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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!

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 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!

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!

I’ve love to show off some photos of the new place, but Rob was in charge of photography. Instead of sweeping views of the front porch or gorgeous shots of the interior, we have these:

Thrilling. Rob’s main concern in house hunting was the sturdiness of the roof and electrical system. My concerns were: Does it have a porch? What’s the neighborhood like? Oooh! Pretty!

I absolutely love house hunting, it’s amazing to see the crazy places that are out there. Like the vacant garage apartment (at least half the places that we looked at had them) that was stinky, moldy, and icky, but had a HUGE widescreen TV. Or the place where the owner was a complete slob, with clothing lying around in the kitchen (unmentionables drying in the kitchen!) and an open container of soybeans chilling on his bedroom floor. Or that 70’s era apartment we saw way-back-when that had a mirrored wall along the staircase going up to the apartment, and a set of gigantic stained glass windows in the dining room with shades embedded in them. So much fun!

Now for the packing and moving and purchasing. We definitely need to buy a fridge and washer/dryer before we move, and we also need some decent furniture. Between the two of us, the nicest piece of furniture we own is probably the Ikea filing cabinet we bought last year. I have my eye on a fancy-pants couch, now I just need to convince Rob that he wants it, too!

You see that line, where the tree decor begins? That’s how high Joe can jump and successfully wreak havoc!

Happy Holidays!

Mates of State this past weekend. Fun!

Ok, there has been thinking about knitting. I’m trying to decide on my next project. I want a cardigan, now. This whole knitting thing – it’s really preventing me from buying sweaters. Well, first there’s the whole living-in-TX thing, so I don’t have a huge need for sweaters. Then there’s the look-at-the-label-acrylic-blend-too-expensive-hell-no-I-can-totally-make-this thing. Then I never make This, whatever This was. Anyway, I want a sweater NOW before I travel to the northeast for xmas, and here are my options:

1. Ivy. I’ve swatched this in some old-skool Lang yarn that I bought from Webs eons ago. My gauge is off (6.5st me vs 6st Ivy), so it will involve thinking and math. I’d also probably change the bottom part to not pull in so much.
2. A sweater from the mind of kelly knit from my schmancy Rowan Cashcotton. I swatched this already, too. But this will involve tinkering and thinking and is unlikely to be completed in a timely manner.
3. The Asymmetrical Cardigan from Knitting Nature. I saw a post on the knitalong recently, and I want! She knit hers in Malabrigo, so I may or may not have bought a bunch of olive Malabrigo from Yarntopia today.

Also, I joined the Stranded Colorwork knitalong. Nope, never knit fair isle before. I bought this pattern, which is awesome in a Japanese woodblock, Legend of Zelda (cartooney Legend of Zelda, like the wind waker one, which btw I had played to death on my little gamecube and me and the mapfish are likethis) sort of way. I can’t wait to knit another pair of useless (in TX) mittens! I’d love to hear suggestions for solid-colored fingering weight yarn – I can get Louet pretty easily, but I want more pretty colors. One LYS here carries Koigu, but very, very few of the solids.

Lastly, I baked yesterday. I usually try to stay a reasonable distance from food preparation at all times. I hate, hate, hate cooking. Rob is my master chef. However, his birthday was on Tuesday, and I decided that I Will Bake a Cake From Scratch. So, last night I grabbed this recipe and some fancy chocolate and got cooking. Baking fun:

1. The recipe called to melt chocolate in fresh brewed coffee. Yum. However, for the first time since we moved here, we are out of beans. I had to dash to Starbucks to pick up a quick cup of coffee, and they were closed! What coffeeshop closes at 9:30? Doesn’t that seem crazy early? Anyway, the door was open (lights on, I hadn’t a clue that they were closed) and the guy gave me a cup for free so he wouldn’t have to mess with the closed register.
2. Wow, it is very easy to make a massive mess with cocoa powder.
3. Using our teeny food processor to chop chocolate is fun! It makes the most horrible little noise as it churns away!
4. I now own Corn Syrup. Please, if anyone in Houston needs some light corn syrup, you are more than welcome to take a hit off of my supply.
5. The cats like to lick butter. Ew.

I successfully did not burn one single-layer cake and a dozen cupcakes. Yay! The cupcakes are tiny because I’ve never made cupcakes before and I was pretty conservative when filling the little shiny liners. The cake is in the freezer since Rob doesn’t come home for a couple of days, and the ganache to frost it with is in the fridge, rock solid. Hopefully it melts up easily!

Also, I don’t have an accent, no matter what my mother says.

Meet Joe, the little creature bringing me one step closer to being a crazy cat lady. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Because Joe? He is cute! We have him because we are gigantic suckers for things that are small and furry (and cute!). We saved him from the streets, indirectly through Amy, whose cat hated poor little Joe.

Joe doesn’t photograph terribly well, since is both black and blurry. Seriously, he is either sleeping or in FULL ON CRAZY mode. There was a bit of hissing from the girls they first saw him, especially Blackie. Surprisingly to us, Joe can fit under our bedroom door. So much for keeping them separate for a day or two. However, everyone is cool with him now. It’s pretty fun to watch Blackie stare at Joe as he bats at her and tries to play.

Someone, please, give me $4000 for this couch (from Anthropologie). I am in love. Perhaps it’s for the best that money does not grow on trees and such, because I’d likely spill something dark and staining on the lovely couch the second I sit down. But still! I’m in love!

On a more affordable note, Snow & Graham wrapping paper (as seen on design*sponge). Also love this. Mittens! I want to wrap everything in my house in this stuff. Back when I lived in Noho, I would always peruse the S&G card selection at Essentials, and I totally wanted them to do our wedding invitations last year (only available in nyc at the time). Yum.

7:30
11:00
1:30
3:30
2:45

Awesome! And so I wait, trying to decide whether or not I should take a nap before I pick him up (it’s currently midnight).

For the Project Runway fans out there: The final 4 showed their collections today. Getty photos here – I personally liked Jeffrey’s collection (ETA: Laura’s – ick. Uli – the prints are beautiful, neutrals eh, Michael – safari?). Also, Nazri was one of Uli’s models, drama!

Rob is in lands far, far away with the camera (for two weeks, boo!), so there’s no photos today. I’m going to have to hit up Amy for a photoshoot with her shiny new Canon. The Baudelaires are almost (all but ribbing) done. After that I’m a clean slate, no other projects going on. There will likely be lace in my future, stay tuned.

Did you see that there’s a new Magknits up? The stitch pattern on the Snowflake Socks will be mine. Also cute: Honorine.

Yarnival! Go check it out – you may recognize this disaster (which fixed up nicely!).

I’m telling you, I love aquariums!

The Basalt Tank is blocking like a champ, which means that it is still sopping wet after 12 hours. It will do battle with the dryer this evening!