pepperknit

When Rachel and I walked into Mood Fabrics yesterday, I think we both stumbled slightly at the mere sight. It was an overwhelming experience, to say the least.

Piles and piles of bolts of fabric, organized by type, with no guidemap. Rachel posited that this is what it feels like when a new knitter walks into a yarn shop for the first time. It’s true, I can walk into Purl and identify the brands from afar–when my friend Julie picked up a yarn I impressed her by glancing over and saying, “Oh yes, Cascade 220 would be great for you to learn with.” (I caught a glimpse of the edge of the label–I’m not that good.)

The idea that I might someday enter a fabric shop and be able to touch a fabric and say “oh, this is a linen/cotton blend” or be able to say, “I want to make a dress, and this fabric is going to have the perfect drape and weight” is completely unfathomable to me. But I want it to be the case, and soon! I want to make a bag from Bend-the-Rules Sewing (the pleated beauty handbag), and I would love to make some dresses, and all sorts of sewing dreams. I just need that guidemap. Advice? What sewing blogs should I be reading? What resources do you turn to for sewing advice?

So far four people have named me in the little lovey meme that’s going around. Thanks so much, Sulafaye, Jennie, and Specs–and I just heard from Jenny Girl, who has never once commented! I think you guys are great, too. With Valentine’s Day, my most favoritest holiday, right around the corner, I’m eager to spread the love as well.

Here, then, the blogs that always make me smile and happy when they go boldface in my Google Reader.

Lickety Knit. I went away for a weekend in the woods in New Hampshire with Rachel, her husband, and her husband’s sister, and none of them snuck into my room in the middle of the night to slit my throat or otherwise harm me!

Flint Knits. I’d been reading this blog for 2 days when Pam posted that she was coming to New York. I was the only person to agree to a get-together, I discovered with dismay–no one else wanted to meet this girl? Sigh, what kind of misfit would she turn out to be? But she was actually kinda cool!

Dogged. What can I say that hasn’t been said already? (And she sent me one of her owls, so I’m legally obliged to say she’s one of my favorites. It was in the contract of acceptance of the gift.)

The Knitting Philistine. If only we’d known each other before I moved from Philly, because we would totally have been knitting together all the time.

Twin Knit. Another gal who went through similar life changes as me–and then moved back to Philly–again, after I’d moved away.

Lolly. Now, this girl posts too often, which makes it hard for me to keep up, and she is certainly not lacking for fans, but she’s become a really great friend over these blogging years. She’s even hung out with my mom, and my mom adores her, so she’s like part of my family now.

Bag ‘n’ Trash. Maryse and I actually have a mutual real-life friend, which is how I even first started reading her blog, but her photos alone keep me coming back.

And So the Days Are Filled. I feel as if Meg and I would have been great real-life friends if she didn’t live all the heck way over in Australia.

Joce. Jocelyn’s the queen of crafty women, easily distracted, always funny, and generally a delightfully supportive friend.

Annie Knits. Anne-Marie is another real-life friend, and not only do I admire her knitting, but the girl has a loom.

And an 11th, just because I can: Specs! How did I not put her in the main list!? When I first saw her blog, I immediately subscribed–you just know, you know, when you’ve found a kindred spirit?

I’m loving all these lists around the blogosphere, because it’s also introducing me to some amazing blogs that I wonder why I haven’t been reading all this time. Just what I need, even more in my Google Reader!

I started a Koolhaas hat on January 1, but in the past few weeks I’ve barely touched it; I just didn’t like knitting it. Something about the frequency of the cable crossings didn’t ever let me get in the flow. In the meantime, every single last one of you has cranked out your own–oh, wait, no, you actually made at least two, sometimes three! I watched in awe and befuddlement.

Yesterday, my Flickr friend Julie organized a knitting afternoon at a bar in the Lower East Side. I brought Koolhaas, to force myself to knit it. I really love the finished look, so I decided I would just have to soldier through. Well, last night, I finished it. And it was so small and tight, it slid right off my head. I considered investigating the source of the problem–careful assessment of gauge (which I’d thought was right), frogging to the beginning of the decreases and adding height, all those things that I normally do. But you know what? I didn’t like knitting it the first time, why would I like knitting it a second time?

So it’s frogged—gone—a mere memory. I needed that ball of yarn to finish up my skirt, anyway.

Very late in the day, and after a long break, but I’ve missed doing Eye Candy Friday. Vegetarians, scroll on past to dessert . . .

After finishing the dodecahedron on Saturday I planned on starting another, but then I got to thinking about polyhedrons and how easy it would be to make pretty much any shape. So I poked around Wikipedia and decided the icosahedron, a 20-sided shape, would be the way to go. I cast on Sunday morning, and cast off tonight.

It was fun! I used three colors–though I know it looks like just orange and yellow, the cast on and first row of each pyramid is in red. I will take better photos of the pair of toys in daylight soon.

Icosahedron
Yarn: Knit Picks Crayon, in red, orange, and yellow
Needles: US size 4 (3.5 mm)
Started: Sunday, Jan 20
Finished: Tuesday, Jan 22
Notes: Each of these pyramids is built on a triangle–mine were all 7 stitches to a side. I knit 4 rounds between decrease rounds, except for the last, where I knit 3 rounds. Each pyramid took about 20 minutes to make, and were mindless but fun. The last pyramid, however, was rather unpleasant.

Took 45 minutes, and made me want to quit! But I’m very happy I persevered. This toy is so much fun!

or dodecahedronical. (But since each piece is built off a pentagon, I’ve been thinking “pentagonical” for the past week.) This is in opposition to the “hexagonical” time I had with the skirt.

Celestine
First FO of 2008!
Yarn: Knit Picks Crayon, in blue and in green
Needles: US size 4 (3.5 mm)
Started: Saturday, Jan 12
Finished: Saturday, Jan 19
Notes: The pattern would make a much larger tree topper, but I wanted it baby-ish-sized (intending to give as a gift), so the base of each point is just 25 stitches. Also, the rate of decreasing would have made a much more rounded shape, and I wanted mine to come out on the pointy side, so I knit 6 rounds between decreases–and only decreased twice (once in the middle and on the last round). I cast on with blue, knit 1 round in blue, and then switched to 2 rounds green, 2 rounds blue.

Would I knit this again? I already am! Stay tuned for a new color combo . . .

Edited to Add (on March 25): Thanks to those who’ve come here via Whipup! To see the second toy, which was not a dodecahedron at all, go here.

Several years ago a friend said to me, in an off-hand way, “well, you’re not a skirt person.”

My reaction was swift and indignant. How dare she say such a thing! But then I thought about it. And, yeah, it’s true, I never wore skirts at the time. I was a jeans-and-a-T-shirt gal, and my skirts required just too much work. More thoughtful shoe choices, potential need for tights (depending on the season), and attention to seated positioning were all necessary when wearing skirts.

I’m not sure if it’s because of her comment or some growth and maturity, but, though my wardrobe remains dominated by slacks, I do enjoy skirting it up from time to time. And my recent foray into the knitted skirt had such resounding success, I was eager to give it another whirl. “Not a skirt person,” pshaw.

Enter Knitting Nature and its cover skirt. The Snapping Turtle Skirt caught my eye immediately–and when I saw Patti’s yarn choice for her version, I knew I wanted to use a yarn that variegated. The individual hexagons would nip any pooling in the bud–or it would at least look artful, I told myself.

At Stitches I had a short list of yarn to buy for specific projects, and the Tess booth came through for the skirt. It’s their Superwash Merino in a colorway that features the darkest chocolate brown, black, gray, and even tan. The photos are a bit washed out–the color is intense.

So intense that it comes off all over your fingers, and you look like you spent time in a newspaper printing plant. (Not that I know if you’re ever likely to get ink on your fingers at a newspaper printing plant–maybe it’s all automated these days.) My flight to Singapore was a night flight, so all the cabin lights were off, and my spot light was a tiny, bright white halogen-quality light–not actually helpful for the seeing. I knit merrily away for a few hours–it’s pretty mindless knitting–and when I saw my blackened fingers later, I was horrified at the sight. I spent the entire time in Singapore with dirty fingers, despite washing my hands all the time. Let’s hope a good washing plus the soak in water and vinegar will nip the skirt’s bleeding in the bud.

Because, I’m happy to report, I finished knitting all the hexagons on my flight back! That was the goal, actually–cast on on the way there, cast off on the way back, 2 weeks later. I would have finished much sooner, but I, uh, didn’t read the directions very closely. See, the third and fourth rows of hexagons are actually increasingly larger than the two rows that preceded them. (I had to take out a row and a half.)

The actual finishing is going to take some time (note all the ends in the shot of me knitting, above). Also, the pattern calls for a zipper, and I left a space for it (though I joined all the other hexagons in the round as I knit), but I’m just going to sew the opening up and re-knit the hem in order to make an elastic casing. How do I know that a zipper won’t work? Because when I arrived home at 2:45 in the morning from my grueling, 30+-hour journey to New York from Singapore, I was unable to sleep–so I blocked the skirt. It was dry by the end of the next day, and I tried it on. I love it–but a zipper is going to do no good. Needs elastic. Needs time to be fixed. Soon, soon.

Well, there go the New Year’s resolutions. I made a little list for myself, and one of them–”Blog more”–has been woefully ignored. I’m happy to report that I’m keeping up my “10 minutes of straightening up every night” resolution, for the first time ever. So you win some, you lose some.

My biggest resolution for 2008 is to blog WIPs. We’ve all talked about and noticed the push to blog just FOs, and there is something so satisfying about the big reveal, but there will be no blog if I don’t blog WIPs. But first, let’s linger a bit longer on the FOs! 2007 had only 2 more FOs than 2006 (and one of those was freezer paper stenciling), and I’m not sure if I think that’s impressive or pathetic. It’s definitely one or the other. I’ll decide how I feel about it as 08 progresses, I think, as I either come to accept that I can only accomplish about this much in one year, or as I try to outstrip previous years’ results.

As always, I have a lot of little projects. Gosh, remember that time I had 4 FOs in 4 days? That was ridiculous. Many of my biggest accomplishments, knitting-wise, appear in this collection–my Shocking! Skirt, my Twist-Front Top. I’m super thrilled with the Roman Earflap Hat (pdf). And I’m more than a little bit proud to be bringing “sexy back” to knitting, as some of you have put it.

I participated in two swaps this year–my first time venturing into the swapping world. I enjoyed the Sound Swap a lot, but the Single Sock Swap was just genius. Those chalets still wow me. But I’ve learned that I’m a terrible, awful, no-good package mailer. I say that it’s practically pathological, my inability to mail a package in a timely manner. So I will be very selective about participating in swaps in the future. Perhaps this needs to be added to my resolutions . . .

The sleeper hit of the year was my Bainbridge Scarf (pdf), which so many of you made as Christmas presents! That was a true honor.

Biggest observation I can make about 2007? My hair grew really long. I’ll let you in on the secret to this: get only one haircut during the year.

Heading into 2008, I’ve got an incredible project just off the needles (but which needs some additional work to be presentable, so I’ll drag it out with a WIP post), and then this just happened tonight . . .

I didn’t do more than dust it off, thread it up, and fill a bobbin. (A friend mended some clothes.) But it’s going to lead to something, it really is.