What to do?

Sometime last year I bought two skeins of some lovely Artyarns superwash merino yarn (quite expensive for me, plus shipping from the States) and ever since i've been looking out for a nice pattern that I can make it with, something special that i'll be able to keep for a while.

I was thinking about berets, but as the yarn is quite varigated I wasn't sure that it would look how I wanted it to. I also wanted to try and find something to do with butterflys to include that, since I love butterflys so much too. I have been biding my time, waiting for a good butterfly hat to come up on Ravelry. Suddenly last week I saw two patterns that I hadn't seen before - this, and this (pattern links, not Rav links).

I thought 'great', and cast on for the butterfly hat on the weekend with one skein, keeping the other for the lace pattern to turn it into a cowl instead of a scarf (i'm well through the hat now - up to the second pattern repeat - its nice and easy). Except now i'm having second thoughts. The hat is really more of a beanie than a beret, which I was ok with to start with because I was so happy to have found the pattern, but i've never really looked that great in beanies with my short hair, so i'm not sure how much wear it will get. On top of this, I was looking at Mary Heather's 365 photo for yesterday and on the bus this morning it came to me - I should make the same thing, using the butterfly lace from the scarf! That way i'll get lots of wear out of it, its in fashion at the moment but something that will always come in handy, can be passed down to children, yada yada yada, as well as learning how to design the lace to fit it myself!

So what do we think? Should I go home tonight and rip out the hat and start charting the lace for a shawlette? Or do we like the idea of a beanie with the butterfly pattern instead? Help me, blog!

Quote of the day:

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself"
- Abraham Maslow

"...and you are a knitter. Knit."
- Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

~Happy knitting!~

Sunburnt

Have a tomato near you? That's the colour of my face. Totally self inflicted - I didn't put on nearly enough sunblock yesterday morning before watching our church's U30s v. O30s soccer match yesterday afternoon! Thank goodness for aloe cream! It was worth it though, the U30s won the game :)

Mingus Big Band was fantastic on Friday night! We shifted seats at intermission to get a view of something other than the pianist's back... And, I've never seem a baritone sax that big - it was a big guy that was playing it, and it came down to his knee! Promptly went home and downloaded a Charles Mingus album from iTunes to listen to. I also managed to pop into the free open concert in the square on Saturday to watch the Vaughan Roberts Big Band, they were great too, with a mixture of swing and salsa and remakes of some old tunes. It was a good weekend.

Knitting update

I finally got up the energy late yesterday afternoon to work some more on Buttony - sadly its not turning out to be the 'quick because its bulky' project I thought it would be, but i'll stick with it, and ignore the urge to cast on the sleeve for Thermal...

(the safety pins mark where the button holes are)

Looking at some of my other raglan projects, I'm estimating that the increases need to be 8 inches long before seperating the sleeves. Here's where I'm up to:

Not long to go!

As you can see from the progress bars, i'm also making ascots for quick presents. I ran out of the yarn I needed, so a quick trip out at lunchtime means that they should be finished and ready to send off tonight, while Desperate Housewives, Brothers and Sisters, and Nip/Tuck is on. (I love Mondays!)

Quote of the week

From the Yarn Harlot's page-a-day calendar:

"All knitterly creation stems from one simple element: yarn. It is the baker's flour, the jeweler's gold, the gardener's soil. Yarn is creation, consolation, and chaos all spun together into one perfect ball."
- Clara Parkes

This quote makes me feel better about my stash :)

~Happy knitting!~

Buttony begins

Buttony Sweater

I got started on this last night - it took a while to figure out how the sizing worked (its only written for size M, and i'm a size S) - i'm still not sure i'm on the right track as the collar looks smaller than I would like, so there's a definate possibility that I will start again with a different cast on number! I love the colour though, and the yarn is lovely to use :)

Ballatrina's Books

I was thinking the other day that I haven't had an update on when i'm reading for a while - and that's because I haven't been reading anything! I've become obsessed with listening to podcasts on the bus. I'm fully up to date with Ready, Set, Knit, the podcast from the awesome team at WEBS, and now i'm listening my way through the Cast On podcast - which is great so far, a little longer than RSK, but it plays full tracks between the talking, which is a good mix. If you have an iPod I recommend you check these out - I found them through a search of 'knitting' on iTunes (yes, yes, i'm obsessed, we know this!)

Quote of the week

Another quote from the Yarn Harlot's page-a-day calendar:

"If you're crazy, there's two things you can do to make yourself feel better: One is to get yourself cured. The other is to make everyone you have to deal with crazy."
- Alan Dean Foster

Stephanie's response to that puts it into knitterly context:

"This is the reason every knitter tries to teach everyone she knows to knit... or at least suggests that they should try it."

~Happy knitting!~

Stash tidy up

Sadly I didn't make it to the carnival on the weekend :( When I got up on Saturday I was hit by a strange cleaning bug which wanted to attack my room - and since that hits so rarely, who am I to say no? Room cleaning went well, thanks to a quiet house and trashy Saturday tv! I even vacuumed! (and broke the vacuum cleaner, but its all better now...)

After that was done, I consulted my Yarn Harlot page-a-day calendar, which suggested a good weekend chore would be to clean out one's stash, not only to remind it what the light of day looks like, but also to remind yourself what you have! Here are my results:

Most of, but not all of, my stash - collected since April 2008

Ok, now I realise that I probably have enough stash to last me a while, and I have no excuses whatsoever to go and by more! (Well, I do - one of the managers at work is having a baby girl, and I don't have any nice pink in my stash to make something, but I promise that's all i'll buy!! Cough cough...)

It is also now resorted into the different types of fibre - bamboo and cotton, mohair (of which I have an awful lot!) - as well as a box of yarn for toys, and one for odd balls and leftovers that can be used for charity stuff. Out of that I was able to sort out which yarns are predestined for projects, and bagged those together with their patterns so I can just pick them up and go when i'm ready to start. I also have a box of 5+ balls of different yarns which are pure stash with no projects in mind - the fun part will be matching those up with projects :)

Knitting update

With all that lovely fibre floating around, of course I was tempted to knit something! Details to come shortly.... Once that was done though I carried on with some squares for the Casa Kiwi blankets - I think I almost have enough now to make one blanket, with promises for more squares from a couple of others to come! I was asked the other day if there was any information about this project on their website, which of course there isn't, because they don't know its happening - it will just be a lovely suprise when these blankets turn up! Feel free to comment if you want to help out :)

Quote of the week

It turns out my page-a-day calendar also does quotes for Sundays! If any come up that are share-worthy i'll pass them on... This week's one is particularly inspirational, and something i've come across in my thinking before:

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about."

- Charles Kingsley

So, what are you enthusiastic about? For me, its definately my knitting, as well as my bass guitar (she's at the doctors at the moment, i'll introduce you to her when she's all better!)

~Happy knitting!~

The joys of blog stalking

It's one of those days at work where its warm inside and cold outside, which leads to sleepiness and lack of motivation to work, so I go blog stalking! Here's the classic for today, from this blog found through Ravelry...

STATEMENT: Mushrooms the product of extraterrestrial ****
rape on mollusks!!

RESPONSE: MUSHROOMS ARE PROOF OF SWEET, MEANINGFUL
LOVING BETWEEN MOLLUSKS AND STAR PEOPLE.

I think i've lost my appetite...

Social weekend

Bec left on Wednesday, and already its really quiet! M&D are also away this weekend, so instead of pouting on my own (although i'd probably get a ton of knitting done that way!), i'm going out with S tonight for drinks and a catch up, and H tomorrow night to see Sex and the City, and enjoying a quiet night on Sunday since the final of Greys and Men in Trees is on! So there, I do have a life :P

Knitting-wise though, I have another baby to knit for, so i'm making the Presto Chango sweater - its such an easy pattern so far, although a few holes have appeared at the end of the moss stitch on the back, but no-one but me is going to notice... It appears I have developed a slight case of insomnia lately, so I didn't put my knitting down until about 11.30 last night, since I figured I had to try and get some sleep if I was going to make it through a day at work AND my outting tonight!

I ordered my wool online today for Sassymetrical , which i'm so excited about making - the wool has to come from Canada though so it may take a while to arrive :( I'm going down to the local to get the wool for this Shrug which i've been planning to work on for a while - it was the first thing on my Ravelry queue! I've also been asked to make another Cabled Cap for mum, but that shouldn't take to long to whip up, since I know what i'm doing now. All that being said, i've put the baby kimono into hibernation for the moment, in hopes that i'll be inspired to work on it again soon! I'd planned it to be a Christmas present, so i'm not in any real rush.

QUOTATION OF THE DAY from the New York Times:
"Plants have a secret social life."
Susan A Dudley, an evolutionary plant ecologist at McMaster University, who found that a plant species can recognize its relatives...