Pools of sorrow, waves of joy

FO!! This is pair 2/13 !



I am in love with these socks!! The yarn is wonderful, the pattern is pretty yet simple enough that I was able to read while knitting, and they fit perfectly!!

Pattern: Vanilla Latte Socks by Virginia Rose-Jeanes
Yarn: Lynai Superwash Sock Yarn in Across the Universe
Needle: 2.25 mm Magic Loop
Notes: Two at at time, toe up. I looove the Eye of Partridge heel! I think it's my favorite now.







in love with the speckles!!! Hope everyone has a good Wednesday :)

Aquarium, Sock FO #1/13

I have finally finished a pair of socks!

Pattern: Hermione's Everyday Socks by Erica Lueder
Yarn: Knit Picks Felici in Aquarium
Needles: 2.25 mm
Notes: I knit these 2aat cuff-down with Magic Loop. This is one of my favorite sock patterns because it's easy to memorize and has awesome texture.

It has been several months since I've even worked on socks, so it felt very good to be back knitting them. I think the magic is in the tiny needles, the thin and beautiful yarn, and because the whole project fits in your lap.

My goal this year is to knit thirteen pairs of socks, and this is pair 1/13! At one point this past year I thought, I have too many socks. But, I've worn almost every pair (of hand knit) because it's been so cold! As I type, they are having a nice soak in Eucalan wash.

I have two pairs on the needles now:

The first pair is nearly finished actually, I just have the leg and cuff left:

This pattern is Vanilla Latte Socks by Virginia Rose-Jeanes, in Lynai's Across the Universe.

And the second pair is just a stockinette sock to have for mindless moments:

Actually, I cast on these plains socks to balance out the Hearts and Flowers socks I originally had planned for the Across the Universe yarn. It was, unfortunately, a poor yarn/pattern combo. Hearts and Flowers by Wendy Johnson is a beautiful pattern and I hope to knit it with a better suited yarn choice soon.

Enjoy your weekend, friends!

two old FOs :)

I finished both Hitchhiker and the Colorblock shawl in March, but never took photos of them! (with a real camera, instead of my cell phone, I mean :) )






Pattern: Hitchhiker by Martina Behm
Yarn: Madeline Tosh Sock in Tart
Needles: 3.25 mm
Notes: I wanted to use as much of the skein as possible, and ended up with 35 teeth

This yarn is soooo beautiful, I loved knitting with it. This is my second time knitting this pattern, and it is my favorite! I have yarn to knit my aunt one too :)



It started snowing!!



Pattern: Colorblock Shawl by Jenn Pfeiffer
Yarn: Knit Picks Felici Sport in Sunny Day and Lana Gatto VIP
Needles: 4.0 mm
Notes: The only modifications I made were sandwiching the MC between the CC (which ended up being the main color!), and shortening the length of the shawl.



I love it!! Both yarns are super soft, and the Lana Gatto has a touch of cashmere in it :)



That's it for now! Hope you guys are having a great weekend :)

TGIF!!!

This has been such an off week for me and it has really tested my patience... I am so happy it's FRIDAY!

Since the third clue for the mystery mitts Grand Right & Left was released today, I can share clue two!



I LOVE the cable on the top so much! How pretty is this design?! I finished knitting this clue last Saturday and it was hard waiting a week for the next clue!

You might notice my blue nails...they are so bright! They were part of my April Julep box; the color is called Ally. I normally don't wear polish this bold or bright, but after wearing it this week, I'm really enjoying it! The Julep monthly box is really neat, you can choose which colors you like and the company sends you two polishes and something extra (like cuticle cream) for $20. (if you're interested in signing up, click here)

One last thing, my parents are raising two pigs!!



About five weeks old now, they are cute and oinky and they squeal!!





Happy Weekend!

(I don't know how to tactfully say this, but the pigs will be eaten). 

Mystery KAL

In my last post, I mentioned that I'm knitting a pair of mystery mitts. Here they are so far :) This is Clue One:



That pattern is Grand Right and Left by Paula McKeever (she also designed Cafe au Lait mitts!!). Right now the Fingerless Glove Fanatics board on Ravelry is hosting the MKAL. There will be four clues; clue two was just released today :)



I started knitting them two at a time on Magic Loop, however, clue two is just for the right mitt, and clue three just for the left, so I have separated the mitts to their own needles. The yarn I am using is Knit Picks Telemark in Aubergine. It is tough to knit, like literally, it doesn't have much give! But it really has nice stitch definition, don't you think? I am happy to be using it since I purchased a bit when Telemark was being discontinued a year or two ago. Using stash yarn is always nice.

Ahem... speaking of stash... and yarn... a box with this in it was delivered yesterday:



:)))))))) 

(I was told sock yarn doesn't count as stash) 

a stash update

1. A friend on Instagram recently started dyeing yarn and each colorway is absolutely gorgeous!

I have shown you the top skein before, it's Roxanne; I purchased it last month from Vanessa before her shop opened. The other two colorways are Across the Universe (left) and Loch Nessa (right). Aren't they so pretty?! It's hard choosing a pattern for them.

Loch Nessa

She just dyed some springy colorways too! Visit her website, Lynai Yarns, for yarn and other pretty things :)


2. I have also shown you the skein on the right before (I bought it in Portland last summer) but I recently added to my Opal Vincent Van Gogh collection!!

I might go back and buy a few more...  these Van Gogh yarns just make me so happy. I am pretty sure they will be plain, stockinette socks. I have seen this yarn knit up and the colors alone make the socks.


3. Wonderful Dag sent me a great package a few months ago (which I realize I never wrote about!! erg!) with this roving that she processed and hand-dyed:

and I spun it up! 

It's about 76 yards of worsted weight yarn!! I love the colors so much, and it was a lot of fun to watch the colors emerge when I was spinning it!


April is going to be a busy month for projects! I hope I can keep up. Progress photos as soon as there is progress :) but I'll tell you there are two cross stitch projects, one mystery knit a long for fingerless mittens, some mice and hay bales, and another Hitchhiker (for my aunt). And I really want to cast on socks with the Lynai yarn!!

Today is my Friday because I have the day off tomorrow! Woo hoo :) Hope you guys have a great weekend!

(p.s. I decided to add a word verification in order to post a comment because I was receiving a lot of spam comments. I know it's kind of a bother but hopefully it's not too annoying! if you have any suggestions/comments about it, you can always email me too, at starshineluck @ gmaildotcom)

a few things...

1. a chubby chirp for my aunt:




2. another Hitchhiker Shawl in progress! Part of an Instagram KAL. I'm knitting it with my lovely skein of Mad Tosh :) I've knit quite a bit more than what's in this photo:




3. Remember the Winter Wonderland Sampler I started last Christmas? Those clever girls have come up with the Springtime Sampler at the Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery ! I am working on the frames right now, and on April 1 the first little patterns come out!! Pictures soon :)


4. I joined another Instagram KAL for the Colorblock Shawl by Jennifer, more information at Knitwise, Purlwise. My colors will be:




5. I recently realized that I can listen to Audible books on my iPhone, instead of on my Kindle... it might not sound like much to you, but when I realized this, the world stopped. So I've been listening to The Help nonstop for the past few days while I stitch on the Springtime Sampler. Have you read/listened/watched it?? It's amazing!! I haven't seen the movie yet but I really want to after listening to the audio book. Soooo good. I think I might be the last person on earth to read this book.

so happy it's Hump Day and BOOK CLUB NIGHT!!

I was attacked by the flu bug two weeks ago, and it was the worst! It started with Scott on Valentine's Day and then I got it that weekend. It took at least an entire week for me to start feeling normal again; I felt like the walking dead!

You'd think that being sick, stuck on the couch all day with nothing to do, would yield lots of knitting. But it didn't. I did read a lot, and finished the first two Beautiful Creatures books. They are sooo melodramatic and cheesy, with lots of teenage angst. The first book was just made into a movie and the trailer always catches my interest. So when the series was the Kindle Daily Deal, I bought all of them. What I like about the series is that it moves quickly and there's enough suspense/intrigue that the books read fast. What I don't like is how much I enjoy reading them, especially because it's in the teenagers-with-supernatural-powers genre. Sigh. It's my guilty pleasure. (and I definitely want to see the movie!)

There hasn't been much progress on my cardigan because I've been busy test knitting for a friend!

The pattern is Great Divide Shawl by Michele Brown. It calls for DK weight yarn but I used fingering weight with US 6 needles. I used stash yarn: Knit Picks Stroll Tonal in Blue Yonder and Araucania Ranco Solid. Besides changing the yarn weight and needle size, I knit to pattern. It's a beautiful pattern and is very well written. I love the shawl!!

I've recently purchased some yarn candy and am itchy to cast on something! I primarily purchase yarn as I need it for projects, but these recent skeins are just plain stash enhancers!

MAD TOSH!!!

the white yarn is nice, but not part of the enhancement

Those are my very first skeins of Madeline Tosh and I am soo excited about them! One skein of DK (maybe for a hat) and one of fingering (shawl). And the above photo contains my first skein of Malabrigo (it's the middle blue. I think it will be a cowl or mitts!) and the colorful skein on the right is A Stash Addict's sock in Mermaid Hair!! So I have a lot of project ideas in mind, I just need to settle on one.

It's Wednesday, friends :) Enjoy the rest of your week

Sweater Reclaimation Act, 2013

I have wanted to knit a sweater almost as long as I've wanted to knit socks, but I've always held myself back. The main issue has been yarn quantity and cost; committing myself to that many skeins at that cost, I just could never do it What if I never finished it?

But then I had a light bulb moment to reclaim yarn from an old sweater to knit a new one. Reclaiming yarn is not a new idea and I've heard of the practice before, yet all of a sudden it seemed like a practical and perfect idea.

So I found a few sweaters at a local thrift store, some that looked nice already and in a variety of yarn weights. The top sweater is an angora wool blend, middle is 100% wool, and bottom is an acrylic wool blend:

Before I cut into a sweater, I did a little googling and found this awesome site that takes you step by step in sweater deconstruction. Thankfully I had chosen sweaters with seams that are easier to take out! (dumb luck, eh?)

And now the process!

This is what the original sweater looked like

These are the sweater pieces after pulling out the seams:

Then I wound the yarn into skeins with my improvised niddy noddy:

it's really the backs of two chairs put together

And the finished, reclaimed yarn!!

I ended up with just over 800 yards of super bulky yarn :) It was a very exciting process and it's still thrilling to think of all the possibilities reclaimed yarn can become.

This 800 yards is becoming a Campus Jacket. I will share progress photos soon.

I hope you are all having a safe and warm weekend.

a new adventure!

Hi friends! We woke up to snow! Today will be spent being cozy on the couch, knitting, with Berny :)

I thought I had written about my new adventure, but I just looked back through the posts and realize I haven't! So, my adventure is that I'm learning how to .......

........................ drum roll ..............................

SPIN YARN! 

A lot of friends on Instagram are spinners and I'm so envious of their gorgeous handspun yarns! And it makes me really excited to think about knitting with yarn that I've spun - I think that's the coolest thing. Ever. I'm learning on a drop spindle and roving that I purchased from Joseph's Coat:

I honestly can't remember what kind of wool this is, but I want to say it's BFL. There are little seeds and bits of grass in it... which I kind of like because it gives the wool a natural feeling, yet, I don't want it in my yarn! I had an option to take a class with the LYS owner, but for now, I think I will practice on my own. I borrowed a few spinning books from the library and have been watching a lot of videos on YouTube. I really like Tanya's 'Learn to Draft Fiber' video:



(Tanya is also the owner of A Yarn Loving Mama Etsy shop and has beautiful handmade drop spindles, roving, and stitch markers)

I've spun about half of the blue roving so far! My first spindles-worth is lumpy, uneven, and has too much spin in it - but I'm going to keep it :) I started again, being more mindful of keeping it smooth and putting less spin in. It is slow going because I don't practice every day... I think that might change because I just received this gorgeous hand-dyed roving from Amanda at Pretty Penny Fiber Arts:

So lush! They are incredibly squishy and smooth and beautiful... I just love them. I am peeing myself because I want to spin them so badly, but I also don't want to undo their perfect little braids!

Stay warm and safe out there!

What's tater, precious?

Fiiinally writing about my goals for this new year :) I added a new page link (under the header) to keep track of my progress.

One of my goals this year is to make more homemade meals. It's not that we eat out a lot, but it's really easy to fall back on canned soups or chili, and I'd really like to cook more healthy. I won't share every single meal, but maybe the recipes that are new and delicious. I've started planning the week's meals and shopping for all the ingredients on one day. And holy cow has it helped! It means I'm more conscious about only grocery shopping one day a week, stocking up on pantry staples, and using up produce before they expire. It takes some strain off me too, because when I get home from work, I already know what to cook. And since Scott is always home before me, he can start prepping.

So, to start it off, we made Skinnytaste's Baked Potato Soup the other night:

it was very good and very easy! The main ingredients are potatoes and cauliflowers! Crazy, huh? You end up cooking them until tender, then pureeing, and that's added to the chicken broth and milk. I like this soup because it isn't heavy or greasy, but the cauliflower helps to add body. I also learned you can cook a potato in the microwave :)


I hope you all have a great weekend! I started a pair of stripey green socks that I will be knitting on today.

Jesse

Hi friends!

This post is more along the lines of what I had in mind to break my absence. Thank you everyone who sent me a message yesterday about my weird experience. Your thoughts and comments calmed my nerves and I slept very soundly last night :)

A few things I've been working on:

Woodland sampler; can't wait for February!

And I finished my Zombie Vixen mitts for the Instagram KAL!  

I love how dramatic the light makes the cables!

this one is slightly awkward because it looks like I don't have a pinky

Pattern: Zombie Vixen Mitts by Susan Claudino
Yarn: Koigu KPPPM in colorway 705
Needles: 2.25 mm


It was a fun KAL and the variety of colors used was awesome! Self-striping, acid green, speckled, jewelly blue...and they all looked GREAT! This was the perfect KAL project for me because I really needed the support of other knitters to finish. The cables are beautiful, but they aren't fun for me, you know? Fair Isle, garter stitch, miles of stockinette stitch, those are fun to me. But this project does give me hope that I will be able to knit cabled socks, and I have quite a few in my queue that I'd love to knit!

I used a darning needle instead of a cable needle. Some of the KALers cabled without a needle at all, and I tried it but didn't catch on. Maybe the next cable project I will try again. It was an easy to follow pattern (available for free on Ravelry), with line by line instructions for cables.


I counted my knitting totals for 2012, and by far, I knit monsters the most!

I used an app called PicFrame to do this; the best spent $0.99, seriously!

It makes me wonder what I will go knit-crazy on this year :)

Hoping everyone has a happy Tuesday,
Jesse

freaky deaky

I would have liked a different post subject to break my blogging absence. But I am really creeped out!

Ok, Scott leaves for work everyday at the same time. It's early, and I try to wake up with him but usually sleep in. Today, he left like normal and I fell back asleep. I woke up to him touching my leg and then heard him leave through the garage. I figured he forgot something and needed to come home to get it, but didn't want to wake me up. It was 7:45 am. I texted him, "Was that you?" and he writes back, "???"

O.M.G.!!!!

I checked all the doors and windows, everything was locked. Everything looked to be in order. Berny was sound asleep on the couch.

The best I can come up with is I was somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, and mistook the events for reality.

But.... holy shit!

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a happy holiday season! Time is really escaping me and once again, I have many things to share with you.

All of the Christmas knits were well appreciated, which made me feel very good. The only knit that needs reworking are dad's socks, which are too short :/ easy fix, I just don't want to look at them anymore!

My last two finished objects of 2012 were:

1. Intersections Break by Mel Ski:

It's a fast and fun knit. I used stashed bulky yarn; the pattern calls for worsted weight held single or doubled. I might tink back and knit it a bit longer; as it is, unblocked, it doesn't quite cover my ears completely.



















2. Hitchhiker by Martina Behm:



I looooove this pattern so much. It was a relief to knit something that wasn't on a time frame. The pattern is simple yet engaging, and it was perfect to knit while finishing The Night Circus (which I loved).

I received this yarn from Scott, for Christmas. It's Knit Picks Imagination in Mermaid Lagoon. I still have one skein left...

And I received the pattern from wonderful Andi. I know I will be knitting this scarf over and over, it has become my favorite.



 

A few projects I'm working on:

The Zombie Vixen mitts is a knit-a-long I've helped start on Instagram. There is also a Ravelry group with a thread dedicated to the KAL if you aren't on IG but would still like to participate!

tag with #zombievixenkal2013 :)

It is a fun pattern knit with fingering weight yarn! I've decided to try knitting them two at a time :) This is my first time using Koigu KPPPM yarn and I am so in love. It is one of the nicest yarns I've used and was definitely a splurge.

The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery gals have done it again; they've designed a new cross stitch sampler that starts TODAY! It is called the Woodland Sampler. 

I've been stitching the frames and am waiting for the January's design to come out :)

and there is one more KAL I want to join, I'm just deciding on yarn. It is 22.5 Degrees by Martina Behm. I am obsessed with her designs! Garter stitch is just so smooshy. There is a Ravelry thread for the KAL too :)

I will be back soon with a few Christmas photos.
Happy 2013 friends :)