the sheep-free knitter

It's a month away but I am already thinking about what to buy at Stitches West. I don't usually go with specific yarns in mind but this year I am. Some of my wonderful Boba friends gave me a gift card to WEBS as a thank you for the many baby blankets I designed for them so I am plotting. My plan is to buy Norah Gaughan Vol. 6 and Berroco Booklet #294  and 16 hanks of Berroco Seduce. I want to make one of the Vol. 6 tops, but I'm not sure which, in the Seduce Bellambie in All Seasons Cotton.

I am also going to be on the look out for Sockina. I  got some from The Fold at Sock Summit and knit a pair of socks in it for myself. Several people hinted (some more clearly than others) that they'd like a pair too. I don't think WEBS carries it but I'm hoping someone will have some at Stitches. Maybe The Loopy Ewe?

I also have a gift card to Purlescence from my friends (aren't they the best) but I might wait until Stitches to decide what to get from them also. I have my eye on Rowan Calmer but I might also pick up books that I've had on my wish list since they have a good book selection in their shop. I don't know if I'll buy from Purlescence at Stitches since I know I can go there easily, obviously.

There's also homework to be done for my sweater finishing class. Thankfully, it doesn't require knitting up an entire sweater to finish!

I'm looking forward to Stitches, in case you can't tell.

After NaBloPoMo I made a resolution to blog at least once a week, preferably twice. I haven't posted in two weeks now. On Christmas I got a Wii Fit and have been using it every day and getting up early in the morning to walk before I do the Wii Fit exercises. The side effect of that is that I really need to go to bed earlier or I can't get up to walk. The side effect of going to bed earlier is that I have a lot less computer time, which is probably not a bad thing.

So I guess I'm back to my sporadic posting schedule. I expect that everyone understands why. Exercise trumps blogging, right?

I have a lot less knitting and crocheting time but I have managed to finish a couple of things recently. A new crocheted bathmat for our downstairs bath.

finished bathmat

And a pair of fingerless mitts for Niels to wear while scootering to school. They are styled after the mitts Ash wears on Pokemon.

finished mitts

I haven't destashed at all yet, but we do have a destash party planned with my BobaKnit group. The week after that Purlescence is having a yarn swap so if anything is left we can all take it over there.

As a follow up to yesterday's post about my project count for 2009, I was inspired today by Lisa to calculate how many miles of yarn I used in 2009. I mentioned last year that I was hoping for my stash go down about 10,000 yards or 5 miles. The good news is that is about how much yarn I used (9825.5 yards, by my estimate, not counting yarn used on small crochet projects where I don't bother to weigh all the little pieces and/or use leftovers from other projects). The bad news is that my stash hasn't changed. So apparently I could use 10,000 yards of yarn in a year, but I could also buy that much.

I need to either knit faster (which hardly seems possible) buy less (which I honestly think I was doing) or get rid of some. Destashing time, I think!

At Wednesday night's Very Special BobaKnit (where we did end up talking about female issues but not on purpose!) I finished my final FO of 2009, the Linoleum Dishcloth by Kay of Mason-Dixon Knitting. Instead of using two colors for the contrast, I used a multi-colored colorway of Sugar n' Cream. I think it came out nicely. (Ravelry link to my project.)

I particularly like the subtlety of the diamond pattern and it feels like it will be nicely scrubby as well. I see more of these in my future. It may replace the ball band dishcloth as my favorite. I use my dishcloths as facial washcloths, actually, so I like them to be a little on the scrubby side, but just a little.

I also made a mosaic for my finished objects from 2009. I "only" had 39 pictures this year instead of 51 like last year. I'm not sure what happened there. More sweaters? Fewer dishcloths? Probably the latter, although you'd think all my tiny crochet would have helped. Ah well, it's not a competition, right?

FOs 2009 Mosaic

FOs 2009 Mosaic

Sometime in the fall Stefan and I were at Purlescence and he picked out two colors of Cascade Cotton Club, a cotton/acrylic blend that I think is very similar to my beloved All Seasons Cotton. In fact the blue/grey he picked out is almost the same color as my Manon. His request for the yarn was a "spiky" hat. The red was supposed to be the spikes. I looked around on Ravelry for a while, trying to find just the right hat and finally settled on Chullosauro (Ravelry link to my project - sorry I have been neglecting to add these). I think it fits the bill, don't you?

spiky

It is supposed to be a chullo hat, with ear flaps, but I didn't have enough of the blue yarn. Also, the pattern didn't have the spikes in it so I improvised a bit. I think it's okay but not great. Maybe the designer will get back to me on Ravelry and tell me how she made hers.

This second picture is a bit out of focus but captures Stefan's smile so perfectly that I had to upload it too.

stegosaurus hat

I know I"m biased, but isn't he a cutie?

Mom's legwarmers were delivered on Christmas. I was a little nervous about how well they'll stay up. We'll see how it goes!

mom's legwarmers

I finally got a photograph of the snail outside his home. He's dirty now because he was taken to the park one day.

niels' snail

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I then made a butterfly in a strawberry for Stefan. Again, too stinkin' cute for words.

peeking butterfly

For some reason I don't want to work on big projects. I go through this at times. I usually end up knitting dish cloths but this time it's amigurumi that have caught my obsession attention. I was going to make another snowman but instead I decided to make a snail in a pear from a pattern called Little Toys and Their Homes. Niels had asked for it and I started and gave up on a seahorse and robot (the yarn wasn't right in both cases) for him after make a turtle and a seahorse for Stefan. So, here's the snail in his home, the S.S. Leaf (according to Niels).

peek-a-boo!

Isn't he too stinking cute for words?

I just realized that I need a picture of the snail out of the pear. I'll get that tomorrow as Niels is currently sleeping with the snail.

I've also been thinking a lot about my living room. (I know, exciting!) We had a Hannukah party this weekend and it got me moving to get the living room, dining room and kitchen into much better shape. Big parties will do that. I'm still not entirely satisified with the state of the living room, though. I would like to replace the giant white Ikea monstrosity that surrounds our TV.

playroom corner

You can only see part of it here. There is another of the four-cube pieces to the right of the TV as well. It is useful in that it has a lot of drawers and closets, however as you can see from the state of the pieces on the far left, the drawers and doors have broken off a few of them. I wanted to get the TV stand that goes with our new bookcase in the corner but I don't think it is big enough for the size TV we want to get. Our couch is a fair distance from the TV and the flat TVs are wider so we'd need something bigger. Erik and I are still discussing. Anyway, here's a couple more photos.

I occasionally consider putting the kid's play/train table in their room but I think it would take up too much of the room, so I'm not sure what to do. I have to say this: the room is much nicer when everything is put away. The new bookcase really helps with that.

I gave the boys' teachers their gifts today, so now I can show them to you.

snowmen for the teachers

Aren't they too stinkin' cute for words? They came from one of my favorite amigurumi designers on etsy. She also designed the bear in the balloon and the robot I made earlier in the summer. They were ornaments and I took the photo before I put the yarn in their heads (aw) to finish them off. The kids wanted some too, so I made Niels another snowman.

niels snowman

Stefan got a Christmas tree.

amigurumi tree ornament

I didn't have the right sized eyes left, so we got those little jingle bells to make ornaments instead. Stefan was excited about it. As you can probably tell, we decorated our tree today. Niels insisted that the tree and snowman should be next to each other. Our little fake tree isn't very big but it was decorated with enthusiasm.

our tiny tree

Erik used the extra big tree lights to decorate the rest of the room a bit.

Erik decided to decorate more

I guess filling that top shelf will have to wait until after Christmas is over. I don't mind, though. I have lots of other things to do in the meanwhile!

My gift projects are progressing. The leg warmers are done but need the ends woven in. I think they're nice. I hope they work. I'm also working on a few small crochet gift projects. After Friday I will be able to post about them. They're nice, though, trust me.

I warped the Beka looms again but am sparing you the photos. The nice thing about having them done is that I was able to return my friend Victoria's warping mill which did make the warping much much easier but took up a significant chunk of space in the living room. I am also looking forward to not having warped and unwarped looms hanging around. They were a challenge to store. I hope to cut the projects off tomorrow at the end of class and leave the Beka looms in our storage space at school. My Cricket will, of course, come home. I would like to warp it and let Stefan and Niels give it a try over break. I always have lots of plans for break, though, and not much ends up getting done.

Speaking of my living room (in the middle of that last paragraph) I have had an ongoing living room project for about a week. It's making serious progress though. We had a fireplace stove thing in the corner of the living room which I originally considered replacing with a gas stove. The cost of running the gas line was a barrier and then our kitchen remodel was so traumatic that it turned me off from home improvement projects involving workmen for a while. In the meantime I decided that I didn't want a hot metal object in the corner of the living room and decided to just have it taken out. I finally got it together to get someone to come and do that last week.

I knew I would want to cover the tile but the ring of rust and the fact that the tiles under the stove were a totally different color confirmed it. I ordered some Flor tiles (from the outlet, actually) and they came yesterday. Erik put them in which required a lot of kneeling on the hard floor to trim them. Yay Erik.

flor tiles

When my parents were here over the weekend Erik and rushed off to Ikea for the fastest, most efficient trip to Ikea in history for an Expedit bookcase. In. Out. Boom. There was a small moment of panic when Victoria asked me the next day what color I got and I realized that I hadn't checked that on the box. Luckily, the bookcase I had used to get the bin location was the same color as the one I wanted. I'm pretty sure they divide them that way. Or I got lucky. Anyway, it was light birch.

erik and niels assemble the expedit

Niels was very excited to be involved in the process and helped Erik by using his new LEGO Power MIners claw car to deliver the bolts and such that Erik needed.

niels is excited

He stayed up for the whole process. Oops, that wasn't my intention. He was pleased, though. After he finally went to sleep, I started filling it.

filing the expedit

So it's no longer Friday and I should be asleep but I'm going to call this my scheduled Friday blog post. (You're welcome.)

Yesterday and today felt like crazy hectic days where I had hardly a minute to sit down, let alone knit. The evenings were slightly more relaxing, I went to BobaKnit last night and got very hungry talking to my fellow BobaKnitters about things like potato lasagne (genius) and learned about crazy solutions to leg cramping issues like soap in the bed. Be careful, though, apparently the cat might make off with the soap and you'll need to keep buying a new bar. Don't ask me, it wasn't my idea but apparently it works for Jen's mom! The topic came up because I am knitting leg warmers to help someone in my family keep from getting leg cramps. I actually think I might knit myself a pair too. My legs don't cramp but they get achy if they're too cold at night. By the time I finish them, of course, it will be back to being 70 degrees outside, just watch. I am slacking in a major way on holiday knitting this year. I'm working on those leg warmers and perhaps a couple other small things but most people are getting purchased gifts. I feel guilty about it but then I remember that I hardly got to sit down today.

Janice posted on Facebook today that December 11th is the second anniversary of Hand Knit Friday, a tradition she started that I keep forgetting to keep. I tried for a while and then it gets warm and I flake and by the time it's cold again, I forgot. But today! I wore my cowl-o-tis and my Sugnim socks.

gorgeous colors

finished socks!

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Happy Hand Knit Friday-aversary, everyone!