Yay, my spoilee for HSKS5 got her package today!! I’ve also had a report from my spoiler that there’s one in the mail for me now, too! Swaps are fun!

Since the veil of secrecy is now lifted, I can finally tell you about the so-called SECRET project! One of the requirements of this swap was to send a “handmade item” (a bag, a needleholder, or…something else, I don’t remember). It was not required that this be a knitted item, but since I don’t really have a place to put up my sewing machine and didn’t have any other great ideas I decided to knit my spoilee a bag. I ran across the HP House Fair Isle Pouch Bag pattern and fell in love, so I ran with the idea.

As it happens this was my first completed Fair Isle project, and also my first lined bag. I was a bit worried during the knitting because no matter how careful I was with the floats, it contracted into a bumpy tube once it was a few rows away from the needles. I just kept hoping that blocking would fix it. So when it was done, I washed it and blocked it rather aggressively. Thankfully, blocking worked miracles and it came out GREAT!

(I didn’t put any fringe on the bottom. I finished the bag late one night and frankly forgot. Then I decided I liked it just fine without.)

Here’s one that shows the lining:

And, since knitters always seem to want to see the wrong side of Fair Isle, here’s a shot of the inside before I lined it:

I followed the instructions for this bag pretty faithfully–with the exception of the fringe. I did make one major change, which was to use worsted weight yarn (Cascade 220–I’ll have to look up the color numbers once I’m home again) rather than DK. I used a size 6 needle because I wanted the result to be pretty dense. Otherwise, I knit it as instructed and just let it turn out whatever size it wanted to be. I think it turned out around 11.5″ x 14″ post-blocking (Narcissa, can you verify that? I didn’t write it down and only vaguely remember from measuring it for the lining). I used less than 1/4 yard of fabric for the lining. I sewed the lining completely by hand, which is something I haven’t done for a long time (hand-sewing, I mean). I can’t say that I love sewing by hand, but I am definitely proud of how the bag came out and I’m glad I went to the trouble.

I’ll let you read about the rest of the swap kit over on Narcissa’s blog, but I did want to mention one more thing. I had our wonderful local indie-dyer, Sharon of Stitchjones custom-dye a skein of her fantastic merino sock yarn in Slytherin colors. Here is the beautiful yarn she made for me to send on to my spoilee:

I’ve been zooming right along on my Flower Scarf. It looks great!

Then, on the way to the coast this afternoon, I RAN OUT OF YARN.

*sigh*

Anyone have any leftover Claudia Handpainted fingering in the “Oops” colorway? I don’t need much!

Awww, they’re even cute all bunched up and floating in water. Look:

I was going to take a picture of them all pinned out, but was interrupted by dinner. And then it got dark. I’ll try to remember to get a shot before I unpin them.

I think they’ll be dry by morning, which means I can start sewing them together tomorrow! And then do the edging! I think this project will be done very soon.

This is what led me to believe I might be able to get 25–or close to 25–flowers from my skein of Claudia Handpainted Fingering yarn. Today I finished the 15th flower, though, and there’s only a teeny tiny bit of yarn left. Hmph. Oh well, 15 will make a nice scarf length, leaving my second skein for the edging that goes all around the flowers.

Here they all are, unblocked and in a pile:

I’m going to try to get them blocked tomorrow so I can start sewing them together. Don’t want to lose steam while I’m still excited about the project!

And now I should really go do a couple of seams on the baby sweater…

We’re gearing up to have the windows and siding replaced on our house–all at once! There’s a contractor coming on Saturday to get an idea of what we want and start to work up a quote. In anticipation of this, we’ve been cleaning/reorganizing/just plain moving things around. Tonight we shifted a bunch of stuff in the dining room/living room area. It looks much nicer in here already, but to a certain extent it’s a losing battle. When you’re only living in half a house, it’s insanely hard to keep clutter at bay. Especially when so many of our things (notably: yarn and all the rest of my knitting/sewing/crafting supplies, plus books and other assorted items) have no home.

I should probably go around and take lots of detail shots of the house before the work gets started, but for now here’s one from last summer just after the roof was finished:

I’m excited–the house is going to look so different after this project is done!

PS I now have ten little hexagon flowers. I weighed one and it looks like there might be enough yarn for 25 of them in this one skein! I’d anticipated making maybe 15 (they’re approximately 4″ across blocked, so that’d make the scarf–without the edging–about 5′ long), but maybe I’ll make it 20 or so…we’ll see.

The Summer of Socks 2008 KAL started on Saturday, so I decided to set aside the Atomic Toes socks (which frankly haven’t been getting much attention anyway) in favor of something that will actually count for the KAL. So Saturday morning I cast on for Ziggy. I’ve also been trying to get the “Secret Project” finished (getting close!), so I haven’t spent a whole lot of time on Ziggy yet. Here’s my progress so far:

I absolutely love how this sock is turning out so far, despite my inexperience with Fair Isle. If you look closely there are definitely flaws, but overall it’s looking pretty good. If I do say so myself.

Also, I LOVE how the colors are striping so far.

The other thing that’s been grabbing my attention here and there is actually a crochet project. I was talking to Shannon at Twisted last week and somehow the topic of crochet came up. I haven’t been doing much crochet in recent years, mostly because–in many cases–I prefer the results achieved with knitting. However, crochet is a lot of fun. It goes really fast, and you can make unusual things pretty easily.

Lately, I’d been sporadically looking for a somewhat specific project: a crocheted scarf, with a lacy, maybe flowery, look. Something that could be used in warmer weather than the rest of my scarves. I’d poked around Ravelry and had found some things that were kind of the right idea, but not quite IT somehow. I told Shannon about the idea, and she pointed me to the two issues of Interweave Crochet that were on the magazine rack.

There are a lot of cute things in those two issues! I was tempted to buy both, but settled on just getting the Spring issue. Because the Spring issue had THE PATTERN in it.

I think Shannon and another woman who was knitting at the front of the shop might have thought I was a little crazy, because I took one look at the Floral Lace Belt (Ravelry link) and said, “There’s my scarf!”

So that night I went home and did a test of one of the hexagon motifs and got this:

Pretty, no? This is leftover Yarntini from my Twisted Sky Socks–I just wanted to see what it would look like in fingering weight and a larger hook (I used an H for this one). Only problem is that the hexagon was way too big–the scarf would be super wide at this size.

Then I tried lace weight yarn and a G hook:

I liked this one, too, and I think it would block out nicely (I just pinned it for the picture), but it was really fiddly in a way that I knew would make me not want to work on the project.

Next try:

Aha! This one, I love. I love the colors, I like the size (the scarf might still be a bit wide, but not so bad). This is Claudia Haindpainted sock yarn in the “Oops” colorway, with a G hook. It’s also fingering weight, but it’s lighter than the Yarntini. Between the lighter weight yarn and the smaller hook (a G is a full millimeter smaller than an H), the motif came out to a pleasing size.

I have four hexagons so far (did three very rapidly earlier this evening–crochet is really fun sometimes!), and I’m thinking I’ll need 12 or 15. I’ll figure it out when I get there.

I had so much fun this evening that I almost don’t remember work today.

Twisted had a Lantern Moon trunk show this evening, which was a lot of fun. I’ve never seen so many people in the shop! They brought so much stuff, it was amazing. And beautiful. I coveted lots of things, but satisfied myself with just one gorgeous bag.

I also got to meet Michele and see Adam‘s Lizard Ridge. (It’s GORGEOUS! I can’t wait to see mine all finished and sewn together.)

OH! And I finished the Sorta Charade Socks at work this morning!

After Nik picked me up at Twisted, we went out for a bite to eat at Mickey Finn’s. By the time we got home it was starting to get dark out, so I’m going to wait until tomorrow to take pictures of both the socks and the new bag. And maybe some other stuff. For now, you have links to click.

Good night!

Emma asked us to post a “first” in knitting, and initially I couldn’t really think of anything. I’m pretty adventurous, so there isn’t much I’ve *never* tried. Perhaps my imagination is failing me, though.

However, I did recently learn a new technique which I used on my Twisted Sky Socks: knitting socks on two circular needles. Here they are again:

I love this technique so much that I’ve also used it for my latest pair, the Sorta Charade Socks:

These aren’t quite finished yet–I’ll get a much better picture once they are.

The Sorta Charade Socks are another first for me. I started out making a pair of the popular Charade Socks (I think you have to be on Ravelry to get the pattern), but ended up adapting that pattern to the sky architecture (used in my Twisted Sky Socks) from Cat Bordhi’s book, New Pathways for Sock Knitters. Basically, I ended up taking the stitch pattern from Charade and putting into the Master Sky sock architecture from the book. Not quite an original design, but fun and unique!

Yesterday was the first time I’ve missed posting something during the whole month of May. Between just being exhausted and then being up late watching American Idol (I had to see if David Cook was going to beat David Archuleta!), I just lost track and went to bed without posting. Oh well, I’m still doing quite well on my self-imposed “post once a day” goal.

This has been another of those crazy work weeks where I work way, way too late one of the days and then struggle to balance it out the rest of the week. And sleep enough to overcome it. I’ll be going to bed very shortly in an effort to make Friday feel less awful than Thursday did.

Yesterday after work was nice, though–I left a little bit early and went to Twisted. Tammy and Kim joined me a while later and we chatted and knitted until Nik came to take me home. It was so nice seeing them! It’s been ages.

My second Sorta Charade sock is well underway now–the leg is done, and I’m starting on the ankle. I’ve also been making a little progress on Mom’s Follow the Leader shawl. I have a few things coming up that are going to pull my attention away from all these awesome works in progress, though, I think. I may finish the sock this weekend, but then I have things to work on for the HSKS5 swap (even though it’s a sock KIT swap, there’s still a handmade component to the swap–which, don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about! I’m even looking forward to it, but it’s yet another thing to add to a queue which is looking a bit daunting right now). And I’m taking a class starting next weekend, so I’ll have a project to work on for that, too.

Oh well–I’m sure I’ll figure out how to juggle everything. I just don’t want Mom’s shawl to keep getting shoved to the bottom of the list! Better work on it a bunch this coming week…haha.

Around 4:00 this afternoon, I was sitting at a table on the sidewalk outside of Grand Central Bowl, waiting for Nik to pick me up. (We went on a work outing, bowling and food at Grand Central. That place is NICE!)

The weather was beautiful and I had 15-20 minutes to kill, so of course I was knitting. In fact, I was knitting this:

That’s square #7 in progress, for my Lizard Ridge project. I’ve described this one as “clown colors.” Heh.

So I was sitting there knitting, enjoying being outside, and a woman walked by (very quickly). On the way by, she said, “Pretty hat!”

Me: “… … Thanks!”

Hat? I decided that it wasn’t worth trying to correct her since 1) she was obviously in a hurry, and 2) I suppose the point was that she thought it was pretty, and it probably doesn’t really matter whether or not she knows it isn’t, in fact, a hat.

I was amused.