Throwing in the towel

So today I'm throwing in the towel on my two remaining Olympic projects, the second Strawberry Sock Forever (which I guess I could finish if I did nothing but knit until the ending ceremony, but that's not an option) and the uberQuinn bag made from Aussi Wool held doubled. The bag is taking a lot longer than I anticipated, and the knitting is so tight, it's literally painful to work on for longer than an hour. It's a cool pattern and will be a great bag, just not by tomorrow night. I spent around an hour on it last night and only managed 6 rows and picking up the stitches for the rest of the bag. Pretty sad.

But now on to the happy news. I got new yarn! I know, I haven't really destashed anything lately and I totally don't need more sock yarn, but when Nicole from Imbued Fibers pulled this purple out of her bag on Thursday, I just knew that it was coming home with me. I did take a couple glamour shots of the yarn, but I currently have no projects in mind for this skein of awesome. But I think it might just be too pretty to put on my feet.
Even though I'm towel-throwing right now, I still plan to continue the project-elimination plan of finish 4 (or more), start 1 while keeping in mind the several people who had requested potholders and some of the repair work I'm doing for the neighbor lady whose dog tore up a crocheted afghan from the 1970's. Just wait until you see these colors. So if you're one of the people waiting for potholders, they are coming, just not right now.

Olympic Update

As always, the darkness strikes before I can get home from work to take Olympic pictures of my knitting projects. So today after a good sleep in, I got my camera and my knitting bag and I went for it. I'm only going to include one of each project, but more can be found on Ravelry.

Firstly: Sock Hockey. These socks at the 12th or 13th attempt at my olympic socks. Seriously. I keep picking patterns and then 2 inches in I decide I hate them. Or the yarn isn't a good match. Or I'll never finish them in time. But Thursday night on my way to SnB, I grabbed one of my more recent sock yarn purchases and headed over to McAllisters to meet the knitters. I worked on another project for a little over an hour, and then started these and remembered why I love plain stockinette socks with fun multi-colored yarns at 60 stitches around. They fly by. Seriously. By the end of knit-night, I was almost ready to start the heel, and after last night's walk on the treadmill, I'm finished with the gusset (I find that knitting socks while training for a mini-marathon while watching Ice Dancing makes training for the mini suck a lot less.) I'll probably try to finish the foot today on the treadmill. I need to stop being such a slacker and hit 10 miles today. Oh yeah, yarn is Panda Cotton. The blue and green sock in the background is a Panda Cotton sock I made a long time ago and love to pieces, forcing me to buy more Panda Cotton at the New Year's Mass Ave Knit Shop sale and cast on for another totally awesome plain Jane sock. The new sock's name is Strawberry Socks Forever, even though the colorway is "Roses".

Bag Jump: This is my Quinn bag in very early stages. I saw Janet's Quinn a while back and decided I had to have one. And a few days before the Olympics, I frogged this sweater that I had started my Sophomore year at Purdue and never finished. In order to use up all of the sweater yarn, I decided to hold the yarn doubled to be that much more dense. The original Quinn bag suggests Cascade 220, knit on size 6 needles. Mine is bulky Aussi Wool from Oasis yarns held doubled on size 10s. It shall be called uberQuinn. It absolutely kills my fingers to knit cables this tightly, but it will all be worth it in the end.
Hat Halfpipe: This is the project that I started the Olympics with. And then frogged. (Are we seeing a theme here?) I'm now making a plain top-down beret out of some fun yarn from work that should be out in a few months. I think. But it's pretty awesome to work with.

So yeah...so far I'm off to a slow start with my Olympic knitting, but I'm confident that I can finish at least the socks and the hat, but uberQuinn might be a different story. We'll see.

****A note on commenting: I've been getting a lot of spam comments on older posts, and I honestly feel like a majority of my readers are not interested in increasing their penis size from 3 to 5 inches. So If you plan on commenting on a post older than 2 weeks, it will remain hidden until I approve it so I don't have to go back and find the posts where these douchebags spam a knitting blog. Seriously- how F'ed up in the head do you have to be to spam a knitting blog? You're still free to comment on all posts under any name, but it will only show up instantly on newer posts until the spammers start hitting new posts. And then I'll change settings again.

Thanks for reading! Can't wait for your non-porn comments!

the knitting party

So last night around 8 o'clock, my house was swarming with knitters eating, drinking, checking gauge, and sitting on the edge of their seats for 9 o'clock, when we could officially cast on for the opening of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. We had a great time despite a couple of us having colds (I'm now one of them) and I was so happy everyone could finally meet my little Madeline. She had a great time running around and checking everyone's projects out before having a little nap on my lap. Now almost 24 hours in to the Olympics, I have a good chunk of a hat done (I had to start over last night after I realized my pattern SUCKED. I hate paying for a pattern that sucks. Really hate it.) But anyhoo, have a new hat on the needles which I will try to finish tonight on the treadmill. Naturally I don't have pictures of it yet, because that would be the organized thing to do. But I can finally show you some of the projects I've recently finished!

Let's start with some of the handspun. This is most affectionately called "pepto pink". I'm really happy with how it spun up, but the gorgeous black cherry color that I bought it for barely shows up in this, which is a little dissapointing. That being said, it's a heavy fingering and eventually, I will spin up the remaining 5 ounces and have socks and probably a beret. I'm diggin' a beret right now.

These are the color-me-happy socks, started in the middle of a creative slump (which I like to think is on it's way out). Yarn is Kaffee Fasset Regia sock yarn. I love the colors, but I wish it were more self-striping than self-patterning, but whatever. They're really nice and warm.

This is the "Sweet November" sweater, mostly because it was started and meant to be finished in November and I even told myself I was going to wear in on Thanksgiving. And then I got sick. And then I didn't knit for like 3 weeks. But it's finished now and I adore it. Yarn is Patons Classic Merino from the Michaels clearance rack, pattern was made up as I went. I have 4 whole skeins left (this sweater took 5) and if you're interested in the remaining 4, I'd pass them on for dirt cheap.

Here we have a shawl that I'm absolutely thrilled with, my Candle Light Shawl by Lucy, one of my BFFs from my year in Colchester. It's her first published shawl pattern and I saw it and knew what the Dream in Color Starry in my stash had been waiting for. The pattern in really well written and was such a nice little knit. Well done Lucy! You can find more info on my ravelry notebook or you can go ask Bearium about it. But you should totally make one. Seriously.

And lastly, here's my Ishbel that I finished back in November but hadn't taken pictures of until now. I'm madly in love with this too. Yarn is Cariad Yarns from Soctopus in London, colorway is Mulberry Wine. It's got a little cashmere in it and it's seriously sexy. Love it.

Ending Things

So the past few weeks for me have meant finishing as many projects as possible. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you see it) this also meant breaking up with Adam. Things just hadn't been the same since I graduated and moved back to Indianapolis. He was supposed to come down to see me the past couple weekends, but at the last minute would always come up with something better to do, and he really sucked at calling me back. Seriously- I went 4 days waiting for him to call back. Not cool.So on Saturday afternoon, squeezing a stressball to death in hopes of not yelling (it worked!) I told him that it just wasn't working, and I needed out.

Of course he assumed there was someone else (does a cat count?) and called me all sorts of things (that I'd only ever heard on Jerry Springer) and that was it. And he's called about a million times since Saturday afternoon, I guess wanting me to change my mind. Not happening.

So after I ended things with Adam I noticed the little gray and black reminder of him on my desk. So I finished that too. (the hat, not the cat)

Sorry for the scary pictures- I took them as I was getting ready for work. Anyhoo, the hat is in the mail headed towards Lafayette. And not only is this a good way to end things with Adam, but my size 8 dpns are finally free.

(Pattern: Turn A Square, Jared Flood. Yarn: Berroco Cuzco, 50% wool, 50% alpaca.)