Usually my participation in Project Spectrum is purely coincidental, but this year I’m putting the teeniest bit of forethought into it.

That’s my sock yarn stash, all 12 skeins of it. I did buy some since making the sock-a-month pledge – the green skeins in the middle that look like they were attacked by cats. Because they were. You can click on the photo to see details on everything.

I fear that my sock-knitting motivation is going to wane once summer hits Houston (um, next month), but I’m going strong for now. I’m planning to knit the next bunch of socks according to Project Spectrum colors. Air is already looking like it’s going to be a weak season, but the other months are well represented in the stash. The fiery looking yarn in the upper-right will be March’s pair.

I may have accidentally added a thirteenth skein to the sock yarn pile.

That wheel that I’ve been borrowing? Well, now it’s mine. This is the first yarn that I’ve spun on it since I bought it – it’s Funky Carolina superwash merino in the Missed colorway.

I wanted to give Navajo-plying a go, so I decided to spin some skinny singles so that the 3ply yarn wouldn’t be too thick. At no point in time did I realize that I would end up with sock yarn. Yup, this is 119g and 350 yards, and pretty darn close to fingering weight. It’s by no means perfect, but I love it anyway!

Oooh, and today is also my two-year blogiversary. Crazy, huh? I’ve got to say, I do have big arrow-pierced hearts for the knitters! It’s such a great, supportive community, and I’m happy to be a part of it. Yay for yarn!

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!

I always thought that sock blockers were such a frivolous purchase, but I’m the first to borrow a pair when I have a too-small sock that needs some lace stretching in order to be attractive.

Another Ironwork Sock is done! Hoo, boy, am I glad I’m only knitting one of these. Dare I say that I now have this pattern memorized? I promise, I’ll only use my powers for good! I used Spirit Trail sock yarn that I purchased at MDSW for this, and I love it! It’s twisty and squishy and good.

Speaking of delicious…

Please stand out of my way while I tear apart the pretty packaging, rawr!

The Wollmeise yarn finally arrived! Roll call!

Dornroschen – medium.
Brombeere – dark.
Poison #5 – dark.
Veilchen – medium.
Gewitterhimmel – dark.
Tiefer See – medium.
Farn – dark.

Only the Brombeere and Gewitterhimmel are mine. I’ll be passing the rest off to their rightful owners this week. Maybe. Just kidding, girls, you’ll get your yarn!

I leave you with one last photo of the pretty.

We are back! We were awake at 3am central time to catch our flight back to the big TX on Wednesday, and hoo boy I’m still recovering. The trip was good, the weather was awesome (almost chilly at times), and the shawl well received on Rob’s grandma’s 90.5th birthday celebration. We also got to go to NY while we were in town and Rob let me drag him to a number of places that make him antsy:

Purl. Purl is very pretty with their lovely window display and so-soft yarns. Everything is smooshed into filled cubbies, so you need to pull out the yarns to see what they are. Which isn’t such a bad thing, since they have the softest selection ever. Soft. Squishy. Yum.

However, you definitely pay the Purl tax for shopping there – Koigu is $13.50 a skein. Damn. I just couldn’t justify paying that much for more sock yarn (although I was quite tempted), but I did break the yarn diet for one lone green skein at 40% off. I also picked up some Nature’s Palette, which isn’t available locally – the green skeins are for me, and the blue for Rob’s mom. She loved the socks I knit her for xmas so much that she wants to relearn to knit (she knit in college) and make her own socks. Yeah, I can help with that.

I probably wouldn’t go to Purl again if I was visiting NY, as their entire inventory (at least the yarns) are available on their website. Which is great for those of us living far away, but not so interesting if you stop by in person. It was nice to see their fabrics up close and personal, though.

I didn’t buy any fabric – Rob was getting impatient, and I don’t really have any sewing projects or yardage requirements in mind for fancy pretty fabric. I figure I’ll order some from them at some point when my sewing skills improve. We ended up having lunch at the cafe between the two Purl shops, and the creepy cats in the window stared at us the whole time we ate.

Kinokuniya. I was on the lookout for some more Japanese stitch dictionaries, but I didn’t see anything worth buying. There was one reasonably priced book but it looked questionable, with some swatches knit in mohair (bad, bad idea). I ended up buying this amigurumi book with cute animals and a crocheted milk carton instead. Does a body good, pass it on.

MOMA. Just kidding about the antsy part, Rob really did want to go here. We used to visit NYC occasionally when we lived in MA, but I’ve only been to the Queens annexy MOMA when they were doing construction on the Manhattan building. It was really nice and only saw about half of it in the 2 hours we were there. MOMA makes me appreciate Houston a teeny bit more, as we’ve seen a few MOMA exhibits in local museums in the last year. Houston definitely has some great contemporary art going on between the Menil, Fine Arts, and Contemporary Art museums.

I ended up bringing Petal to Jersey, so I only really worked on Petal. I finished the front up to the arm shaping and a good chunk of the back. Then I ripped a good chunk of the back because my gauge loosened up while I knit sleepily on planes, buses and automobiles, gah! I also reworked the chart for the Sockpalooza socks to make it sock-workable, more on that when I start the actual socks (T-minus 26 days).

I finished the knitting on my Spring Things shawl!

Blackie says that she would prefer to lounge on blocked lace. Maybe I’ll block it soon, maybe not. It’s a gift for Rob’s grandmother who we’ll be seeing in July, so I’m thinking that I’ll block it closer to our trip up north.

Also, I realized that I need a bigger ball winder:

This is the most recent handspun again, partially ball-wound and partially kelly-wound. That kelly’s quite a machine, I tell ya. I’m still kinda bummed about the spinning/plying job on this one, but I’m pressing on. All in all, it’s 109 grams and about 18 wpi.

I’m still mesmerized that this:

Turns into this:

Whee! I crammed the whole plied skein onto one bobbin this time – maybe Amy doesn’t really need bigger bobbins after all. I was hoping for something more tightly plied, but what you see is the balanced result.

The fiber is Spunky Eclectic merino/silk in the Nova Scotia colorway. I split it into four strips and kept everything in the same direction when I spun and plied it, so there are some distinct color shifts in the skein (moreso at one end than the other).

My skills have improved a bit from the first skein to last:

The newest skein isn’t too shabby! Predrafting is key.

And last, a little handspun yarn party:

Well, the spinning has been fun, but I’m ready to get back to some knitting. Big thanks go to Amy for letting me borrow her wheel and not complaining at all when I wound up keeping it for two weeks. There has been some knitting happening around these parts – I’m on the last chart of the Spring Things shawl, which you can see perched on our new chair:

Ta da! After 8 years of sitting on some seriously ugly, falling-apart grad student furniture, Rob and I finally went out and bought a quality sofa and chair. I feel like such an adult!

I have received the most kickass mail this week!

First up, remember me begging for some of the discontinued Rowan 4 ply cotton? Well Caro heard my cries and we did a little swappy action for these 5+ balls. How cool is that? Answer: Very! I think this yarn is going to become a Phyllo Yoked Pullover from Knitting Nature, with (hopefully) a shorter yoke so I can wear it sans cami.

Then, Ashley offered to take some unexpectedly-variegated Koigu off my hands (I swear, the Yarnzilla photo made it look like a semisolid) in exchange for this lovely box bag. How cool is that? You already know the answer. The box bag is the perfect size for two balls of yarn and my in-progress Garnstudio baby jacket.

The baby jacket is such an awesome pattern – simple to execute, yet very cool looking. I never thought I could love garter stitch so much, but in the RYC Cashsoft, it’s downright delicious. Baby-in-law is going to be one pampered boy. However, I’m feeling a bit eh about the colors of this – I’ve had the olive yarn for a while, and just purchased the celery color last week. I was going for a tonal color scheme for the sweater, but I’m afraid that I’m imparting my drab color scheme on sister-in-law’s unborn child. Well, at least it will be a cushy, soft, and luxurious drab sweater.

I also have a swap in progress with NanC, for a subset of my oodles of Lang Fantomas. I really need to complain about my yarn more often, these swaps have been great.

Lastly, I got my Petal package in the mail yesterday. Happy early birthday to me! Yes, I already own that color of 4 ply cotton. I’m warming up my size 2 needles for this puppy!

I’ve been meaning to catalog my stash for a while, but the final push came recently from two directions: the faboo Ravelry and my no-more-yarn decree. I gathered up the troops and everyone got a nice mugshot outdoors last weekend. The good is that I thought I had many more oddballs than I actually do. The bad news?

That’s 18 sweaters worth of yarn, arranged roughly by weight. Clicky on the picy for details. When I first started knitting, I bought lots of random skeins of ooh, pretty! Now I’m a bit wiser about buying yarn, but hot damn! For the record, I have knit 5 sweaters in my knitting career, one of which I’ve actually worn out of the house.

There are a couple of beginner-knitter-with-credit-card, um, mistakes up there. Like the Nadia, which is a thick-and-thin, alpaca-blend yarn in a whopping 72 yards (!) per skein. Or the Lang Fantomas, which is essentially sock yarn, but I have enough to make a sweater and socks and I’ll still probably have extras (damn you, Webs tent sale!).

I’ll also say there are a couple of groups that Don’t Count. The Rowanspun Aran is currently becoming a robsweater, although that sweater’s on the back burner for now and I’m considering frogging it because of pattern issues. The black Rowan 4 ply cotton is enough for a sleeveless sweater, and that’s about it. I’d love to track down another ball, but it’s been long discontinued. Anyone have any off-black 4 ply cotton that they don’t want anymore? I’d love to take it off your hands!

The really good news in all of this is that 15 groups in the photo above were purchased at least 30% off. Go me. The lesson learned is that this will be the summer of sweaters. Seriously, I need to knit this stuff up!

There will be a teeny exception to my knit-from-stash decree – my birthday is in one month (3-0), and I’m going to buy myself Kim Hargreaves’ Petal as a gift. I really wish that she sold her patterns separately, since I maybe have the yarn to make it in three different colors.

The yarn, oh! The yarn! I was at MDSW for a total of five hours, but did countless dollars of damage. Please don’t do the math and give me a running total, because I’m still in a bit of denial. At least I didn’t buy any fiber – I never spun up the stuff I got at Boerne, so I didn’t allow myself to buy any more.

First up, yarns for gifts! This is how I justify the purchases – a bunch aren’t for me!

The skeins on the ends are for baby-in-law due in August. The 8oz on the left is some superwash Tess worsted (YUM), and the 8oz right is Blue Ridge Farms organic cotton. That’s a pound of yarn for baby. I think the cotton will be one of the first yarns to get wound up and knit, for some reason I’m deeply in love with it. In the middle is some Spirit Trail laceweight for Sockpalooza 4. I’m still debating about this one – my sockpal is definitely into brights, and I’m wondering if this color is shocking enough.

There are two more skeins that don’t photo well with others:

Tess laceweight – this will be a Spring Things shawl for Rob’s grandmother. I had to do some fancy color-correcting to get it to look anything but RED.

Yarns for me:

The top yarn is Brooks Farm Acero, a wool-silk-viscose blend. It is shiny, and I couldn’t resist. I now have five skeins of Brooks Farm in my stash, all unknit. Bad kelp! Left to right: two skeins of Tess worsted for a sweater, some Koigu from the Mannings (I was determined!), and some Spirit Trail laceweight. I was thisclose to buying Spirit Trail’s silk laceweight in a gorgeous pink and grey colorway, but I went with the merino instead. Silk is expensive! I am absolutely in love with the Tess yarns. I wish that there was more of the skinnier merino, but I loved it so much that I bought the worsted anyway. I’m thinking that it will become a lacy cardigan so that I’ll actually wear it around these parts.

Overall I did pretty well. I went a bit over my budget, but didn’t buy too many frivolous things – I was on the lookout to extend my laceweight stash and stay away from the multicolored sock yarns, and was pretty successful at both of those goals. There’s also a couple of skeins that I got for Amy, but those are a surprise until I see her on Thursday.

The official I-have-too-much-yarn-and-must-knit-from-stash decree

Given the recent Yarnzilla action and MDSW, my stash is officially growing faster than I can knit it up, so I’m not buying any more yarn in my problem areas (sweaters, socks, scarf-amounts) for the rest of the year. Socks totally count – I’ve got more sock yarn than I know what to do with. There are a few exceptions:

• I am allowed to buy yarn for gifts. Especially for momma P, who is allergic to wool.
• Any money made from destashing yarn can be used to buy more yarn. But really, I’d prefer to plug it in to something else, like etsy non-yarn goodness.
• If I knit three projects in one problem area, I can buy yarn for another project in that area. I’m definitely hoping to knit three sweaters before the end-of-summer sales to get more sweater yarn at a crazy discount.

Wish me luck, I’m certainly going to need it!

We are back! We had a great time visiting our peeps in the midatlantic region, and of course visiting the yarn! We left on Thursday morning and flew into Dulles – my friend Amy lives pretty close to the airport. Also close to the airport is the National Air and Space Museum, and Rob really wanted to check out the planes. My fave was this guy to the right, who looked very hungry.

Then we were off to Georgetown to meet Amy after work. There was shopping. There were crepes and awesome calamari (but not together). There was drinking and mild ridiculing of the masses of urban professionals.

Back at Amy’s place there was Squarey!

I knitted Squarey for Amy a couple of years ago, and this is the first I’ve seen of him since. What followed was a XXX photoshoot with Rob and Squarey, but I’ll spare the internets those photos.

The next day we went the touristy route:

Rob’s seen many of the major DC attractions, so we hit up the International Spy Museum. Silence is safe, people. We also saw the Washington Monument. Again, there was plenty of food and drink – Rob needs to eat every couple of hours, it’s amazing.

Saturday was Maryland Sheep and Wool, the big yarny event. I got up bright and early to drive from near-Dulles to the fairgrounds and busted a move to the Koigu booth. It took me longer than it should have to realize that the booth didn’t exist – apparently there was a fall and injury affecting someone on the Koigu team, so they didn’t make it to the festival. I bounced back quickly enough and explored the main building, buying yummy stuff from Ellen’s 1/2 Pint Farm and Spirit Trail before exploring the rest of the festival.

I don’t remember if I called them first or happened to run into them, but the Dallas troops were at the Fold booth, standing in line with their masses of Socks that Rock. I had met Chris and Nanc at Boerne, and met Jen and Lilyan (and others!) there. We all meandered over to the Tess both, where we split up because I spent absolutely forever in there. There was SO much good stuff at Tess. I was there so long that I ran into awkwardly introducted myself to Jess and Erin, both of whom I recognized from their blogs.

Of course I visited the alpacas and sleepy sheep. Those alpacas were munching in unison, SO CUTE!

Next up was the bloggy meetup, where I met a bunch of the knitters from the internets. I spotted Stacey’s awesome Turkish Stockings from afar – it was slightly overcast at that point, and the socks made a great knit-signal. I also met Kristy, Turtlegirl (spotted her sweater, too), Katydid Knits (whose real name I forgot, sorry!), Jess of the awesome Ravelry, and saw Christine and the DFW gals again. I took off right after the meetup, and happened to stop by one of the first booths where I ran into Lolly, who had just arrived. Whew!

Overall, the festival was pretty fun. I wouldn’t go every year – my credit card can’t take that much pain all at once. Especially that damn Tess booth, their yarns are absolutely gorgeous. I was really surprised at sheer size of the event – the booths were all packed by the afternoon. I was also surprised at how much lamb was on the menu. You’re buying wool, yummy wool, then you eat the sheep? The poor lambs!

The rest of the vacay was spent in Baltimore, visiting some grad school friends. There was, naturally, more drinking (Cinco de Mayo, baby!) and food (Rob must FEED), lots of shopping, and some more sightseeing at the Inner Harbor and a history lesson at Fort McHenry (where Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner).

All in all, fun times! We got back Monday morning, and I went straight to work, whee. Yarny photos to come tomorrow!