Fingerless gloves, lacey progress, knitting in public, and yarn lust.

I just finished a pair of Hooray For Me fingerless gloves, which were a nice fun little pattern, and which allowed me to use that forlorn single ball of sock yarn that I was semi-despairing of finding a use for. The pattern calls for 1.5 skeins of Regia Multi Effekt, but I was able to do it with less than one skein of Trekking. I was ready to do the fingers in another yarn if necessary, but I ended up having more Trekking left over than I had of my accent color (leftover Jawoll from the Bayerische Sock -- that pattern devours wool), so I just did them in MC. Action shot -- they're comin' to getcha!!!

Very cute I think! I am not much of a fingerless glove person, but I may get a bit of use out of these in the fall and early winter. I do appreciate fingerless gloves on an intellectual level -- how nice to be able to wear gloves and knit and text and work my iPod without having to use my nose on the clickwheel! -- but I this will be the first pair I've ever owned.

Still plugging away on the Hanami Shawl. I've finished the basketweave section and have moved on to the free-form falling-petal section, which is mostly stockinette really at the moment. I kept having to rip back towards the end of the basketweave section -- I had just turned my brain right off or something -- but I seem to be back on the right track now.

Behold, the glory of unblocked lace knitting:


Well, at least it's getting longer:

I got a lot of knitting done last week on the train. I went to Rockport to go ocean kayaking, which was great fun, and I knitted up a storm. On the way back there was a little girl (she said she was four) out with a big group of her relatives, who I think were visiting from China. She was being a bit of a hellion and running up and down the aisle and being very loud and boisterous. She saw me knitting and she stopped dead for a second and said, "What you doing?" and I said that I was knitting, and that I was making a shawl out of yarn. Then she showed me a picture of her with Chuck E. Cheese, and told me she wanted to be a ship when she grew up, and we had a nice conversation for much of the rest of the trip back to Boston. Once she calmed down a little she was super-cute.

I've decided I want to try to learn to knit continental-style; sometimes English feels too stressful on my wrists, and I'd like to have another way. When I first started knitting, I knit English and purled continental, but that didn't work once I progressed beyond stockinette and had to switch back and forth between knit and purl in the same row, and for whatever reason, I chose to go English.

Anyway, since I figure I'll need an easy but interesting project to work on while I retrain myself, I bought some Noro Silk Garden on Thursday to make me a purty scarf. And I got some boring old stitch markers and needle point covers, too. While I was checking out, I noticed the Malabrigo laceweight they had at the counter. Ooh! I had previously been unaware of the existence of Malabrigo laceweight! While they were running my credit card, I was fondling the yarn. I love the Malabrigo worsted anyhow, and I now I can't wait to make something out of the laceweight, possibly something like Lacey from Knitty. I couldn't resist, and I ended up going back the next day for the Malabrigo laceweight in the Loro Barranquero colorway (I looked it up, and apparently that is a kind of Patagonian burrowing parrot that has historically been considered a pest but which is now endangered or threatened or something). So, in closing -- yarn porn!
Aww, sookie sookie.

The Great Yarn Audit

So I'm in a yarn-acquiring mood -- I want to get started on a sweater to wear this fall and winter, and I don't have anything right now that is screaming to be incorporated into a sweater. Part of the problem is that I like my sweaters lighter-weight, and a lot of my yarn is heavier, but also I just have a lot of yarn that I know I no longer need or want or even like. So I went through the stash -- my stash is pretty tame, since I'm a cheapskate with limited storage space -- and photographed everything so that I could see what I had, what I needed to get rid of, what I couldn't wait to play with!

There were nice things, ugly things, useless things and, I'm afraid, quite a lot of boring things. What's with the gray and beige?

Some things made me sad, like this:


One lonely ball of Trekking in a colorway I absolutely loved (it says 33 on the label, but I think it's a discontinued 33, sadly). I remember what the first sock looked like knitted up -- it was like flowers in a forest, all dark green with little bright-colored spots. I lost that sock, or something bad happened to it... I don't remember, it was at least two years ago and possibly I have PTSD about it. But now there's just this poor little ball left. I haven't given up, though; I think I can still make socks out of this, perhaps in stripes with a dark green or even brown. Heels and toes and cuffs in solid, and the rest of the sock in this pretty, pretty Trekking? Or maybe some nice knee socks with the cuffs, heels, and toes in Trekking and the sock body in something else? It could work.

Some things made me confused, like this bunch of gray yarns.

What made me want so much gray yarn? It doesn't even match itself! The top stuff looks like a cheap wig! I think I bought all of this around the same time; I guess I was just in a gray way. Actually, I can be even more specific about what caused me to buy the two Katia yarns: they were on sale. This was at a time when I had a somewhat different attitude about stash. A long time ago I knitted the Grecian Plait pullover from Knitty in the fuzzy yarn, but it wasn't a good substitute for the yarn in the pattern and the fabric was sloppy, and then I did an awful job of sewing it up, and then I washed it and it looked like a wet Westie. I think I gave that sweater to Goodwill, which is a sad ending for a handmade sweater, but there you go.

Or how about this:
That's about a third of the front of a big aran sweater I was going to make. It's way too big. It's way too oatmeal-colored. If you look closely, you'll see that I became so disgusted and annoyed with it I stopped IN MID-CABLE (the little green bit up in the corner is my cable needle). So now I have 13+ skeins of oatmeal-colored Elann Highland Wool and 9 inches of sweater I'll never wear.

Some yarns made me happy, although I have no more idea what to do with them now than I did when I shoved them under the bed:

These are from a purple period, I guess. The stuff on the top is bulky handspun something, and on the bottom is some kind of big huge yarn. I believe it's wool and it would probably get you three or four wraps to the inch. Fun stuff! There's some of it in my Afghan of Doooooom, but I have no idea what to do with the rest of it. It might make a nice hat.

Anyway, you can see the full extent of the carnage in my pics labelled yarn-audit at Flickr. And I am up for swapping much of what's there -- more pics and labels will be added over the next couple of days.