Now is the time when knitbloggers look back and reflect on the finished objects of last year. Here’s a mosaic of it all:

Twenty four things: half of them socks, 10 accessories, the Squares for Sharron blanket, and poor Phyllo Yoked Pullover, which turned out very unflattering, sigh. You can click on the photo for details on all of the projects.

A bit more interesting is the yarns of 2008. Specifically, handspun. I bought a used, somewhat rickety (well-loved, right?) Ashford Traveller at the end of 2007 and gave it quite the workout in ‘08:

clicky for linky!

That’s a lot of yarn! Looking at the mosaic, I can clearly see how I improved as the year progressed, from the overspun messes in spring to the relatively good quality yarns that I spun in the winter. In mid fall I decided that my fiber stash had gotten out of control, so I spun the last ten skeins in a relatively short span of time.

While I was getting good at spinning yarn, I wasn’t very good at using it. No, not at all. Had I actually knit with the early yarns I would have realized how icky and overspun they were and I probably could have spun better stuff sooner. Ah, well, hindsight and all. Regardless, I have a shelf of handspun sitting around, becoming yet another stash. I finally decided to do something about it, all at once!

If you read Lolly’s blog, then you’ve seen her posts about the Komb blanket she’s knitting. I have an unnatural love of hexagons and how they tessellate oh-so-perfectly, so Komb is perfect! I decided that all of the handspun, from crap to gold, was going to become a gigantic blanket. Knit it until it’s gone!

First came color selection:

Since my color preferences are pretty consistent (cool colors!), this was pretty easy! I omitted anything with brown so that the blanket could hang out on our grey couch. I also chose yarns that were relatively the same weight – dk to worsted. One bulky yarn made it in to the blanket, and my next post will talk about the issues with handling the gauge difference.

I knit a few swatches:

Which became a little flower:

Which then multiplied!

The cream border yarn is Knitpicks Bare Superwash in the worsted weight. I went back and forth (and back. and forth.) of whether to use the superwash or non-superwash versions. There’s quite a bit of a price difference between them, but I finally splurged for the superwash (after buying all that fiber, what’s a few more dollars a skein?) so that I could easily spot clean the border without accidentally felting the yarn.

In the past, I never considered myself much of a blanket knitter. I’ve knit one baby blanket, the Oat Couture Prairie Blanket, and at the time I thought that was the longest, most painful project ever. I’m really enjoying this blanket, though – I think the handspun makes everything much more fun! I have a huge bag that I keep all the yarns in and it’s entertaining to close my eyes, put my hand in, and pull out the next color. I’ve also been searching the internets looking for more! colors! and spinning additional skeins to add to the blanket.

Since I’ll be working on this blanket for the foreseeable future, I’m going to spread out the details until the blanket is done. Next up: construction and gauge, where I spill the beans on the fact that I’m not actually knitting Komb at all, just a very close replica.

Sorry about the whole abandonment thing, blog. I took a bit of a break to do some secret knitting, and then I wasn’t working on anything for a while, and then I became lazy. I blame summer. It’s do damn hot to do anything but sit around, drink margaritas, and bitch about humidity. Ugh, humidity. But! Now I can blog about the unbloggables, and I’ve even been knitting a bit. I started a sock.

Then abandoned it for another sock, which is still unphotographed.

I also started a new, non-crafty project – the 365 days, self-portrait one. I think it’s an interesting idea, and I’ve been at it for a little over a month. I’ve been maybe spending all of my blogging time on flickr these days. I’m planning on peppering this space with some of the 365 photos, so that we don’t have another of these long breaks apart.

I may be back, but I’m leaving again for a couple of weeks. Rob has a conference in Zurich and I’m going with him! I’m very excited to go far, far away, to a land that has (hopefully!) less humidity than Houston. However, I’m not leaving you out in the cold, blog! Time permitting, I’m going to write a couple of crafty posts that will magically appear while I’m away.

There’s no knitting to see here. Well, I could photograph another almost-completed Mad Color Weave sock, but that would steal all the fire from the FO photos. And do you really want to see another frogged piece of Petal, complete with swearing? Yup, the sleeve cap reknitting doesn’t need blog documentation.

Therefore I shall distract you with… kittens!

Clicky on the picy for extra big. How can you resist those little blue eyes?

The kittens have undergone an amazing transformation from when we found them a little over a week ago. Back then, they would huddle behind the toilet whenever we walked into the room and would hiss like crazy. Now they climb all over us and are positively jumpy. Dare I say, frisky? Definitely frisky. Also, they learned how to purr this weekend and they all purr at the same time when we enter the room. Purring in stereo! It’s pretty awesome.

We have another week of kittens living in the bathroom before they get their feline lukemia test, and then we can take them to get adopted. I’m introducing them to the other cats as soon as possible – we only have one, small bathroom, and we want it back!

Hello! It is so Friday, and I am in serious need of a weekend. Rob and I are off to the Robparents for some serious R+R in… New Jersey. Woo. Gifting of the shawl will occur, and I’m hoping for a jaunt into NYC if we can spare the time. Rob asked me what I wanted to do in the city if we do go, and I had a list already prepared. Now, Purl or Habu? Decisions, decisions. Habu is pretty cool, but I’m not supposed to be buying yarn, remember? Fabric is fair game, though.

There will be plenty of hanging out and car trip time this weekend, so I’m bringing all sorts of crafty goodness.

Petal! I have two sleeves and two bottom borders complete, and I’ve started the back. I may leave this home to motivate myself to work on other projects.

I really, really need to bust a move on the Sockpalooza socks. T-minus 32 days, and I haven’t even started them yet. The swatch is a modified stitch pattern from a japanese craft book, but I need to add about 4 more stitches per pattern repeat to make it doable. This swatch was truly a labor of love – every traveling stitch and double decrease was worked on the wrong side.

I have confirmed that the sock yarn doesn’t bleed – it’s Tess (just like the bleedy laceweight), a prize from Jess for winning her blog contest, yay!

Remember the Counterpane Clutch? Ugh, neither did I. This thing has been sitting around since August. At some point I grafted the bottom together (I had started with a provisional CO to avoid a seam), but the rest was unfinished. I picked it up about a month ago and made what you see here. You see how the zipper is pinned to a separate lining? That was version 1.0, which was about an inch too narrow. Practice makes perfect, right? All I need to do is hand-sew the thing together and I’ll be done.

Act 1: Confrontation

Blackie was on the bed, sleeping soundly, when Silver showed up. They sat like that for a few minutes.

Act 2: Rejection

Act 3: Resolution

One bed, two ok three, cats. So freaking cute! There will be some craftiness here soon, with optional sewing content. The sewing comes with swearing for free, whee!

The Airy-name-is-too-long is complete! It’s still unblocked, and I can’t bear to post another photo of that lumpy mess. I’m also sure that everyone is sick of cats-in-felted-bed photos (joe and blackie were both lying in it at the same time, CUTE), so no photos for you.

I have other exciting news – remember me mentioning the deliciousness that is sponge candy, and not really explaining what it is? Well, Oiyi made some, and she posted some awesome photos of the little morsels of YUM. How cool is that? The recipe that she found is pretty darn close to what my mom uses. The process is two-fold: there’s the dangerous make-sure-it-doesn’t-burn phase, then the tedious dip-each-individual-chunk-in-chocolate phase. The end product is completely worth it, though, and it looks like Oiyi totally nailed it. I may need to cook myself up a batch sometime soon…

Other photoless excitement:

• Rob and I had our first crawfish experience last weekend. We went to a genuine crawfish boil (118 pounds of crawfish!) which was both fun and delicious. I went in thinking that crawfish were like shrimp, but they’re really like miniature, spicy lobsters.
• The international crimefighter was in town this weekend, keeping Houston a bit safer for a short while. I also met Everwhelming Liz, and am eagerly anticipating seeing her almost-finished Venezia.
• It’s Sockpalooza time! The planning will begin soon – I just bought a couple of Japanese stitch pattern books, and I’m thinking about cobbling together a sock pattern from them.

I’m leaving on Thursday for our mini-vacation to DC and MD, and will be swinging by the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival. I’ve set some ground rules (no variegated sock yarn, no 400 yard/scarf amounts of wool, no spinning materials), and I’m ready to hit the Koigu! You see, I now need to go to the Koigu booth, because I agreed to pay Amy in Koigu for catsitting. After this weekend, I vow to not buy any yarn for the rest of the year, except for gift knitting. Really!

I’ve always been amazed at the flora in Houston. It’s very green and lush here, and there’s an abundance of palm trees and bamboo. Palm trees! So cool. This time of year is definitely gorgeous around here – there’s lots of rain, but everything is flowering like crazy and the temps are ideal.

Our backyard is a different story. There’s no grass, just a series of shrubs, each larger than the next. And ferns! Ferns belong on a forest floor, not in our backyard. Rob has Big Plans for this space.

However, it’s not all bad. All those little flowers in the background?

Jasmine! It looks remarkably similar to the Jasmine of last year at our old apartment. There’s also Jasmine growing next to our driveway, so I smell it when I get home every day. I’m beginning to associate the smell of Jasmine with spring down here.

The big shrub in the foreground has a brother next to the garage (it also has a big ass rosemary bush behind it). The garage shrub has pointy leaves that always scrape my legs as I walk by it when doing laundry. Annoying. But it’s slightly less annoying these days:

It suddenly has two gorgeous flowers, this one on a stalk about three feet tall. Ok, Rob will let this one live… for now. I’d love to tell you what this flower smells like, but I’ve developed a cold and can’t smell a damn thing. I blame the northeast – this is the first cold I’ve had since moving down here (I used to get at least one cold a year). Damn you, Cleveland!

Coming next: I slipped and fell on Yarnzilla. Lesson learned: don’t shop for yarn when tipsy.

A bulleted list of Buffalo activities from our weekend visiting the fam:

• A new haircut, with bangs. Last time I had bangs, I was 16 and my mother warned me about how horrible I would look when they grew out.
• Ate unhealthy food and drank $1.61 beers.
• We watched it snow sideways. I know, most of the northeast had much more white action than this, but still! I brought Sarcelle with me, and it made the perfect pretty scarf.
• Took photos of a Buffalo-themed license plate:

• Hung out with a Goldendoodle puppy. Rob thinks they should be called Pootrievers.
• Made sponge candy. YUM! Does anyone outside of Western NY/Southern Ontario eat this stuff?

Of course I didn’t take photos of the fun stuff, like hanging with my peeps and drinking to excess and getting STUCK IN CLEVELAND overnight because of !@#$ bad weather in Newark (which caused our plane to show up late, which then caused us to miss our connection).

There was knitting. No project knitting, but tons of swatching. I’m feeling a bit inspired from the swatching happening here, but completely noncommittal to anything bigger than a five-inch square.

Clockwise from the big black void on the left:

• Phyllo Yoked Pullover (from Knitting Nature) in GGH Safari. The black really obscures the pattern, and I want something with a shorter row gauge so the pattern is compressed, then I can maybe wear the sweater without a cami underneath.
• Shetland Triangle (Wrap Style) in Fleece Artist Sea Wool. Thanks to Amy for suggesting this in my “what to knit with Sea Wool?” post. I knit this on a US 5, I’ll probably go up a needle size if I decide to make this.
• Some travelling cables in Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy. I need to work on the increase/decrease method – there’s some seriously ugly step edges along the purl columns.
• Twisted Flower sock pattern in Mountain Colors Bearfoot. Love the Bearfoot, but I’m thinking it’s a bit too hairy for this pattern. The colorway is gorgeous – it’s teal with some green bits running through it.

My fave of the four is the Sea Wool:

The only thing better than beautiful sock yarn is SHINY sock yarn!

I’m back! I effectively hid away from the internets and email for a couple of weeks, getting my ass whomped at work and unpacking like a fiend. Rob did most of the heavy packing for us, so I’ve been in charge of unloading everything into the house. We also hit Ikea, and bought an awesome rug, I can’t wait to set it up. It’s so easy to spend lots of money there in very small increments – ooh, a cheap photo frame! And a garlic press! And a shower curtain! And a hamper! So much fun!

There has been some knitting:

A full sleeve of the Cambridge Jacket, doubling as my gauge swatch. Swatches lie, people, and that sucks. I also have the back knit up to the arm shaping, but I may have to reknit it due to the horrid lies that my gauge swatch was telling.

But mostly, we’ve been spending a lot of time out here:

Our front porch, completely worth the many zeros that it cost. So awesome. The weather has been in the high 70’s here, and we’ve been putting lots of quality porch time in before the weather turns to humid hell and the mosquitoes show up.

I have lots to post about, like a proper FO post for the Asymmetrical Cardigan and for Sarcelle (it’s finally complete and blocked, horray!). And of course some house photos, once all the boxes are long gone!

One of my favorite Valentine’s seasons involved those little candy conversation hearts.

Back in the day, pre-Rob and pre-Houston, a friend and I were alone in the lab with a bag of hearts. Writing on the hearts with edible marker is hot stuff these days, but we were old skool and used a regular old pen. We weren’t planning on eating them – those things taste like crap! We also weren’t writing love notes – we would change a letter here, add a word there, and create some decidedly unsavory valentines. My Baby Is Ugly wasn’t my idea, but was one of my favorites. I’m Sorry You Suck was another classic. Happy V Day!