Weirdest thing I’ve ever knit. And turkey.

So a few weeks ago I had someone contact me on Etsy about making gloves for their father, who smokes cigars, and would benefit from a pair of these, but with the colorwork pattern that I’ve used with other fingerless gloves. Now I have to say, these are probably the weirdest gloves I’ve ever knit. Doing the colorwork for the fingers made them extra pretty, but a real pain. I think my biggest issue with them though, was that I don’t like smoking, and I don’t like people who do. And not just cigarettes, but cigars, hooka, pot, I don’t care – if it involves inhaling smoke, people who do it aren’t very bright. But all in all, these are rather gorgeous gloves, if I do say so myself!

Now onto turkey! Thanksgiving this year was our first holiday that we got to host, which is appropriate that it was also our first holiday as a married couple. Ty went way overboard with the cooking, making about 10 pound more turkey than needed, and about 5 pounds of extra potatoes. The only downside is that I’ve been eating Thanksgiving dinner for a week now.

We managed to cram seven people into our apartment and around our table, with only one person not sitting on a real chair, Bonnie got the lounger. There was plenty of wine, and as previously stated, way too much food, so I call that a successful holiday. And now I think Ty is addicted to hosting holiday. Mostly because it means he gets to control everything, and perhaps just a little because he gets to cook.

And here’s a super pretty picture of moss. Cause it was there. And yelling at me each time I went change the laundry. So I obliged and photographed it.

In the meantime. I’ve been knitting lots of men’s fingerless gloves for Etsy. Who knew they made such good presents for men. Oh, I guess all the people on Etsy did. Now I need to catch up!

Happy Knitting!

Where magic happens

This weekend I went to visit my friend in NYC and it was definitely the best time I’ve had there so far. I really got to see the city for what it was, and we visited a lot more of it than I’ve seen before. My friend goes to Columbia, in the Upper West Side, near Harlem, we walked all through Midtown and went out in the Lower East Side.

One of the best parts of the weekend was wandering through Central Park, which always seems to be a part of a good trip to New York.

And of course I managed to convince my friends that a short stop at Knitty City was in order. From my brief time there I can say it’s a great store, and I wouldn’t mind having it as my LYS. Of course, I’m always going to be spoiled by Looped, where I know everyone and they have huge open spaces with couches for open knit night. But Knitty City would be easy to get used to. There were plenty of people there knitting, and the staff were all very friendly. And of course the yarn selection was up to my standards, although I was only looking for Madelinetosh and Lorna’s Laces.

If New York City is where we end up living, I won’t be disappointed in the least.

Happy Knitting!

WIP?

When does a sweater become a work in progress? When the yarn is bought? When the idea forms? When you actually cast on?

The Berocco Vintage that I bought for my birthday has sitting patiently in a box waiting for me to get my act together. However, the first swatch I made has been sitting on the coffee table yelling at me every time I’m knitting something else. The swatch was beautiful, I loved the color pattern and the combination. Just one problem, there was no way it’d be workable flat, which was my one and only plan for this sweater. So it was back to the drawing board. I’ve been sketching different ideas that could be worked flat and none of them seemed like what I wanted out of a colorwork border for a cardigan. Finally, I was flipping through my colorwork stitch dictionary, ravelry, and a pattern book and I found something that would work. Curlicues!

So I think that’s what I’m going to stick with. But now I have to make sure I sit down and sketch/calculate out the whole sweater before I start. Seriously, it’s going to happen this time.

Good thing I have about twenty other projects to finish before I can work on this sweater. Because that will definitely stop me. Yup.

Happy Knitting!

Blueberry Muffins

When Ty woke up this morning at an ungodly hour to catch a flight to Utah, I swore that it smelled like blueberry muffins near me in bed. He, of course, thought I was insane, or asleep. It was driving me crazy all day, and I had to make some.

I’ve been working on some Etsy gloves, the non-custom ones (less brain power needed) for the last few days, including today. And it was incredibly frustrating when I had to wait for a seat on the metro this morning. Two full stops of knitting I’ll never get back! It’s also a little awkward to knit with my bag on my lap sometimes, I’m always a little worried that it will fall off, especially when it’s packed full. I realized as I was leaving the house this morning that I had four separate knitting projects in my bag – gloves for Etsy, custom gloves for Etsy, socks for Ty and the front of Working Diamonds. Oh well, a girl can never have too many options.

And despite the weather today being the perfect fall weather, just the right amount of crispness to the air, it felt like Christmas should be around the corner. But maybe that’s just my worrying over application deadlines. Can someone else make my grownup decisions? It’s not that I’m bad at decisions, I mean in chocolate vs. vanilla, chocolate always wins. But if it’s chocolate A or chocolate B? Who can tell the difference from far away? Without trying both?

Although I guess today I went with blueberry. Go figure.

Happy Knitting! (I can’t wait to get back to Working Diamonds tomorrow at knit night!)

Also, those muffins are Splenda’s recipe, surprisingly tasty every time I make them!

The lessons we learn, or not.

Whoops, missed yesterday I guess. It probably had something to do with asking the bartender to just surprise us, three times. Fortunately, the bartender knew what he was doing. Before that, while I was not eating, Ashley, Ellie and I were all at Looped. Ellie’s never been, and Ashley’s been a slacker, so it was great to be there. Although Ellie pointed out that I know my yarn brands scary well, or at least some of them. She had grabbed some Fresco and I knew what it was, though I spaced on the name. I’ve been meaning to buy a few skein, I think it’d knit up really soft. Looped also had some new yarn in, Wandering Wool, which is a local dyer. Their Rock Creek Sock looked so nice, and her colors were gorgeous, very saturated. Every time I go to knit nights at Looped I wish I could go every day and stay there all night. The people are great, and the store is great.

Ty’s been talking recently about what he wants to do with his life. And despite our having talked about this hundreds of times, it seems like it changes every day. Fortunately I think we’re finally getting somewhere. Although we’ve been talking about going to school either in Boston or New York, the more we talk about it, the clearer it gets that New York is much higher on the list for multiple reasons. It would be tough to turn down living so close to my family in Boston, but New York has amazing school and work options for both of us, and it’s NEW YORK! I guess I can’t really say that I was never the girl who dreamed of living in the big city, and with the lifestyle and culture in DC, I’ve gotten used to city life, and Boston just might not cut it. I’m not-so-secretly hoping that the JetBlue job Ty will be applying to soon (his dream job) will offer him the job and we’ll have no choice but to go to New York. We’ll see what happens, but as I’ve learned in life, and especially since meeting Ty, things tend to come together better than you expect.

Happy Knitting!

P.S. Hopefully these gloves will too. Custom order – red and grey stripes, which surprisingly looks like a candy cane…