Knitting in pink

While I try to catch up to everything after my trip to New York City, I'll leave you with a few pictures of the yarn purchases I made.

Karabella Lace Merino from School Products, Habu Textiles 100% Cashmere laceweight, Habu Textiles Wool/Stainless Steel laceweight from Habu Textiles

I guess there was a theme to my purchases, although I didn't realize it until just now.

Message to my Sockapalooza pal: I've been trying to reach you but I don't think you check your anonymous email. I'm concerned that my pair of socks might have gotten lost in the mail. You said you sent them to me almost 2 weeks ago and they still haven't arrived. Can you contact me with your regular email so that we can see if we can find out what happened? Thank you!

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I've been waiting for something to arrive in the mail to write this post. The last item I was waiting for came in today so now I can!

Here are a few things I ordered in the last couple weeks from etsy.

First I ordered a circular needle wallet from Piddleloop.

I special ordered one to match the project pouch and the zippered case that I already had bought from them.



It came with a few extra goodies; cute pencils, stitch markers, a little notebook and cute little tags.



I also found this cute necklace by Mack Handmade Goods. I thought it would be a fun addition to my jewelry box. I think that all knitters should get one!



Closeup on the pendant here.

Last but not least is this:



What is it you ask? It's a brand new camera strap from here, for my new toy.



It's a Pentax K100D bought after reading about it on Chemgrrl's blog. Using this fancy DSLR required quite an adjustment from my tiny 3 megapixel point and shoot camera, but I'm really enjoying it and I look forward to taking much better pictures with time and practice.

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On the knitting front: I'm 75% done with my second Yarntini sock and should be done within the next couple days. Next up will have to be my first pair of Monkeys for my Monkey Sock Swap pal out of the cuties on the right



The yarn is ShiBuiKnits Sock that we just got in at yarn4socks.

New Acquisitions:

A little knitty Po made by TADworks especially for me:

She's holding 3 balls of yarn and a pair of knitting needles.

Once that I had in my mind that I wanted one of these cute little Pos for myself I contacted Tomoko from TADworks. She was super fast and super helpful. She even made 3 different Pos for me to choose from. And in less than a week I had my own.

My own pair of sock blockers:



I've been wanting a pair of sock blockers for quite a while now. But I didn't want to spend the amount that I've seen most of them go for. Then I found Knitting Haven's. I placed an order for them Thursday or Friday and received them yesterday. I'm really pleased with them. Between them and the model foot I have I should be able to take better pictures of finished socks.

More sock yarn:

Like I need more sock yarn! : )


Fleece Artist Merino Wool in color Vintage

yarn4socks has received a huge order from Fleece Artist full of new colors. Of course I couldn't resist and I had to have at least one!



That's what I had to pick from, so it was quite difficult! : ) All of these will be available later today for purchase.

Knitting:

A finished Punk sock:



A square for my new afghan:



After mentioning it in my goals the other day I had the extreme need to cast on immediately. You should have seen me on the couch. A huge bag full of balls of yarn on one side. My square on my lap. And 6 different balls of yarn still attached to the knitted square on the other side. (I didn't want to cut the yarn until I was really sure I liked it)

I don't know if you can tell, but the lower half of the square was knit as per pattern. With rapid changes of color. The second half was not. I didn't like the fact that the colors changed so rapidly and decided to stick to less color changes. I like it better and will probably do all the other squares like that. Each square is supposed to measure 5" across but I get barely 4.5" with mine. So I'll just have a slightly smaller blanket when I'm done. Or I'll have to make more squares. 1 square out of 96 done.

BTW, what you see at the bottom of the picture are the gazillion ends that I will have to weave in. Another reason while the lesser amount of color changes sounds good to me! : )

Last night I went to my local B&N to browse their knitting books. I was very lucky in that I found some very cool knitting books to look at and some other nice books too.

My first pick was The Cute Book. This book was full of adorable little stuffies to make out of felt. One of them was a pair of sheep, so cute! I really liked the way things were explained and would surely enjoy making some of those. Another craft to look into for me! : )

I also looked at Simple Sewing with a French Twist: An Illustrated Guide to Sewing Clothes and Home Accessories with Style. A beautiful book full of pretty things. Yet another craft I would like to practice.

Another beautiful book was The Best of Vogue Knitting Magazine: 25 Years of Articles, Techniques, and Expert Advice. This would make a beautiful coffee table book as well as a very interesting and full of information knitting anthology.

Last but not least I looked at Fitted Knits: 25 Designs for the Fashionable Knitter. I must have this book. Now. I loved like 90% of the patterns. If I hadn't known that I could get this book cheaper elsewhere I would have walked out with it. I could see myself wearing quite a few of the patterns, some with some mods, like lengthening the sleeves and such. But definitely a must have book for me, especially now that I'm starting to make real garments for myself.

So it was quite a successful trip to the local bookstore...

Also going on are some stash enhancement and some knitting.

I've been knitting on my Child's First sock the second for a couple days now. This is a picture as of Saturday morning when there actually was some sunshine.

As of this morning I have reached the midpoint of the heel. My goal for today is to finish the heel and start working on the leg. This pattern is really easy for me now as I've memorized the pattern and know what comes next. So barring very bad luck I should be done in a few days. Did you notice the stitch markers I'm using? They are Zero Stitch Markers by Sock prØn's Aija.

A couple weeks ago I had the chance to score 3 skeins Cascade 220 on the Destash blog. I got even more lucky because the person selling it told me her friend had 3 more skeins in the same dyelot that she wanted to destash. So I quickly snagged the additional 3 and now have enough to make any sweater I want.



The color is 9422, a very pretty cherry red. It is a little more pink than in the picture. I might use it to knit Ariann, or Wicked. We'll see.

So this is what's been going on here at Chez Knitting in Pink.

Any excuse to reorganize and reevaluate the stash is a good excuse. And Flash your Stash Day is certainly a very good excuse.

So I got up this morning and brought all my yarn to the kitchen table. This is what I've got:

If you click on each picture you will be led to a bigger one. To some I have added notes.

I gave/sold away some of my sock yarn stash last week. I figured that since I would be getting in 3 skeins of Vespers I needed to get rid of some of the existing ones. Also I've done a couple trades where I'll be getting some more yarn for my Ripple Blanket. After seeing all my stash this morning I think that there are a few more things that I could sell or trade.

This is the home of the stash, a cute cabinet from IKEA. It fits the stash very well.

Today I'll just share this with you:

This is yarn that was waiting for me at the post office when I came back from vacation.

From left to right:

Gorgeous One Sheep Hill* won on a contest on Pam's blog Flint Knits. The yarn is super soft and the colors are really, really pretty, I love it! Thank you again Pam!

2 skeins of Duet sock yarn in Army Girl and Merlot from A Swell Yarn Shop. The day after I purchased them I learned that their price would be raised $2 per skein, so I'm glad I scored some more before that! I really loved knitting with that yarn. Knitted up, the socks are super comfortable and soft on my feet. So I look forward to knitting a couple more pairs out of this yarn!

* According to Pam, One Sheep Hill is an artist that handdyes sock yarn exclusively for Yarnzilla. The color above is #463. It comes in 500yds skein and is superwash merino. If it is not available online yet it will be in the near future.

Last week I won a contest over at The YoYo Knits. The contest was about why I loved being a girl, and her fiancé got to pick the comment he liked the best.
I wrote this: "I love that as a girl I can wear all sorts of pretty clothing, dresses, skirts, cute jewelery and cute sandals but that at the same time I can wield a screwdriver and build IKEA furniture too!" Yeah, I'm a big IKEA fan!

So I got my package today...

A skein of Lisa Souza Sock! in Pacific, 2 skeins of Patagonia Nature Cotton in a very pretty pink color and last but not least a bottle of "Le Vernis" by Chanel in color Noir Ceramic. Apparently is the new super hip color for spring and everybody is going crazy trying to get a bottle!

The color of the Lisa Souza sock yarn isn't quite coming out right, it's brighter and totally the colors I like right now. I'm thinking it would make a great shawl if don't make socks with it.

The Nature Cotton is really cool, but I could use some suggestions as to what to make with it. There are 210 yds of it altogether. Let me know what you think!

All in all, thank you Alyson for this contest and this wonderful package!

More sock Pr0n...



On the top you see a skein of yarn handpainted by White Willow that I bought on Etsy. The color is called Alice's Garden. I troll the knitting section of Etsy a lot and I usually restrain myself a lot. But when I saw that color I had to have it. And it is even more beautiful in real life. She even sent me a little sample of Eucalan and a cute little sachet of lavender.

The skein at the bottom is Sunshine Yarn in Mocha. I think I bought it off of someone destashing. I loved the brown color with the little streaks of lavender. I think it will make great lace socks.

I don't know if you've noticed but I've added a button in my side bar, for the Bejeweled Knitalong. I had been thinking about getting the pattern for a while now. I was afraid that it might be too hard for me! But then, yesterday, I finally decided to go for it and order it. I wanted to knit it from the stash and I managed to find one yarn that would work in yardage and weight. I didn't really have time to look at the pattern yesterday but I got around to it this morning. The pattern is super easy and a great start for a lace newbie like me.

So I cast on this morning and here is what I've got so far (actually it's more than that by now)

I was afraid that the variegation of the yarn would hide the stitch pattern but it still works out really well, although you can't really see it in the picture.

The yarn that I am using is Indigo Moon (50/50 Fine Mohair/Wool) by Done Roving from Maine. I bought this yarn this summer while spending the weekend in Maine.

I am using my new KP Option needles in size 10 and because of it decided to increase less than recommended. Even so, my scarf is still about an inch wider than the pattern. But I like it that way, I'll just have to make it a bit shorter to compensate.

ETA: The KAL officially starts on the 1st of January... But I wanted to knit something else than socks for a while, so I'm knitting away, at least today. Tomorrow I'll probably go back to socks!

Random tidbits of what's going on chez Knitting in Pink

First of all stash enhancement due to a trip to WEBS to pick up a 40" size 0 circular. Sorry for the horrible picture! : )

10 balls Classic Elite Skye Tweed to make LMKG Hourglass Sweater

The beginnings of a MDK felted box using Lamb's Pride Bulky



Yet another sock in the making


Test knit for the store, I wont say more, you'll just have to wait! *tease, tease*

And Unikat hat for DH Sides 1 and 2 (isnt it interesting how the yarn pooled?)



After being tried on some modifications will have to be done. Like frogging the bind-off and a couple rows to make the hat shorter. Could be other things but in any case it will involve some frogging.

In the past couple weeks I have been destashing a little. I sold some stuff on the destash blog with amazing success. One of the things I got rid of were a few skeins of sock yarns that failed to entice me anymore and that I knew I would probably not knit in a long long while. I also made a couple trades on the Knitty board. Sock yarn for books that I'd been wanting for a while.

Sadly, I restashed right back! On a late evening internet browsing session I found that Pureknits had restocked on the Yarntini sock yarns. There were only 3 colors that weren't sold out yet and I ordered two of them: the Pureknits colorway and the Home colorway.

I've always liked the Pureknits colorway, the white, brown and pink together. I saw them knitted up and it is really cute. The Home colorway was really interesting, light blue, pink, gold and brown. Not my colors first hand but I think that they will make gorgeous socks.

Still on the sock front, I made the crazy decision to sign up for the Sock that Rock club. It really seems crazy to me the amount of money they are asking for but I think that it will be worth it. I guess I might still change my mind by January though.