The Mittens are coming!!!

Remember the great hat adventures? I believe I am entering into their mitten counterpart. This time though not for charity but for Christmas. Meet the first arrival, mittens for a Christmas Eve birthday of an Irish girl.
I am becoming hopelessly addicted to Fair Isle, plus it makes the projects so much warmer and cozier. Not to mention you get a lot more attention and comments from strangers when you're working with two colors.
Next up will be my own mittens which I designed, Hooray! The mittens are coming the mittens are coming...

Apartment Decorating Time

My partner and I finally found a new apartment for the fall. While he is now relaxing until moving time, thinking our work is done. I'm thinking about all those hardwood floors and what I'm going to have to do to keep our feet warm. Enter the knit rug!

While I haven't started any projects yet I've been scoping out options. I'm thinking of doing recycled t-shirt rag rugs for high use areas like the bathroom and the kitchen so that they'll be machine washable. For the bedroom, living room and odd little study room I can't wait to get my hands on some extra bulky yarn and a huge pair of needles. Nothing as big as this though! Warm feet will be mine!!!

Self inflicted yarn drama...

I did a silly thing the other day. I was buying yarn for my February Lady Sweater, and I found some beautiful Louet Riverstone worsted weight in fantastic shade called "French Blue." There was actually a sample of the sweater knit up in the store in the same yarn, and while the yarn looked a little chunky for the pattern I couldn't resist the color and got some. I then met up with my knitting buddies at Windsor Button in Boston, and soon saw some Nashua Handknits in an Alpaca/Wool blend that was the exact creamy-goodness color I was envisioning for the FLS. So what did I do? Well of course I bought four skeins of the Nashua.

What happened next? Did I act like a sane person and return the french blue yarn? No, no I did not. Instead I have begun a frantic search for a beautiful pattern to use every gram of that blue-goodness. That afternoon I drove both myself and the salesperson crazy looking through EVERY book and pattern booklet for a pattern to use approximately 1,100 yards of worsted weight wool in the most lovely color you can imagine. Of course because it is late May most pattern booklets are featuring cotton and bamboo, or fingering weight shrugs. I have not yet given up the fight though, and there are several options that I'm considering but I still haven't been struck by the perfect pattern. I'm counting on Ravelry to help me through this self-inflicted yarn craziness!

Sweater updates

So here is the second sweater I've been working on; the February Lady Sweater, an awesome adaptation of the February Baby Sweater from Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac. It is going ok so far, although I am developing a buttonhole phobia and have yet to make a good one. I think it may be coming out a little small through the chest area and if I can't block it out I may have to gift it. Now it's time to work on the sleeves!

Ignore the weird face I'm making, the sun was in my eyes and so was my hair!!

Here is the completely finished sweater I did (my first!) which was a heavily modified version of Ysolda's Cloud Bolero. I picked mother of pearl buttons because the yarn reminds me of the ocean and I thought the buttons would fit well with the style (rather than doing buttonholes I just fit the buttons through the yarn on the button band, why? see my comment above about my increasing "buttonhole phobia").