So here’s just a smattering of what I’ve been up to recently.
And boy, is there ever more than that… woo. I didn’t document a lot of what I’ve been up to these past few months! But there will be more. Oh, yes, there will be more.
Yay! I finished my easy peasy hat a little while ago:
and just to give you an idea of just how big my head is…
This giant thing is a perfect fit. Yay, another hat I can’t wear for 8 months! Wooooo! hehe.
Honestly I haven’t done much other knitting recently. It sucks. While I was sick I did absolutely none – it hurt my skin to touch anything, wool and needles included. Just about the only knitting I’ve done is swatches for work and *one sleeve’s* i-cord border for the Lisa Shrug. If I could only find the time… it’s a shame, really. Between cleaning and sewing, being sick and working too much, knitting has just fallen by the wayside. ANd it sucks. Really really sucks. Especially with so many baby things I want to knit…
And now that I have this in my stash, I just have to do a baby surprise! Argh!
*sigh* Oh well. It’s hard to imagine that there’d be a downside to having a knitting related job (and there really isn’t much), but I don’t get a chance to do much of my own knitting. Poo. Well, that’s what meetings are for, I guess.
This has been a weekend of finishing. I finished four knitting projects! The Saturday market gives me time to do that… that’s just about the only benefit of it right now. But I won’t get into that.
First is my autumn wheat sox:
Next is a little something I whipped up for the niece-in-progress:
The third, well I can’t show it because it’s a test knit. 
But the fourth – it’s not done yet, but it will be – is my easy-peasy hat:
I’m just getting through the short rows on the ribbing to make it longer in the back. I’m going to short row it in the other direction next to make some earflaps. Or really, more ear-covering things. Not quite flappy. 
Now I have to figure out what next to do. i have a bunch of old sleeping projects on the needles – I really do want to finish all of those. But I also have so much pretty stuff in my stash, and a new baby to knit for. Oh, the torture! And speaking of stash, I have this:
I remarked when I bought it how it was such a great V-man color, and naturally when I brought it home he said “Wow, what a great color!” so, we know what this will be. hehe. But it’s getting towards the season where he’ll be wearing thinner socks, so there’s no pressure for now.
But.. that still leaves me stuck! I want to cast something on tonight… or maybe I really should just stick to what’s already in progress. I still have to do the i-cord border on the Lisa Shrug, and there’s a pair of gloves that needs to have the fingers re-done. Not to mention that giant obnoxious blanket…. the chenille monstrosity that I haven’t touched in months.
Speaking of months, how is that I’ve been at KP for two months already?! where did the time go, seriously? It’s going to be May, like, this week. Then I’ll be buying a flying car, because I’ll be 50 and we’ll have them by then. hehe.
Speaking of cars, mine doesn’t fly but she did get her first bath today! Also I should be passing 1000 miles tomorrow or the next day. Not bad for only two and a half weeks…. Sheesh.
Speaking of sheesh, I bought more nail polish today. And not the inexpensive drugstore variety either:
Two look identical in the bottles, but as anyone who likes to do a french manicure regularly can tell you, looks can be deceiving. They have the same base, but one is much pinker when dry. Anyway, I’ve been desperately hunting the perfect French base color for a while now. I like something that’s opaque, but as closely matches my natural color as possible. This is as close as I’ve found! It’s totally worth it to find the right color, even if it is $8.50 a bottle.
Well, I think the pollen and the craziness of the last couple of weeks has finally caught up with me… I have a sore throat. 
I dumped some turmeric on my dinner tonight, and I’m going to load up on vitamin C. Oh, I have oranges! I might just go have one of those right now in fact. But it’s a miserable feeling to be sure. I really can’t afford to miss any work or anything because of this. I’ll make sure I get plenty of some sleep tonight.
I’d talk about the yarn harlot’s visit, but I think it’s been so well summed up elsewhere that I don’t need to just yet! And as for my bad behavior, well, I guess you had to be there!
there have been so many folks posting views from their windows, I had to join in. I happen to think I have a darn good view from either end of my apartment – so you’ve got some from both ends!
but first, my window to the world:
I could keep going, hehe. I take a LOT of photos out my bedroom window – I love my view, and I get a great shot of the sunset every night. Like right now… my room is golden-glowy. Sigh. It’s going to be very bittersweet to leave here. I really feel blessed to live in such a pretty place.
And I HAVE been knitting – I swear! i’ve used up most of my knitting mojo on work stuff – lots of knitting. Holy cow.
One project is sooper seekrit, so I can’t show that. I can show my progress on my easy-peasy hat though:
Because my head’s so darn big, I won’t have enough yarn for a long hat, so I’m just going to short row it to make it long enough for my ears. Good enough for me. Heck, the whole thing is just a diversion anyway. Don’t really care how it looks!
I’m painfully close to the end of my Autumn Wheat Sox:
Why is is painful? Because I have too much to knit for work and I can’t get to the remaining 11 rows. Argh!
Hopefully seeing the Yarn Harlot tuesday will be a perfect opportunity – not only can I not work on work stuff there, but using BMFA at a BMFA sponsored event – good idea.
And I couldn’t resist – I got even more Stitchjones yarn at last week’s PDXKB get-together!
That’s ‘Tea Rose’ and ‘Solid Gold’ BFL. LOVE! they’ll be so pretty together!
Well, speaking of pretty, the last light of day is beckoning me outside. I must oblige.
Holy Moly. The time is flying.
My brain is nearly full. Work is going well, but i’m just so busy. I don’t have enough time during the day to get my stuff done, so I’ve been taking work home with me every day – except tonight. I just couldn’t. And I knew I wouldn’t get to it anyway, since I hung out with the Knitbloggers tonight!
I’ve gotten even MORE yummy stitchjones wonderfulness in the past couple of weeks. This yummy delight:
Andes Mint – how totally delicious!!
And today, a beautiful specimen, bestowed upon me by the venerable and kind-hearted Duffy:
She’s doing roving now! Holy pants. This could be dangerous! Four ounces for $10. Seriously people.
But that’s not all I’ve added to my inventory. Let’s just say that during the office move, we had some clearing out to do:
I’ll give you a cookie if you can guess how many balls of yarn that is! I couldn’t believe it either. It’s mostly stuff I probably won’t find a use for any time soon, but there’s a lot of interesting sample stuff and mistakes in there. I like weird stuff. And then there’s the brain skein. What exactly is a brain skein? Well, it’s a ball of bizarre Italian novelty crap that, at first glance, I remarked looked like a brain. And somehow when I got home it was in my stuff. I really don’t know how. Really. It kinda creeped me out actually. The photo doesn’t do it justice. 
It looks like a creepy oozing brain.
I think I like it.
So, moving on. I have done a little knitting recently. And by little, I really mean that. Most of my knitting hours are spent on work things, so it’s rare these days that I have time for me. But I did make an excuse to cast on a new pair of socks for myself:
Yeah, they’re a little past cast-on now. I like them. I decided with all of this insanely gorgeous Stitchjones stuff staring me down, I needed to make use of the oldest and least appealing things in my stash so that I wouldn’t feel too guilty diving into the prettiness. So, here are two discontinued and kinda ugly colorways from Blue Moon. As ugly as they are, I think they work well together. They’re much better together than either on their own, so with the leftovers from this pair I’m going to make another pair in the opposite color pattern. I don’t think I’ll use this exact stitch motif, though it is pretty; it’s very bulky and impractical for colder seasons or heavy shoes. And since I don’t wear wool socks as often in the summertime, there’s not much use in too many pair of highly textured socks. But they are darn pretty. The stitch I chose looks like little ears of wheat:
too bad it doesn’t like to be photographed!
I got a good action shot of the Boring Charcoal Socks too:
He’s only had them a few weeks and they’re already pilling like the dickens. It’s crazy how much he really wears them. I’m proud He will be getting many more.
Besides work knitting and a few errant socks, I’ve been working on the Lisa Shrug for Twisted. They gave me this project to do a week before I got hired at KP, and I feel terribly that I haven’t finished yet. The darn thing has been really plagued with weirdness. First of all was the swatch. The gauge was nearly square, and is measured after machine washing – I had to swatch over and over and go up two needle sizes to get it. Even then I had to block the heck out of it to get the row gauge right. I’m thinking about washing it before I sew all the pieces together, but I don’t know. Haven’t decided yet. Anyway, as I was going through, I kept thinking that there was a lot more than meets the eye with this one. It looks really really simple, but I was really having to pay attention to it. Turns out it’s rated “Experienced.” Who knew! It looks good so far, though.
Well, I have a lot left to say, but my time is growing short. I’d have been in bed already but my downstairs neighbor is watching something pretty loud and indiscriminately yelling at her cat, so it’s not very peaceful here at the moment. This too shall pass
Now that I’ve finally got some pics uploaded, I can post about stuff again. So I’ll post again soon But for now, it’s off to dreamland for me.
I’m taking a break right now. It’s supposedly my lunch break, yet my lunch is only about 5 minutes long. So, I have 55 minutes to hang out and do whatever. Include blogging
I’ve been diving through wool for the last couple of days. The office is moving, and I’ve been taking inventory of what we have here in the office. It’s been a welcome diversion from pattern errata, I can promise you that.
The heels look awesome:
What I think is really interesting about these is that all of the pooling took place on the instep – the sole is all one-row stripes. How odd! I really like them, though I wish I’d decreased a little more at the ankles.
*insert argh – my site went all bonkers while I was writing this, so I lost the rest of the post… I’m finishing it now that I’m home.*
So I finally picked up the Boring Charcoal Socks again. I’m about two inches into the ribbing now. I don’t think they’re going to be very tall – maybe 5″ of rib.
I also messed up the heel; I started the gusset too far down the foot, and so they didn’t really increase as much as they should have. Because of that the heel flap is really short, and there’s much less room in the heel-to-ankle diagonal than I had hoped. They still fit V-man, albeit tightly, and he said he’d still wear them. So I will power on. I hope to have them off the needles this weekend. Sooner if possible! Why, pray tell?
Because – what could possibly be better than this colorway?
I’ll tell you what – Its name.
I sincerely hope that V-man is as chuffed as I am. I can’t wait to make him socks out of his own colorway! And special thanks to Sharon for doing such an awesome job. YAY!!
I also have to thank Bobbie and Tool man for my brandy-new spinning chair – I haven’t taken a pic of it yet, but I’m so excited to have a chair that fits! Wooooo!
Not to mention, I can’t wait to see the photos she has of all of us knitbloggers stroking, petting, licking and otherwise doing lustful things with Sharon’s new yarns. Of all she brought, I think she went home with one skein. Hehe Not bad!
Well, I actually brought some work home with me tonight (the office is not a concentration-friendly place what with all the moving), so I’m going to go do a little of that and just have a nice relaxing evening.
As long as by natural you mean stash, and by enhancement you mean procuring more of said stash. All you have to do is run into Sharon and her twisted Mary Poppins bag of doom!
I mean, seriously. Was I supposed to resist this?! The colors are just yummmmmmmy. The worsted weight yarn is destined to become a happy flappy hat, I think. It beckons me. The sock yarn might be socks. Or it might not. That depends
And some other sock yarn that is not socks:
Hmmm, wonder what that is? Well, I can’t really say. Soon
So I finally got a good look at what I’d bought at the coast. My Yarn Shop is cramped and kind of dark (especially where this yarn was – she’d just gotten a huge shipment which was in front of these shelves!), but I picked this out and just figured “what the hay.” Turns out it’s fantastic. See?
375 yards of aran weight bliss. I mean, wow. Awesome.
And last but certainly not least, the wonderful fiber I got from Heritage Textile Arts Guild:
I’m not sure what to do with the mogit Romney. I just thought it was so pretty. They had some eesit too, but I had to pick only one. The alpaca is destined to be a hat for V-man. Hopefully we’ll have a winter cold enough for an alpaca hat next year, hehe.
So glad I finally got to hang out with the Knitbloggers again. It was hard to leave early, but there is that whole bedtime issue… sigh. And if I’d stayed any longer I’d have come home with even more yarn! hehe.
Ok, eyes are droopy…. off to bed.