We’ve returned, finally! Colorado was great, but so very dry. I felt like kindling the whole time I was there, and I’m just beginning to moisten back up now. Houston is good for something, and that’s humidity.

There’s so much to do in the Denver vicinity – we spent some quality family time in the city, then did a little CO college town tour (Boulder and Fort Collins) and checked out Rocky Mountain National Park. The roads to the good, high peaks were closed for the season and we weren’t really prepared for some hardcore mountain hiking in the snow (and wind). But we did have an encounter with some of the cutest wildlife around.

Hello, hearty magpie, you’re so cute and plump for the winter!

It was cold enough to skip past the fingerless mitts straight to full mittens.

Brrr! I’m also wearing my Sarcelle and handknit socks. I grabbed a few pairs of socks, not realizing that I’d wear the Mad Color Weaves every night as house socks (Rob’s brother’s house was COLD). My favorite pair was the Hederas that Silja sent me for Sockapalooza. I originally thought they were a wee bit snug, but they fit perfectly and stay up the best out of any of my handknit socks. Note to self: knit socks slightly smaller in the future!

We got to meet our almost-four-month-old nephew on the trip, which naturally meant that I got knitting.

Remember my great spin-out this past summer? I knit these out of this Spunky Eclectic yarn. The yarn was crazy uneven, but they didn’t turn out half bad! The hat is based on the kittyville Little Devil hat, and the thumbless mittens (hee!) are sort of based on the Baby Mittens pattern here. I may have done a half-assed job writing down the mitten pattern, so I winged knitting them on the plane. In addition to being crazy uneven, the handspun changed gauge as I knit with it, from worsted-ish to dk-ish. I’m still pleased at how well the hat and mittens turned out, and they almost fit baby Isaac. Yay!

I leave you with the strangest thing we saw on our trip (well, besides the townies singing karaoke in an Estes Park bar):

This gigantor sculpture sits outside the Denver Art Museum. Um, Denver is a dirty, dirty city and needs a good sweeping?

I’m rushing around today, trying to get things together before we leave for the holiday. Somehow I’m behind on just about everything right now, eep! We’re off to Denver for a week to visit Rob’s brother and family, so here’s a drive-by FO post before we leave.

Pattern: Endpaper Mitts, by Eunny Jang.
Yarn: Brooks Farm Acero (the dark blue), Hand Jive Nature’s Palette in Odd Duck #4.

In short, I love my Endpapers! They’ll be perfect for winter in Houston and my why-is-the-vent-blowing-on-me office. Yay!

The pattern is straightforward, although a bit thoroughly charted – the pattern repeat is the rightmost 10 stitches of the chart. I find a 10 stitch pattern easier to follow than a 27-stitch mass of blocks, and I pretty much had it memorized by the end. Since I knit tightly, I went up a needle size for both the ribbing and the pattern.

The one problem I had with the pattern was the Italian Tubular cast on. I used this tutorial (perfect!), but it was coming out loosey goosey. I consulted my Montse Stanley book for alternate tubular cast ons, and she suggested that the Italian cast on should be worked on smaller needles. That did the trick! It still flares a bit, but you can’t tell when the mitts are on.

The yarns are, in a word, awesome! If I were buying yarn (I’m still technically dieting until the end of the year), I would rush back to the yarn store and buy more of the Nature’s Palette yarn in that same colorway, I love it to bits. I think the colors work very well together and they’re definitely a “me” color scheme. The Acero is shiny, thanks to the undyed silk, and looks great with the matte Nature’s Palette.

The photo above is perfectly true to color. One issue is that the Acero variegates ever so slightly to a lighter teal, and it’s almost the same color as the Nature’s Palette in some places. It almost looks like I made a chart error, but I swear it’s the yarn, not the knitter!

Knitting these mitts has definitely improved my continental knitting. I still knit much looser in continental than english-style, so you can tell that my light blue stitches are pretty elongated. I’d also say that my floats are too long – I was being very careful not to knit too tightly around the DPN joins, and I think I overcompensated.

Endpaper Mitts say peekaboo! Ok, I’m off, have a good turkey day (or tofurkey day, or plain old Thursday)!

Ever since finishing the Endpaper Mitts (photos coming soon, once I’m home when Mr. Sun is out), I’ve been trying to tackle the holiday knitting. I’m only making a few things, but they’ve been All Wrong thus far.

I knit a Utopia hat. Too small. Now I’m knitting another straight from the too-small version. I’m using Malabrigo + a smallish needle (US 5) for a warm, cozy hat, and had originally cast on one extra pattern repeat. This would have worked fine for me, but my brother has a gigantic head. Boo.

Pooling, my nemesis. These were going to be Marina Piccola socks for my mother-in-law, and now I’m stumped for a pattern. Double-boo.

I also have a goal of finishing all of my wips before the end of the year, so I decided to revisit Petal. I set in the one remaining sleeve and tried it on, and it’s too short. I’ve been in a state of denial about this, hoping that the fit would miraculously change once I set in the sleeves. No dice.

I’ve already reknit the front and back pieces due to fit issues, and there’s no way I’m doing that again. It was time to take drastic measures.

I cut my sweater in half a couple of days ago! Well, I actually snipped a strand and carefully unraveled one row, but it was just as fun. Will Petal be complete before cold arrives in Houston? Probably, given the weather as of late!

My mom and her friend were in town last week and I’m finally resurfacing after their visit. Whew! The ladies loved the weather (but I feel cheated out of my autumn, boo!) and did some hardcore shopping, but my favorite activity of the past week was the International Quilt Festival last weekend.

This was my first time going to the quilt festival and I was blown away by all of the amazing handiwork. There were a ton of quilts on display, and so many were truly awe inspiring. Seriously, you’d walk up to a quilt and think, “wow, amazing!” And then you’d check the details and see “handpieced, handquilted”, holy crap!

This galaxy quilt was my favorite. The lighting wasn’t optimal for photos, but trust me, it was awesome.

I wish that I had more detail photos of it. Quilters really know their color theory and composition. I could only hope to be that creative with fabric someday!

I also love this one, it was one of the big money winners. You can see some of my other photos from the show here, and a bunch of the juried quilts on flickr.

There was also a gigantic market, and I may have purchased a couple of things. The ladies were getting a bit restless at this point, but I luckily had some tips of the must-see booths in the market. Most of these are fat quarters purchased relatively cheaply, and I also picked up a Nigella fat quarter set. I see more box bags in my future… Maybe one day I’ll even move on to sew something else!

Meet Floppy, Wonky, and Passable:

Last Friday, I set out to make a box bag for a gift and somehow ended up with three! I really wanted to mail it out on Saturday, and it was a very long, frustrating evening.

The first bag is Floppy, my attempt at constructing the box bag correctly (unlike the previous attempt). The construction was successful, but I didn’t use strong enough interfacing and the bag wound up being extremely flimsy. It does make a perfect beanbag for Igor.

I’m using the bag now – a skein of Malabrigo gives the bag a bit more structure, but I didn’t think it was good enough to gift. I do love the fabric – cute little peas from Superbuzzy. Eat your veggies!

The center bag is Wonky, king of the uneven seams. At the end of the tutorial, you pinch out some triangles for the end seams, and I could not get the seams to be parallel. This bag has pretty heavy sewn-in interfacing, and I blame the interfacing for all of my issues. Bah!

The blue and green bag is Passable, the best of the bunch. I used slightly lighter interfacing, fused to the lining fabric. The seams are still a bit crooked, but it’s the best of the lot. I did add an extra step to the box bag assembly – concealed seams, to contain the raw edges so that strings don’t fly away and embed themselves in your yarn.

Next time I make one of these, I’m going to create pattern pieces that have the triangle parts cut out ahead of time. I think that this will help me line up the handle, too – it’s really difficult to align it without any straight edge as a reference point. There will definitely be more box bags in my future – I went to the Quilt Festival last weekend, and my fabric stash was considerably enhanced!

It’s been a while since I’ve fallen head-over-heels for a knitting project, but I’m thisclose to leaving Rob for an Endpaper Mitt.

The list of loves for this mitt is long, and it starts with the yarn. The shininess of the Brooks Farm Acero combined with the matte Nature’s Pallette, and the tonal color scheme of two subtlely variegating yarns that climb dangerously close to the same color, but never meet. Swoon! Also, the colorwork is like magic – it’s amazing to see the pattern emerge and it seems that the somewhat complex knitting is just speeding by. Seriously, I can’t get enough of this project and I’m sure you’ll see a FO report in the near future!

The Endpaper Mitts are really just a warmup for a larger colorwork project.

More details to come, but this is the first of a slew of holiday gifts that I’m knitting this year. I’m super excited about this one and I can’t wait to see it take shape! I love knitting for the holidays (um, for those who appreciate it), and I love the prospect of finishing a number of smallish projects by the end of the year. Here’s also hoping that a couple of sweaters get finished soon, too – both of them are ridiculously close to completion!