A Yarny Prize and Germany (Pt. 3)

First things first: I won yarn on Carrie's blog! It's this pretty shade of STR Bambu, and it's all soft and squishy and lovely and pettable. How do I know? I've been petting it, of course!
And isn't that the cutest tea-themed tape measure?


And now, the last part of the Germany trip. Here is the reason I went in the first place. Meet the Batty people!


Me, my dad and my mom, and


me and my sister. She's back from Thailand, and she loved it there. Poor thing got back on Tuesday and had to work Thursday afternoon and evening. Nothing like being jet lagged and having to work!

About my last post: the yarn is CTH Supersock. I think the colorway is Jewels, but I'm not entirely sure (and won't be until I get the ball band out of the middle of the yarn... yes, I did it again).
The dad sweater is a modified Paton's pattern, no. 4 from their Casual Classics booklet. Instead of gray with burgundy cables, I'm doing it in burgundy with gray cables because my dad looks good in burgundy.
And to all the oompa instrument players out there: Sure, why don't we start a knitting oompa band? If people don't like our music, we'll chase them with pointy sticks.
The less said about the swimming pool experiment, the better. That's why I didn't initially mention the fact that it included bubbles. It was a bubble bath swimming pool, and 15 years later, my carpet still faintly smelled like bubble bath.

WIPs and The MEME

I, too, have been tagged with the 7 random facts. Pixieriot tagged me first, and at least 3 other people have followed suit.

The rules: Each person tagged gives 7 random facts about themselves. Those tagged need to write in their blogs the 7 facts, as well as the rules of the game. You need to tag seven others and list their names on your blog. You have to leave those you plan on tagging a note in their comments so they know that they have been tagged and to read your blog.

So, without further ado, here are 7 random facts about me:

1. I used to play the accordion. 'nuff said.

2. I can bend back my left thumb so it touches my left forearm, but I can't do it with my right thumb.

3. I'm a klutz. When I got married, I had to throw the bouquet twice because the first time, it landed in the chandelier and came down in a rain of crystal. At least 6 people have told me since that they saw it coming.

4. For the longest time, I collected erasers. Not the boring ones, but erasers that came in fun shapes and colors. I had over 350, including one shaped like a faucet (3D, not just a flat one).

5. I have an unhealthy obsession with bureaucracy and the way it works. In grad school, my fellow historians used to wonder out loud when I'd write a paper about people instead of documents. Does this make me a boring person? I don't know, but it's just the way I'm wired.

6. When I was 4, I built a swimming pool in the middle of my room by making a square out of rectangular cushions. After about the 10th bucket of water, my friends and I had to admit this wasn't working -- about the same time my mom and her friend decided it was way too quiet up there and we got busted.

7. I'll randomly start humming the Inquisition song from Monty Python's History of the World. Make of that what you will.

Thise meme has been around for a while, and I'm losing sight of who's already done and who hasn't. So, in direct violation of the rules, I'm tagging everyone who hasn't done it yet but would like to. It's so much easier than checking everyone's archives to see if they've already been tagged, or if they dislike memes!

And now, some knitting content. My first Conwy sock is finished, and I'm starting my second today.


The front of my Dad's sweater is about 1" away from getting interesting. So far, it's only lots of burgundy reverse stockinette (the color is not a bright tomato red in real life), but I'm about to start on the blue border and the grey cables.


It's a very fast knit, though I'm getting a bad feeling about not washing the swatch for this one. I think I'm knitting up another swatch (ripped out the old one, bad me!) and giving it the wash and block treatment. This is the first time I've worked with pure alpaca, and I wouldn't want it to grow and surprise me after I'm done!

Germany (Pt.2)

My sister is still in Thailand, and I won't have her pictures until a week or two from now. But in the meantime, here's what else Mr. Batty and I were up to.

First, my parents and I took him to the Autostadt in Wolfsburg. We live less than an hour from the Volkswagen plant, and Volkswagen has built a kind of theme park, sort of a car-themed version of Epcot Center. 'There's a car museum with some seriously nice-looking cars like this little red number, which I really covet. I love the late 1800s and early 1900s, though after cataloging loads of books about the medicine of the period, I'm glad things have advanced! It's all fun and games until somebody gets sick.


Mr. Batty, on the other hand, found a cute little beer truck in the 1930's section.


What he didn't know: my parents' dental office was on our way home, and they decided to take a spontaneous look at his teeth. Here is Dr. Batty, Sr., going about his usual business. My sweetie was lucky, though: there was nothing wrong with his teeth and he didn't get any dental work that day.


Later on, we went to the Millennium Tower in Magdeburg. It's the world's tallest wooden tower (66 meters tall), and it reminds me of one of DaVinci's designs. Inside is a science museum with a really cool exhibit showing the progress of science from the Babylonians and Egyptians to prognoses of future developments. We spent an entire day in there.


Next post, it'll be back to knitting, though. You didn't think there were no WIPs I started in Germany, now, did you?

Jespere's Amazing Socks and German Yarn

Sometimes, a package shows up exactly when it's needed. I was having a pretty bad day until I got home and found a bag with a package from the Netherlands! I don't know many people from that part of the world, so I knew right away that I had received the gift of socks. Jespere, my pal from the knitty sock exchange, knit these beauties for me. I put them on right away and showed them off to my parents, who were appropriately impressed with the perfection of color choice, fit, pattern, and happy daughter who was sticking her foot in their faces shouting, "Look! Look at these amazing socks!"


They really do fit perfectly. The color is the prettiest red I have ever seen, and I'm in love with the pattern, the cuff details in particular. Thank you, Jespere! You really made my day.

Oh, and there were cookies and chocolate in that package... alas, they no longer exist for me to take pictures of them. Somebody ate them...
*looks away innocently while trying to wipe off a couple of crumbs*

And now, as promised: German yarn. I bought 4 skeins of Regia Silk so I can knit Clessidra and one other skein of fancy Regia yarn. The rest of the sock yarn? Skeins that cost between 1.99 to 5 Euros and were mostly bought at a grocery store that had gotten in sock yarn! In retrospect, I wish I'd taken pictures of the yarn on display, but at the time, I was too busy oohing and aahing and stuffing yarn in a basket to do much else.


The stuff in the lower left corner is crochet cotton. I'm usually not a pot holder person, but I found the most adorable book of pot holder patterns. Chickens, sheep, horses, coffee mugs... I'll be crocheting up a storm. Maybe some of them will even look like they're supposed to!

The purplish stuff on the right is a sweater's worth of the most beautiful shiny novelty yarn I've ever seen. And I'm so not a novelty yarn person! But look at these beauties. Here, take a closer look. Click on the picture, make them bigger, see why I couldn't resist. The fact that my mother's patient owns the yarn store and gave me a discount doesn't hurt, but I would have bought these at full price without a second thought.


The color is a bit lighter than I usually wear, but it'll be a pretty summery lace sweater. I can always creep it up by wearing black under it!

The Germany Experience (Pt. 1)

Germany was fun. The rumors about yarn in grocery stores are true! I bought sock yarn at a grocery store, and I think American grocery stores could attract an even bigger number of knitters than they already do. Yes, we all need food, but what would happen if the knitter went to a grocery stores for her occasional yarn emergency? The economic possibilities are mind-blowing.

Some things, on the other hand, are mind-boggling. When I got to the Frankfurt Airport at 5:30 AM local time, I had to go through the psychadelic tunnel of weirdness. Note how long it is. The lights change as you gently roll along on the slow-moving walkway, and strange sounds enhance the utterly surreal atmosphere. Just what you want to see after an already disorienting transatlantic flight! Oh, and look at the length of this hallway. Your psychedelic tunnel experience will take a good 5+ minutes even if you walk fairly quickly. What genius thought changing lights and strange zoioioing sounds were exactly what the tired and disoriented international traveler needs???

But all in all, much fun was had. My sister has a whole series of family pictures that won't be available until she gets back from Thailand in about two weeks, but I'll make sure to post some of the good ones then. My friend Linda forgot to take pictures on the day I forgot to bring my camera (and besides being generally creepy, we are friends because we have occasional flaky tendencies!), so no pictures there.

But here are some German knitters. Jeannine knitting a sock, and


Silke knitting the inevitable Mother-in-law scarf. Who hasn't made one of those? With fun fur?


We had a fun sock knitting get-together. One of her Main Coon Cats really enjoyed it too. Here's the boy kitten checking out the yarn. He is so cute! That's really good for him because otherwise, chewing up Silke's sock yarn could have been a problem.


The only thing I regret is that I was a little too early for the Wave Gotik Treffen, a 4 day goth extravaganza in Leipzig. Maybe next year or the year after that, Linda and I will be able to go again.

More pictures are coming soon, including those of the beautiful socks Jespere sent me and of my yarn purchases. Needless to say, I came back with significantly more yarn than I left with.

What I'm up to

Well, I'm in Germany. There's something strange about coming home for the first time after 6 years, an odd mix of familiarity and change. Since my last visit, I have finished 2 graduate programs, I've gotten engaged and married, and I've held 2 different jobs. I've taken up knitting again, this time in a serious way, and I've moved from one state in the US to another. Yet when I come into my room, I see how it hasn't changed since my last visit, how it hasn't really changed since I graduated high school over 10 years ago. The room is still the same, but I am a different person. It's like visiting the past.
Then there are the changes. Stores I remember are no longer open and others have opened in the same spots, familiar to everyone else, but new to me. Some of my friends are still here, but some have moved away. I used to be a big part of the fabric of their lives, and they of mine. Now, I'm just stopping by, barely related lives touching for a moment before we go our separate ways again. It's nice to see them again, but it also makes me feel like oil floating on water, almost like a ghost haunting what used to be my old life. Melodramatic, but it's a fitting description.

My husband is coming over in a little over a week. Then, we'll take a trip to Cologne and look at some of the local sights. I'll take him to the castle where Luther hid out and wrote his translation of the Bible, then we'll look at some other castles, Ephraim Lessing's house, and the library at Wolfenbüttel. It'll be fun.

In knitting news, I'm knitting my dad's sweater, my sister has picked out some sock yarn, and I've bought yarn for Clessidra. I've been ogling these socks ever since the new knitty came out and now, I have what I need to make them.

See you in a while!

Well, it's almost time to go to the airport. Must finish packing because I'm leaving in about an hour. If I get a chance, I'll say hello from Germany and let you know how my yarn shopping is going!

So-Called Hat

And here is another installment in Unexpected Knitting Series. I wasn't planning on knitting My So-Called Scarf. It wasn't on my to knit list, and that list is so long, I expected to be knitting nothing besides list items for a long time. Then I went to the going out of business sale at A Stitch Above in Providence and fell in love with some skeins of Manos.
My So-Called Scarf turned out to be the perfect pattern for my new yarn, and I enjoyed knitting it so much that I wanted to make a matching hat. This is the pattern I found (moonfrog is just a really cool name for a blog too!), and here is the hat with a few minor modifications:


A closeup of the hat on my head:


Pattern Notes:
Pattern: My Herringbone Hat for My So-Called Scarf by Rebecca (see link to her blog above)
Yarn: Manos Del Uruguay in Mulled Wine, less than 1 skein
Needles: US 10 (I think I'm becoming a loose knitter)
Modifications: I made the hat a bit shorter so it covers only part of my ears. I only knit 5" before beginning the decreases and left out the second knit row after the second decrease. Otherwise, everything is knit as written.

In other news: I was going to flash my stash, but as I'm leaving for Germany on Tuesday, I don't want to have to put everything back and reorganize it. Maybe next year. This year, I'm packing part of my stash for its trip overseas and leaving the rest safe in its containers, to await my return and subsequent attempt to knit from stash and nothing else.

Yeah, like I'm not going to buy souvenir yarn in Germany...

100th Post and a FO

So this is it, my 100th post! I wish I'd realized this sooner. With a bit of planning, it could have been more impressive. As is... well, you'll have to make do with a picture in which I look crazy, but which shows off my So-Called Scarf to great advantage. I've received so many compliments on this!


Details:
Pattern: My So-Called Scarf
Yarn: Manos del Uruguay in Mulled Wine, 2 skeins
Needles: US 11

Thanks for all the good wishes and advice, I'm assembling my travel knitting as we speak. Updates on the progress of my yarn selection to follow, but so far, it's mostly socks, and yarn for a second Lotus Blossom Tank, this one for my sister in the new SWTC bamboo, which is so much softer than the old stuff!
I also bought a bunch of knitting magazines, 1 new knitting book, 1 new spinning book (which looks awesome), and size 0 and 1 DPNs. I hope they let me take those on the plane!

I'm going home!

I just got off the phone with the airline and I'm going home to Germany on April 3! It's so exciting because I haven't been there for almost 6 years now and because I haven't seen my sister since my wedding almost 4 years ago. Now I'm frantically looking around the house for something to knit. Something I can take on 9 hour flights and something I can knit while jetlagged and something I can knit while I'm there. I know I'll buy yarn when I get there, but I'm not going on a 6 week trip without bringing some extra knitting, just in case.

Now if only I can get rid of this nasty cold before I go...

Stitch markers and Manos

I got stitch markers! I won them on knitten kitten's blog, and they're fabulous! Look at them, aren't they pretty?
And yes, that's a crochet hook. My knitting is on size 11 needles and the markers won't fit. Not that I need 'em for that particular project.


Speaking of project, here it is, My so-called scarf in Manos, color: mulled wine. I love this yarn. It is beautiful, the colors are stunning, it's squishy, it's a joy to knit with. I only started this morning, but this is knitting up very quickly, and I think I'll make a hat to go with it.

Sorry for the sideways image. Too lazy to flip it.

Yarn sale: the damage

A Stitch Above in Providence is closing forever, and I went to their going out of business sale. I feel sort of guilty because I'd never been there before, and there's something vulture-like about a bunch of sale hungry people descending on a dying business. But such qualms aside, I'm ecstatic about the amount of stuff I got.


I got a bunch of yarn: 4 skeins in SWTC Bamboo, 2 skeins of Tofutsies, 2 skeins of sock yarn (Artyarns?), 3 skeins of Manos, and 4 skeins of Karaoke, in 2 different yet similar greys. I also got a thrummed mitten kit in a beautiful bright purple, the pattern for Fibertrends felted clogs, and Folk Knitting in Estonia. Now I'm on a yarn diet till the end of the year -- or till I get a job that pays well. Whichever comes first!

Spinning and knitting

I finally got around to dyeing and skeining the rest of my handspun. On the whole, I think my spinning has improved quite a bit since the first skein (the one on top, shown for comparison). It's more even and there aren't as many overtwisted parts. See, no white spots!


I've finished the sock pal socks, and now I have nothing on the needles! It's a scary feeling, must cast on, and quickly!

Right now, I'm swatching for 3 different things. The first is a super-secret, hush-hush SP project and shall not be revealed.

The second is a slip stitch sweater for my sweetie. This is a picture of the yarn, which he picked out himself.


I took him to Sheep's Clothing in Rhinebeck and had him fondle the fiber. Why? Because I'm married to a yarn snob. Neither of us knew this until he touched the WoolEase blanket I was knitting for the in-laws and made a face like he'd stuck his hand into something unpleasant. So now, no knitting happens until the yarn is sweetie-approved. I don't want to bust my behind knitting and knitting just to get a yuck face, you know?

The third project is a sweater for my dad in a gorgeous burgundy alpaca. I had a pattern in mind, but after swatching, I'm not so sure. The gauge was dead on, but I hated the loose fabric it made. Eileen, who has more experience knitting with alpaca than I do, pointed out that it has no memory, so now, I'll have to find a sweater knit at a finer gauge, with a stitch pattern that'll help the alpaca hold its shape.

My SP rocks!

My SP is the greatest! I got more of those amazing toffees I've been talking about for weeks now. Ever since the last package, those toffees have haunted my dreams, and I even rationed out the last couple so they'd last longer. Now I have more!

But I didn't just get toffees. There's also green tea (yum!), the latest issue of knitsimple (love that magazine but don't subscribe to it so I didn't have it), stitch markers (I keep losing 'em, so they're always welcome), stitch holders, and... YARN!


Yarn. Beautifully soft, and you can see for yourselves just how pretty it is. The lighter blues and purples, and then, the amazingly vivid, fuchsia-and-black yarn! Yes, it's vivid, it's weird, and I love it.

Thank you, BlueHen!

Pal socks, STR yarn... socks!

The pal socks are done. My first real socks on size 0 needles. One is a bit wider than the other because my gauge changed from sock to sock, but I'm sending them unblocked for ease of size adjustment.


Here's another shot. Jespere, I hope they fit!


And now, a picture of the Socks that Rock club yarn. I'm so excited. Look at those colors! It isn't something I would have picked out for myself, but now that I'm actually holding the yarn in my hands, I love the colors. It's soft and luscious and we'll see how it knits up.

New Mac!

I am back! One of the big computer chain stores is closing all stores in our state and I got a brand-new Mac on sale. This is my first Mac ever, so we're still getting used to each other. As in, I'm not even sure how to burn a file onto CD. But I'm learning, I'm knitting, and tomorrow, I'll put up some pictures.

One of the downsides of this sudden transition is that I lost all of my bookmarks. So if I regularly visit your blog but you don't hear from me in a couple of days, drop me a line. Don't be shy. I haven't lost interest, I just haven't found you again.

I broke it!

I broke my computer. I stepped on the monitor part of my laptop, and now it looks like glass superimposed over scorched paper. I can't believe I did this! Everything is on that laptop!

I hope they can fix it. Really. I can't believe I did this!

Rockin' Socks!

My first Socks that Rock package has arrived! I love the yarn, the pattern looks like it'll make a cozy sock, and I can't wait to start. But first: sock pal socks. Must not get distracted.
The lady at my LYS saw my finished sock and the amount of yarn I have left. She thinks it'll be enough, but I'm not sure because my row gauge is off and I have more rows per inch than the pattern calls for. The fabric looks beautiful, the fit is perfect, but oh, how I hope the yarn lasts.

Here's the irrational question of the day: am I the only knitter who somehow believes she won't run out of yarn if she knits faster? I know it doesn't make any sense, but I catch myself doing it anyway!

One down

I finished the first sock for my sock pal Jespere. I hope they fit!


I'm also hoping that I won't run out of yarn.

Here are some more thoughts on ML: At first, I thought it was awkward, but the longer I do it, the more I love it. No gaps. Anywhere. No losing DPNs. The only thing that gets lost are stitch markers, but that's why I use the cheapest kind when I'm on the go.
Now that I've knit an entire sock, I also have to say that ML is incredible for those last 8 or so stitches, which are incredibly frustrating on DPNs. 2 on each needle? I usually do that in my lap. No problems this time around!

Bad feeling

I'm worried. The first sock pal sock is nearly finished, but I may have used more than half the yarn. To make matters worse, I wound the ball around the little paper band that contains a few minor bits of information, such as the name of the colorway and the dye lot. Aaaargh!

I hope I don't run out of yarn.