yarnie winners

We have our winners!



Congrats to Irishgirlieknits and One Sheep! I have e-mailed both of you.

P.S. I put all names in a box and had my boyfriend pull two pieces of paper. As you can see, he gives the thumbs-up seal of approval to the drawing.

BSJ fun

After a long hiatus from baby knits, I'm back at one. My co-worker Luis and his wife are expecting a baby in September, and they're being old school and not finding out the baby's gender in advance. Another co-worker and I are planning a co-ed baby shower to let more guys from work come. We're avoiding cheesy games (like wrapping toilet paper around the mom-to-be's tummy) but looking for good ones, like bringing baby pictures and having to guess who's who. I decided to make my first Baby Surprise Jacket since I've got a month to knit the thing.

I dug out this lovely skein of STR lightweight in Marbles that I won in a contest over at Irishgirlieknits ...



and immediately cast on. It makes a great BSJ, but I was a little worried about the colors. The reddish-pink could look awfully pink, and what if the baby's a boy?



So I consulted co-workers (since the dad-to-be is back in Spain for a few weeks, I could openly run around with the project at the office!), Flickr peeps and my mama. I *want* to think that the world is cool with baby boys wearing a titch of pink, but I just don't know how the recipients would feel about the thing. I set the whole thing aside to finish later and went back to my sock yarn stash. This guy was sitting on top:



Why hadn't I noticed it before? The perfect baby green! Onward ...

EDIT: Almost forgot - you can still enter my yarn contest!

my first shawl

First, a reminder - I'm giving away yarn!

Now that that's out of the way, I can share my latest FO: a shawl.



It's the Simple Yet Effective Shawl, knit from a skein of JulieSpins Not Sock Hop - Crown Mountain Farm roving (colorway: "It Takes Two, Baby) spun up into 432 yards of yummy sockweight goodness. I stumbled across it in Julie's Etsy shop a while back and decided to make it my first-ever purchase of handspun.



It was wonderful to work with. The finished shawl is so soft. I foresee myself making another one (or two?) of these in the future. It's such an easy, portable pattern.

My only mod was to keep the center stitch a stockinette one throughout (knitting on the right side, purling on the right side . I also just played each panel of stockinette and garter by ear.

For now, I'm getting back to my Ishbel. I'm afraid it's too small (I'm knitting it on US4s and I am knitting the smaller size), so I might rip it back to my lifeline and do the larger stockinette portion. We will see....

yarny giveaway!

This isn't some landmark blog post. It's no. 233. But in all that time I haven't had a yarn giveaway. I've amassed a lot of sock yarn over the past two years. A kind of scary amount. So I want to give a few skeins away to my fellow knitters!

The goodies up for grabs are:



Fearless Fibers super-soft 100% merino sock yarn in a very generous, 550-yard put-up in a golden-y shade called Greed (apropo, since I tend to be a bit greedy about sock yarn...)



And Knitterly Things Vesper Sock Yarn in Indian Summer. It's a club offering from last summer's sock yarn club - a merino-tencel blend - very soft and shiny!

There's one catch - you have to leave a comment here and tell me about a blog you like, be it about knitting or cooking or fitness, all of which are things I enjoy.

Leave your blog addy or e-mail in the comment form, too, so I can get ahold of you. This is open to U.S. and Canada peeps - sorry to those farther afield.

I will keep this contest open until Wednesday, July 1.

P.S. If I somehow manage to get more than 100 comments, I might throw a third skein of sock yarn into the pot to better your odds ....

slow, slow knitter

Well, I've still been knitting but I've got no FOs to show. I'm onto the lace portion in Ishbel:



I've learned that I need absolute silence when working with charts. I sequester myself in the bedroom if Josh is around (and all he's doing is typing on his keyboard. Seriously.) or sit in the living room and get aggravated when the A/C kicks on. So yeah, this is slow going. I'm still on the first lace repeat.

I have knit two more repeats on the Clapotis that never ends - and I'm happy to say I've moved on to the second skein of yarn (STR mediumweight in Tlingit). I cast this on in January so I'm hopeful that, at one or two repeats a week, I'll be done in, oh, November?

And I'm cheerfully knitting away on the foot of the mate to this sock. Etc. etc.

Nothing else to report in knitting land except that I've been lucky enough to win two blog contests in the past week. I won a beautiful skein of Misti Alpaca from The ADD Knitter, who is a witty gal whose posts make me laugh and whose FOs (many of them knit with Malabrigo) make me drool. I also won a skein of STR to be determined as from Carrie, aka Irishgirlieknits, over here. She is an STR enthusiast just like me. Oh! and she sent me a copy of her newly written pattern, Cotty. So I am a lucky, lucky gal this week, and stay tuned for a giveaway soon-to-be-announced here ...

almost my weekend!

Today is my Friday, and I'm really looking forward to having the next two days off. You wouldn't think I'd be so desperate for a weekend, because I just had four days off to go to Ohio, and, a few days later, a three-day weekend (thanks to a furlough day). But I am. I've been keeping my mornings busy with running and errands and dates with friends - I went to the beach Sunday, to a new Trader Joe's on Monday, and had a great run yesterday. I like having busy mornings because they feel more productive, but today rolled around and I just didn't want to do anything. I took Gracie on a nice walk and decided to go for a run, but I ran maybe half a mile and just wasn't feeling it. No motivation. (And I was hungry, since I hadn't eaten breakfast and set out a little before noon on my run. No wonder I was ravenous.) So I made the choice to come home and do a little stretching instead. I'm slowly learning to be OK with skipping runs in favor of something else ... like knitting on Ishbel!



I'm totally digging the colorway. I'm flying along on the stockinette section and I'm hopeful I don't run into too many hiccups on the lace part - hoping to get to that point tomorrow. I've got another trip to the beach planned with friends, a pizza party at work and knit night. Fun stuff!

I'll leave you with a pic of my herb garden. A few weeks ago, I had just transferred the plants to flower boxes and they looked rather floppy. But check out the basil now:



Grow, baby, grow!

I had a blast in Ohio. I was there for less than 72 hours but it felt like I was there for a week. Perhaps because I spent all day Friday knitting and ended up with a sock?



STR mediumweight in Cockamamie, basic ribbed sock

I'm already past the heel of the second sock. I really love the fabric of STR mediumweight on US 2 needles.

I've also cast on for what I'm hoping will be my first shawl, Ishbel.



Yarn is what else but STR (Mustang Sally, lightweight).

I thought the cast-on was kind of tricky, and I'm not quite sure I did it right, but I'm just going with it.

Yesterday was my return to running after the Capital City Half Marathon last Saturday. I woke up early and ran 2.3 miles before going to the beach with my pal Steph.

Oh yeah, and as for how the race went, I'm disappointed because I didn't push myself as much as I'd have liked. I didn't feel as strong as I did six weeks ago at the Shamrock Half Marathon, and I know that's because I wasn't able to complete my long runs (thanks to my two untimely falls). But I know I'm going to focus on improving my speed this summer, despite the mugginess that's to come. No excuses for me this summer.

a new pair of socks

Hi, blogworld. I'm excited to show off the second pair of socks I've knitted for myself.



These are knit in Prism Merino Mia in the Tahoe colorway: US 2.5 needles made them really fly by (the first was knit in a two weeks, the second ... a bit, ahem, longer. Like a-month-and-two-weeks longer.) They're really soft and squishy, and I hope they hold up well with no nylon ... we shall see.

Of course, now that it's 90 degrees out, I have no need for wool socks! But I'm bringing them with me to Ohio for scuttling around my parents' new house. I am finally going to get to stay in their brand-new house, which they moved into in mid-January. I'm headed there this weekend to run a half marathon Saturday morning, which I'm very excited about, and to see them and my grandma (who is visiting from Pittsburgh) and see my mom's play and generally be an only child for just a couple nights.

I'll be taking this sock on the plane with me:



It's STR mediumweight in Cockamamie. Since I took the photo, I've switched to from ribbing to stockinette and it's continued the crazy flashing. I'm just going with it - it's kind of crazy and out there but I'm digging it.

I won't be taking any time off work for a loooong while after this - I planned ahead to see how much I'd accrue by October, and I'm planning on taking off a week so Josh and I can go on vacation. He is pushing for Europe, I am pushing for Portland and Seattle. We shall see how the chips fall ... I love planning vacations!

oh hai.

No, I haven't taken up building completely accurate miniature dollhouse scenes. The above photo is tiltshifted! It's a photo I took last summer while at a Buccos game at PNC Park. I learned about tiltshifting through Flickr, one of the Web sites where I seem to spend all my time online. When I saw the first few tiltshifted pictures, I figured it required some fancy Photoshop skills I don't have. Well, it does, but luckily, there is a Web site out there to do it for me!

Today was a truly glorious spring day. Josh and I took the pup for a walk to the bagel shop, and then I went for a run. Normally I have to be at work by 12:30 p.m. on Saturdays, but today I didn't have to be in till 4:30. It felt like having a day off! So, so nice.

Running has been going very well. Well, except for the part where I'm a clumsy fool. I was out on what was destined to be a 12-mile run Thursday and tripped and fell five miles in, scraping up my knees and hands. I ran/hobbled the mile to the apartment and decided I wouldn't continue. I know I'm prepared for the Capital City Half Marathon in two weeks. I'm a little bummed because I was running the race so my parents + brother could see me in it (well, that's not the only reason but you know what I mean). Except now it's only my dad who can come to the race - my brother has National Guard duty that weekend (totally out of his hands) and my mom has a matinee performance of the play she's in. Such a bummer! Well I'm still psyched for the race, and it looks like my dad can see me at the start, around mile 8 and again at the finish, thanks to the route. I'm a little nervous about running a half marathon on a course I don't really know, but I'm trying to stay positive and tell myself it will be fine.

I have been knitting on Clapotis as much as possible - usually a row or two a day. I'm nearly halfway done with the yarn, and I plan on doing quite a few extra repeats of the straight section to make the scarf much longer. I really love how drapey it is but I'm pretty sure I'm going to block it. Here's a progress pic from a few nights ago:

50 lashes with a wet noodle ...

... for myself. Seriously, I hadn't logged into blogger since forever ago and discovered a handful of comments that needed to be moderated. The e-mails about them must've been deleted when I checked my e-mail after my trip to New York. Whoops. I've been neglectful of this poor little blog lately ... but it's about time for an update.

The trip to New York City was fabulous. We had overcast, spitting rainy weather on our ferry rides to and from Manhattan, which was quite moody. But while we were in the city, we had two lovely sunny days. I even got sunburned one morning! My complete set of pictures can be found here. We had great food everywhere we went (I wish I had been brave enough/competent enough with my camera to take some pictures of it): a huge pastrami sandwich at Katz's Deli (the restaurant made famous by Sally's fake O in "When Harry Met Sally"), yummy pasta in Little Italy, scones from Josh's favorite cafe in Brooklyn Heights, and awesome steaks at Les Halles, Anthony Bourdain's restaurant. Seriously good food at a good price.

And now, about the yarny pursuits in the city ... the first store I went to was Seaport Yarn in the Financial District. This was literally around the corner from our hotel (and no, I didn't plan that!). I knew from reading online that it was on the fifth floor of a building, and I arrived right as the store opened. For some reason, the elevator didn't work, so I relucantly climbed four flights of dingy stairs (the things we do for yarn, huh?). I got there, huffing and puffing, and a English girl who worked at the shop let me in. It was cheerfully packed (but organized) - yarn everywhere, much of it in clear plastic bags. Knowing I was headed to several more yarn stores, I bought only this Noro Silk Garden Sock:



I had heard how pretty Purl was, and it definitely didn't disappoint. They had so ... much ... Koigu. I didn't even look at anything else. However, the store was so, so, tiny (seriously, maybe 15 feet wide), and with several other shoppers, I felt like I should hurry up and get outta there. I ended up with two skeins of this lovely Koigu:



Doesn't it look like a Monet painting? Sigh. I love it. The final store we visited (and god love Josh for seeking out these stores with me! he's the best) was Knitty City on the Upper West Side. (Yeah we really got around that day. Although we took the subway a lot, we must've walked seven or eight miles that day!) I think this might've been my favorite store. It was really roomy, had a 'waiting area' (where Josh sat down and started reading "Crochet for Dummies") and had the best selection of yarn I had seen. They had Madeline Tosh and Malabrigo Sock, neither of which I had seen at a store before. I wanted to get so many things, but I was really mindful of my money all weekend. So I ended up with something I really, really love:



two skeins of Malabrigo Sock in Solis. I have been thinking about this yarn since I bought it, no joke. I can't wait to wind it and cast on. But first, I am trying to finish my Clapotis. I'm nearly done with the first skein, so I'm about halfway there ...

Oh, one more unrelated note: If you're a fiber artist and you're interested in copyright/fair use issues, check out a post by Pam (Flint Knits), who tweaked Elizabeth Zimmermann's February Baby Sweater and came up with the February Lady Sweater. It's a thought-provoking post, and all I will say is this problem wouldn't exist if people just did the right thing. Le sigh.