I started making these earlier this week, and I decided to give these socks to Taryn instead of the Rainy Day Socks.

I got bored with knitting the RDS, so I finished one sock and started on the second one. I wanted to try making a textured heel flap, so I played around with a slip-stitch pattern (pictures to come when I get new batteries for my camera). So, while both socks are good, they do not match completely. I don’t want to rip out everything I’ve done with the second sock, so I’m just going to finish it and keep the pair for myself, and give Taryn the Monkeys instead.

Knitting these socks has been a lot of fun. I cast on the first sock on Monday, and then it just kept on growing and growing.

to…

to…

Right now I’m really close to grafting the toes together. I think I’m going to finish the first sock and cast on the second one today.

I started on one of the socks today. I figured I owed myself a treat, so I casted on and now I’m one and a half repeats in.

I had two finals today, one of which I studied a lot for, and I think I did well on both.

After I took the exams, I slept. I haven’t been sleeping well lately. I haven’t had problems not sleeping, which did come in handy for studying, of course. I have one exam tomorrow that shouldn’t be difficult, and a paper due on Wednesday.

After that, I’m done with Spring semester. Ah, it’s so close!

I’m going to go study for my Japanese final and outline my Core paper now.

So close so close so close…

Yes, it has been a long time since I last updated. Anything I’ve written about my knitting endeavors was posted to my LiveJournal, and not here where it’s supposed to go.

So, what have I been doing? Lots of things. First of all, I got a Ravelry account; I’m riesquared over there.

Now, onto the knitting… With pictures!

Chelsey’s Christmas present to me was a Pick Up Sticks felted coin purse kit. So, in February, I made a yellow one. Yes, it’s a bit dilapidated; I felted it for a little too long… Still, making it was a lot of fun, and I like it.

I made the Cecily Beanie from Lousia Harding’s Knitting Little Luxuries during the first week of March. I might eventually decorate it with buttons, but I’m not sure yet. Knitting this one was quick and easy, and I really like the swirls formed by the decreases.

After the Cecily Beanie, I made Knitty’s Yorick. It knit up just fine, but I didn’t check on it while it was in the washer. Yeah… It didn’t work out. So, I made another Yorick. One with green and white stripes. I finished knitting it a few weeks ago, I just have to felt it.

I made another felted coin purse from the kit. I improvised the pattern and made it curved, and sewed on a zipper I’ve had lying around since high school. The zipper looks surprisingly nice, apart from the white thread.

When I went home over spring break in March, I decided that I wanted to learn how to knit socks. I didn’t want to make plain stockinette socks, so I made Monkeys. They turned out awesome, and I love them. I just wish they weren’t as loose. I like clingy socks.

So… I made clingy socks. I made the pattern, and knit the socks on two circular needles. I really love these socks. It’s RT, p2 ribbing, and I used the twists to decrease too. They’re very warm and comfy, and they look good. Even on Mazi.

Other than, I’ve been working on my Notre Dame De Grace pullover. The front and back done, and bound together. One sleeve is done, and I’m in the middle of the other one; it’s about 2½” long right now.

I also made one sock with the Wheat-Ear Cable pattern. I figured out how to knit socks from the toe up, and I used Magic Loop. I’m not sure I understand short rowing… Other than the heel, everything’s good. I even used a picot edge for fun. I might make a mate to this sock, I might not. I don’t know yet.

Right now, I’m working on a Branching Out for a friend who is graduating this semester. I’m also going to make her a pair of Rainy Day Socks from MagKnits, which is now dead.

I also ordered some needles from Knitpicks, and I hope I like them. I’ve read good things about them, and they’re not as expensive as Addi Turbos. I just have to wait them to get here is all…

I’m working on the yoke of my wheat ear cable yoke pullover, and I’ve started working on the front of the the Notre Dame de Grace pullover. Squee.

Pictures!!!

I’ve been working on the Wheat Ear Cable Yoke sweater from the Summer ‘07 cover of Interweave Knits for a while.

I’d have been done with it by now, but I forgot to take extra yarn with me for my month-long stay in The Hills (Michigan).

Anyways, I’ve been working on it every now and then, while I’m not rereading the Harry Potter series, and everything’s been coming along nicely.

I’ve got the front and back done up to where they need to be joined with the sleeves. Both sleeves are almost done, I just to knit even for few inches and then an inch and a half of the cable pattern, and then it all gets joined.

I’m working with Jo Sharp Soho Summer in Sailboat and Poplin. The white’s for the ribbing, the blue’s for everything else. I love this yarn, it’s super soft and very light.

I’d give you a picture, but my internet connection is very slow for some reason, and uploading is not happening quickly enough for my liking.

Here’s a picture, of either the front or the back. It’s mostly stockinette, but you can see a bit of the wheat ear cable action. It’s kind of hard because it’s on a holder. But here it is…

I’m making a “to do list” of things I want to make.

First, from the Summer ‘07 issue of Interweave Knits:

1824 Blouson	Notre Dame Pullover	Wheat-Ear Cable Yoke
My sister loves this, so I’d be making this for her.	I love love love this so much. I must make it!	This is gorgeous. Espec- ially in that color.
Motorcycle Chica Gloves	Summertime Tunic
I MUST make these. End of story.	I want cute little things to wear in the summer- time.

Right now I’m knitting the Lacy Top from Vogue Knitting’s 2006 Holiday issue. I am knitting it out of Blue Sky Alpaca’s Alpaca Silk yarn in Plum, on my favorite needles – Addi Turbos. They’re just so fast!

I finished the back this afternoon, and I’ve got about an inch and a half of the front done. I will try to post pictures of the back tomorrow, it’s blocking on my wall right now. =)

Now, I shall go knit some more and hope my Mazi calls me before he goes to bed. Eee, the phone just rang. Yay!

This post is going to serve as an introductory post, but I’m also writing this for nostalgia’s sake. I’m going to tell everyone how I got started knitting.

First, my mother. My mother was born in India, and she learned to knit when she was eight or nine years old. When she was older (late teen’s to early 20’s), she taught knitting classes, and was somewhat famous for her classes and her work in her community. She knit until she got married and moved to the US in the 1980’s. Then, the knitting stopped. She had my dad, and she had my sister, and then she had me, and she didn’t have time for knitting.

She picked up her needles again when I was in eight grade and dusters became all the rage – my sister and I wanted one, and she’d sniff at every one my sister and I’d show her and scoff “I can knit something better than this!” Finally, she did. She knit a purplish-grey duster that now sits on the highest shelf of my sister’s closet. After the duster, she took on a few more projects: a yellow seed-stitch sweater, a gorgeous blue cabled sweater (made for your’s truly), and a few sweaters for Christmas gifts for my sister’s two best friends from high school. After that, the knitting weened off again, and she had some unfinished projects, or just lots of yarn and a pattern that never got started to go with it.

The knitting started up again with great fervor last summer when we moved to Atlanta and I was bored out of my mind and desperately needed something to occupy my mind and my hands. I found a yarn store about 15 minutes away from us, and off we went. My sister picked out a Filatura di Crosa pattern for my mom, and she’s finished at least eight or nine (if not more) complicated patterns since then, in my sister’s and my apartment, cars, hotel rooms, and our house in Michigan.

Now, my turn. My first attempt at knitting occurred when I was about 10 years old. An old friend randomly gave me three skeins of acrylic yarn and a pair of knitting needles in box that once held a soap making kit for my birthday. My mother taught me how to knit, and I made myself a headband to keep my small head warm that cold Michigan winter. I promptly forgot about the headband and the knitting.

I became interested in knitting again in middle school when my mom started again, but I didn’t make an effort to learn until my sophomore year of high school when a friend told me she knit too. I asked her to teach me, and we’d make tentative plans, but nothing ever happened. Finally, one day I wasn’t feeling well enough to go to school and I rummaged through my mother’s knitting things and pulled out a pair of size sevens and a ball of worsted weight navy blue yarn and shoved it in my mother’s face and demanded she teach me. She spent about twenty minutes teaching me how to cast on, knit, and purl, and that’s all it took.

I spent a week or two just knitting blocks, making sure I got out of the habit of accidentally slipping stitches or creating yarn overs, and then I started knitting scarves, lots and lots of scarves. They were all very simple, either garter, stockinette, or ribbed, and I handed them off to my friends as gifts, as they were all made of inexpensive acrylic bought from Meijer’s. I made a bag out of Lion Brand Homespun, three-stranded and garter stitch, which I still bring out on occasion. I stopped knitting at the end of my junior year, it stopped exciting me. I guess all that garter and stockinette and ribbing got boring, and I didn’t feel challenged or that I was learning and gaining anything.

My sister and I moved to Atlanta last July, and my parents stayed with us for a few months to set us up. Not knowing where anything was and not having and friends got old fast, and my mom realized I desperately needed something to consume myself with. We went off to the LYS and I started on a pair of fingerless gloves, and then I started on My First Sweater, a Tahki Stacey Charles raglan sweater. I finished the front and back very quickly, but the decreasing on the sleeves confused me, and it ended up taking me nine months and lot of my mother’s help to finish it. If you do the math, that means I finished that sweater about two weeks ago.

Since then, I’ve started a bag made out of chunky pink cotton, and a lacy top from Vogue Knitting’s 2006 Holiday edition. The top is coming along beautifully, and I plan on finishing it by the end of next week. I have plenty of projects lined up, especially lots of things from Interweave Knits.

I get a kick out of reading people’s knitting blogs and learning about their work(s) in progress. I’ve picked up my knitting habbit again in the past month as well, so I figured I’d make my own. This time, I want to keep on knitting constantly, because I love how knitting makes me feel.

Right now, I’ve got two WIPs. One is a pair of fingerless gloves, and the other is a sweater.

The fingerless gloves are striped and green and yellow, and have a cable pattern going. This was my first time making gloves, and my first time doing cables. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy making cables is, and I learned my lesson in the difference of holding the cable needle to front of the work, as opposed to the back. The pattern is from Funky Knits, a book I picked out at my local yarn store here in Georgia.

Anyways, I got up to the gusset of the second glove and got sidetracked. Thus, I began my sweater. This is my first sweater endeavor, and it’s a pattern from Filatura di Crosa’s 2005 Zara/Zara Plus pattern book. I’m not making it in the merino wool the pattern calls, I’m making it in some Takhi Stacey Charles Cotton Classic, in Mossy. I’ve finshed the front and the back, and now I’m on the first sleeve. This was my first time doing KF&B increases, and it turns out I was doing them incorrectly for the ten inches, so the edges looked sloppy. Earlier tonight, I ripped the entire sleeve and cast on sixty stitches for the third or fourth time. This sleeve is going to be imacculate, I insist.

My mother taught me the cable cast-on method, but the women at our old yarn store in Michingan insisted on the double cast-on method. I love how the cable cast-on looks, and prefer it to the look of the sling-shot method, but the motions in the sling-shot method always had me wondering how they did it. I never attempted it until today, and I got the hang of it in about five minutes of studying Debbie Stoller’s diagrams in my Stitch & Bitch book. I liked how fast it was, but I made my stitches realy tight and hated having to hold two needles together, so I think I’m going to stick to the cable cast-on.

I’m going to go watch Conan O’Brien and work on my sleeve now, if you’ll exuse me.

I’ll post pictures as soon as I can, which, in other words means whenever I actually feel like it.