trickery so you can both knit them in the round without having to weave in a million little ends.

If you want to knit this pattern, you’ll need:
~ The pattern, of course :)
~ Needles: US 6, 7, 8, 9/4, 4.5, 5, 5.5 mm DPNs or circulars (2 circs or magic loop)
Don’t be intimidated by the number of needles! The needles are used to change gauge to adjust the fit, but the ribbing alone will make this pattern fit a range of sizes if worked with just one or two needle sizes.
~ Yarn: [MC] Cascade 220 Wool [100% Peruvian Highland Wool; 220yds/201m per 100g skein]; color #8400: Charcoal Grey; 1 skein (more like 3/4 skein)
[CC] Patons Classic Wool [100% Pure New Wool; 223/205m per 100g skein]; color #00226: Black; 1 skein (more like 1/4 skein)
~ Notions: Tapestry needle; Stitch markers
~ Gauge: 19sts/28rows = 4”
~ Finished Measurements: Arm Cuff: 8”/20cm
Wrist: 6.5”/16.5cm
Length: 13.5”/34cm

And for the second piece of news, I’m having a sale in my Ravelry Store. From now until my birthday, October 11 (I’m gonna be 22!!!), I’m offering a buy 2, get 1 free promotion! You don’t need to enter any codes or anything – just buy 2 patterns, then when you go to buy a 3rd, it’ll be free! And I do believe that if you have bought patterns from me in the past, they’ll count towards the tally…

I’m here…

I’m alive and knitting even. I went home for Canada Day Long Weekend and over 3 nights watched 4 movies and played about a million games of Mario Kart. I also managed to swatch for a sweater, but then left that swatch there accidently. No photos, but I’ll leave you with some music. Tool.

BECAUSE I’M SEEING THEM LIVE ON FRIDAY!!!!

New books!

Yay, books!

Yesterday, on the way home from work, I noticed a bunch of big signs at Indigo Books, saying BUY 3 GET THE 4TH FREE!  So, I had to get in on that!  They also had some other promo going on, and with an Indigo card, I got a discount – they aren’t supposed to stack, but looking at my receipt, I do believe that they did.  The cashier was really stoked to see a stack of knitting books going through, so I think I got a knitter discount, yay!

As you can see, I got 3 knitting books.  I can’t really tell you a lot about them yet, as I’ve only had a chance to flip through them, but I’ll give you some of my first impressions :)

The bottom one is Shirley Paden’s Knitwear Design Workshop (Rav link).  This book looks absolutely amazing.  Everything I’ve read so far is explained clearly, the charts are very clear and the photography is gorgeous.  There are a few patterns in the back that are stunning, as well as standard size charts.  I can’t wait to sit down and read through it!

The 2nd book is Sharon Brant’s Ultimate Knitting Bible.  I do not consider myself a novice knitter by any means, but this book had such great photos that I had to take it!  Plus, one thing I do know is that I don’t know everything.  I think the section on finish techniques will be especially helpful, as that’s something I don’t have a lot experience with (fingerless mitts and hat don’t take much finishing!

And, finally, I picked up Cookie A’s Sock Innovation (Rav link).  I’m still not very good at finishing socks, but I had to have it! There is so much information in the first section (and I’m sure a lot of it can be taken and applied to other small-tube knitting, like fingerless mitts!), and I kept seeing lovely socks flying through my Friend Activity on Rav.  Again and again, the ones I loved were from this book.  I LOVE Angee, Cauchy, and Kai-Mei in particular.

My BF picked up Guns, Germs and Steel as the last book, so we are both happily surrounded in new book smell.  Mmm, new book smell!

So much going on…

for a simple stockinette sweater!  In here we’ve got 3 sets of needles, 2 balls of yarn and a contrast color waiting to be added in.  Turns out I have about 8 million 16″ US9 needles, so instead of putting stitches onto waste yarn, I’m just leaving them on the needles and grabbing a new pair to knit the next section.  And adding in the contrast color will actually calm the madness down – at that point I’ll be dropping the main color, and will not be alternating skeins anymore (though the dye lots are close enough that I probably didn’t need to in the first place)

Little busy there!

Mmm, alpaca-bamboo blend...

I’m so close to being done. Got to finish the back, knit like 20 rows of 20 sts of the 2nd front, then the edging in CC. I’ve been distracted though. I turned this lovely Mirasol Qina (Rav link) into a test-knit hat that I’ll be showing off later in the week (when I get a decent pic!).  Amazing yarn, the sheen, drape and color are all fabulous (that’s 901 Steel there, but I think it’s more a perfect silver).  I’ve got a mostal of the 2nd skein left, so I’m probably gonna get me a teeny pair of mitts to go along with the hat, yay!

Difficulties!

Difficulties first off in knitting.  It’s not actually difficult knitting, but I’m spending sooo much time tinking back.  Why?  Because I always seem to get the right side and the wrong side of K3, p2 ribbing mixed up if I treat it as mindless knitting.  My K3 columns end up with a random purl stuck on one side.

See the naughty purl?

I’m knitting a new hat design, with a buttoned band knit flat and a very easy, but (hopefully!) very dramatic textured body knit in the round. If I ever GET to the body. When you are tinking back every round or 2, it really slows you down.  But I’m really liking the look of the ribbing.

That ain't no green grey!

The yarn is Malabrigo Silky Merino (Rav Link) in 411 Green Grey, which is where the SECOND difficulty comes into play.  This color is impossible to photograph!  Right out of the camera, the color is lovely, but soooo wrong.  Even my adjusted photo up there is just not quite right.  I can’t seem to get the hint of green and the vibrancy right (and I haven’t desaturated the whole photo – the little table out there is that bland!)  But trust me, this color is AMAZING.

Mmm, new yarn…

The cotton that changed my world.

This, my friends, is Blue Sky Alpacas Dyed Cotton (Rav Link) in color #632 – Mediterranean. And my goodness, is it ever YUMMY.  Here’s the thing.  I started to knit, found Malabrigo, fell in love, touched a small amount of cotton in a big box store, said “Ew.  Rough, no stretch, ugly colors.  Cotton is GROSS,” and went on my merry little way knitting with every animal fiber I could get my hands on, and acrylic or silk when I was not using animal fibers.

Then I decided that I needed an Abalone (rav link).  It calls for worsted, so I COULD have gone out and bought a couple of skeins of my lovely Mal for it, but decided to check out a LYS nearby to see if there was a more summer-appropriate alternative (since I’m living in Van for the summer, I want to see what they are all about in a big city :D).  Quick plug for the store – it was Urban Yarns on Edgemont, and it was great!  Lovely, lovely yarns.  The lady working there was quite content to let me browse and have my BF chill out on her couch looking bored out of his mind and then was helpful at the end making sure I was sure that 4 skeins would be enough yarn and that they were all the same dyelot (well, they aren’t, but they didn’t have 4 of the same and I’m comfortable with 2-row striping).   They have a knit night on Tuesdays, and I may need to check it out :D

Abalone WIP

Anywho, going there led me to paw at this yarn a bunch and then wander off to go paw at animal fibers and then come back to this, back and forth and back and forth, before finally deciding to give it a shot.  And I’m glad I did!  It doesn’t have the same bounce as merino, obviously, but it is sooooo soft.  Bonus is it’s cool enough to knit with in summer heat!  I’ve made it about 11 inches into the body of the Abalone, but it doesn’t look like much yet.  Just a lovely, oceany-blue lump of stockinette.  I may add in longer sleeves, and use a contrast color for the edgings.  I think an espresso brown would be lovely!

It’s a bit of a change to knit with and I think my tension is a teensy bit wonky because of the lack of elasticity, but from what I hear about cotton, it’ll even out and get even softer with washing and blocking.  Some people have warned me of pilling, but I’m not worried.  That’s the price you pay for softness!

Oh, so soft...

City Hat

A cozy hat inspired by the beautiful city skyline. The hat is long enough to keep your ears warm, but just short enough to not snag on earrings, if you choose to wear a pair. The hat is knit inside out, with twisted stitches to help make the skyscraper columns stand out. It is a super-quick knit, great for chilly evenings in the city.

Sooo tired.

Working full time takes a lot out of ya! and by the time I get home, I’m feeling too lazy to go out and get pics of the … oh, 5 or so FOs that I need to show off to you, oh and like 5 swatches for my swatch book.  And I want to get that  Column Hat pattern out sooner or later, seeing as the pattern and the knitting are done, I just need to put the photos INTO the pattern.  But, first, I must get photos…

Besides those, I’ve got the Prada Mitts pattern in testing, a crochet(!) pattern in the makings, plans for Prada Socks (there is a pattern out there already, but they are sock-weight.  I want fat worsted weight Prada Socks!)

All of this to come… Oh, I dunno.  I want to have the Columns hat from ages ago done this weekend at the very least.  See you then!