Photos! Photos!

Lots of finished things. Lots of ongoing projects.

Sky was awesome enough to get me a new camera for Christmas. She was right in that at first it was like, hmmmm... New camera, eh? But so far it's been rad. Went bird watching in the north east part of the state and took some pretty incredible photos of hawks and eagles. But this blog is about knitting, and sometimes quilting.

Sonya was in town visiting for a bit. Did a lot of yarn shopping with her including heading all the way to a strip mall in the south bay to end up at Purl Esscence. At first thought, WTF are we doing here, but on closer inspection realized the 100+ miles of driving that day were well worth it. Got two colorways of socks that rock yarn. Beautiful. It was fun being the enabler and getting Sonya to pick up a bunch of new yarn and rovings to take back to Italy with her. Apparently it's hard to come across good yarn there, all the more reason to encourage sky's the limit yarn shopping. Everyone was chomping at the bit to send her yarn internationally after her various purchases.

Anyhow, finished projects!



Here's a hat that took a long time. It's the knitted lace hat from Lace Style. Two layers, knitting the inner layer first top down, then changing yarn and needle size and working my way back to the top. It's a bit short because I didn't repeat the pattern as much as they indicated, but I was worried about running out of yarn. Used bamboo yarn. Pretty. Looks very French on especially with my short hair.



Here's a scarf I made that was inspired by a shop in Philadelphia that wouldn't let me take photos of their projects so I invented this from what I remembered of what I saw. Started out with one thing and changed it to this. Love it. Very lacy, super easy to make. Lots of compliments, maybe I could mass produce it. Uses kidsilk haze by rowan and something chunkier by malabrigo. Lots of double yarn overs and dropped stitches for the loopy effect. Fun. Kind of a pain, but great effects, works well if you stick to a pattern of added and then dropped stitches.



Here's a scarf I made, again inspired by another one I saw in a shop. Cast on horizontally, way too many, something like 250, should've gone down to less than 200, but it ends up being very warm and good for a double rap through.



Here you can see the crazy double rap around action.



These are my first fingerless gloves that I made for Vivs. They don't look all that impressive not on, but they look pretty cool on and were easy enough that it'd be fun to make another pair, perhaps with smaller needles.



And here is a really cool hat Sonya made for me from yarn she found in Italy that looks exactly like yarn from one of my very first hats I made that I still wear today despite it being stretched beyond repair. Here's a close up as well. I have no idea how she made it. She explained it in an email, but I prefer the mystery of not knowing. Makes it seem even cooler.



Maybe one of these days I'll get around to writing about progress of various things. Still haven't finished the other dahlia sock. Working on a huge 42 square afghan for Sky, have 10 squares finished so far. Working on a log cabin quilt, a habu scarf of stainless steel and cashmere and I think that's it. Not as many projects as I normally have going at once. I think it was due to finishing inspiration by Sonya when she came to finish all of the sudden I got a ton of stuff done. Yay!