proof of recycling

I ended up swiping buttons from an old black sweater yesterday, and while they aren't perfect, neither are they hideous. Behold the FLS in action:



(I'm playing with a baby, hence the wackiness.)

For the record, I love this sweater with all my black heart. It could maybe have used another half-inch of room in the bust, but whatever. Close enough, and the rest of it fits perfectly and is generally fabulous. One of my friends at the party wants to make one, but claims it's beyond her skill. She didn't believe me when I told her it was one of the easiest sweaters ever. Really. It doesn't take much brainpower at all. Anyway, I still may go find it some real buttons someday. Because then, if I put these buttons back on their original sweater, I can give it to one of my cousins.

(Speaking of my cousins, I passed the Shrunken Hat on this week, and the baby cousin loves it. It looks just as fantastic on her as I thought it would. I feel she was probably just meant to have the hat all along.)

Man, if my aunts weren't all of a size that would render the cost of yarn prohibitive, I would totally make an FLS, throw it in the grab bag, and watch them fight over it.

it's recycling, ok?

It may be a recycling attempt, but I feel I've hit a bit of a new low here. I still haven't found buttons for my February Lady Sweater--it's been finished for over a month!--and today has found me looking through my closet, seeing if I've got anything I can steal buttons from.

I don't have anything that's striking me as perfect, but I still may jack something. I'm going to a birthday party this afternoon (a first birthday scrapbooking party, God help me) and I thought it would be fun to wear my sweater. But it doesn't have buttons. Rrrr. This means I will probably be at the pricey button store on Monday.

Unless I find a forgotten cardigan or jacket with excellent buttons between now and then.

It's that time of year . . .

. . . when we all start knitting like maniacs, though I'm trying not to make TOO many presents this year.

Anyhow, today I present the start of my holiday knitting:



Super Disco Awesome Squares waiting to be felted and turned into Super Disco Potholders. I made these bad boys out of some random Patons and Cascade 220 I had lying around. I'm hoping they felt into something resembling potholder-shape, but if not, eh, I'll sew whatever shapes they are together and call them a purse or something. Whatever happens, I am completely in love with the colors and the stripeyness. We all know I can't resist stripes.

I really want to make a Super Disco Blanket out of these two colors:



It's a blanket that would make you blind, but it'd be worth it to have seen it once.

There is one fly in this Happy Disco Ointment, however. Look at this sad and tragic square:




Do you see it? Do you see that sad little loop of brown in the upper left corner? That's where the brown ran out. I am lacking only as much brown as is needed to single crochet 24 inches. (Or so.) Oh, the doom and sadness. Oh, the cursing that went on last night. I guess I could edge two of them with their color, instead of brown, or edge them all with a contrasting color, but I really did like the brown edge. Made the whole thing a kind of classy disco. And sure, I could always buy more brown, but . . . I was so proud of the stashbusty aspect of this gift. Dammit, this is why a person needs to have knitting friends, because then I could call them all and beg a wee bit of brown.

Ah well. I will survive, as the disco song says.

I wonder if I can find some sort of Disco Pan to go with my Disco Potholders? (If we're going to be precise, they're probably more Psychedelic Potholders than Disco Potholders, but disco is so much easier to spell.)

hilarious labels

So I was at Macy's today, petting the sweaters in the Eileen Fisher section. (They feel gooooooood.) Anyway, naturally I can't remember the exact wording, but this one tag said something like "Yarn Links" and was advertising the stitch as the new texture of luxury.

In case you were wondering, the "new texture of luxury" is garter stitch.

It was a really nice sweater, though. LOTS of really nice sweaters.

I wish I wasn't poor.

shrinkage update

So remember how I was talking about giving the shrunken hat away? Well, today the very baby cousin I was thinking of giving the hat to called and asked if I would teach her to knit--because she wants that very sort of hat! It's some kind of knitted fate. Particularly since she doesn't know I have the very sort of hat she wants: she just knows I knit.

Naturally I'll teach her to knit. And she can totally have the hat. Hopefully we won't have to shrink it more to get it to fit her.

Gotta love it when a so-called ruined item is just what someone else was wanting.

shrinkage

So I made myself a hat out of some Louet Euroflax this summer. It's quite a nice hat. I like it. I even like the way the unwashed linen felt, but since everything I've read about linen yarn has said "yes, go ahead and wash and dry it, it gets even better!" I washed it. And dried it. And now it is too small.

Anyone else have this problem? It didn't shrink all THAT much, but I like hats that cover my ears, and now this one does with only a lot of tugging.

Le sigh. So now I have to decide if I should keep it and tug on it, or find someone with a smaller head than mine and give them an extremely high-quality hat. I have a ten-year-old cousin who would look fantastic in it . . . maybe I'll pass it on. Because I do have half a skein left, and could totally make myself another one. I had to add repetitions to the pattern anyway: perhaps I will make another one with a larger needle.

Anyway. Just be careful that your Euroflax may shrink. At least when it's in a lace pattern.

I'm surprised at how not horribly upset I am about this. I guess it's because it's not RUINED, it just doesn't fit me anymore. And it's not really a pain in the ass, like yesterday's horrible incident with about 300 yards of recycled fingering weight yarn. EPIC TANGLE. Times were dark.

whimper

I am slowly but surely losing the battle against NOT LEARNING TO SPIN. I don't have room for fleece and crap. I don't have money to buy any. But I kind of want to. I kind of like the idea of being able to make a hat or whatever that is really mine-all-mine.

But it's such a slippery slope! Then comes dying, and arrrrrgh. I really don't need to. I don't want to want to. But I'm pretty sure I'm losing the fight.

I may be asking for a drop spindle for Christmas, though God knows there are other things I could use more.

Whimper. I have no willpower. Help.

Veteran's Day

Thanks, guys.

just what I didn't need

More yarn! Oh dear God. I went to Michaels' today with my brother, for no good reason other than that he was going and had asked if I wanted to go along. And then all the yarn was on sale--including Patons SWS for $1.50. Holy crap. What's a girl to do, I ask you? Actually, it's a good thing my brother was there, or I might have REALLY stocked up on the SWS. I only bought four skeins, though, and then some Patons Classic Merino, which was also quite a good price.

And here, as promised, is the handspun by CosyMakes, purchased this weekend:



It is so totally gonna be a hat before the week is out. I hope.

well-meaning but clueless people

So I consider myself to be pretty good at this whole knitting thing, problems with sweater fit aside. I've made some nice stuff in the three or so years I've been knitting for real.

And I have this acquaintance who has been knitting for ages and is very good at it. And whenever I mention anything about what I'm knitting, her comments and advice are always the MOST OBVIOUS THING IMAGINABLE. Stuff that I CLEARLY know/understand already, or I could not make half the stuff I do. In my opinion, knitting is not at all difficult. (Fitting sweaters is, but I blame that on my boobs.) And I find it interesting, so I read about it a lot. I am a fairly well-informed knitter. A snippet of credit for having some brains and sense and skill is all I ask. I don't think that's too much to ask.

In other news, my mama bought me a skein of handspun at a craft fair yesterday. It's oooh very pretty. I shall post a picture of it after there is sun to take a picture of it in.

mmm, recycling

I haven't been doing too much actual knitting lately--there's a birthday present I HAVE to finish, but since it's already late I'm totally slacking--but I have been dismantling a few of my old sweaters for their yarn. One old blue cashmere one (that was drying in the last picture we saw) and one grey one from the Gap. Not quite as beloved a sweater as the red one, but a very nice sweater nonetheless. I got quite a bit of good yarn out of that one.

I'm trying to decide if I want to knit something for the grownup Christmas grab bag at my grandma's. I can never think of anything good to buy for it, and if I knit something, well, I still run the risk that no one will like it, but at least I will have had a good time knitting it. I'm sort of considering making a scarf or stole out of the grey former sweater (the gift is supposed to cost around $30, but hey, anything I make will automatically be worth at least that, so I don't care if I got the yarn for free and have already worn it) or else maybe a pair each of women's and men's fingerless gloves. I feel that my relatives are more likely to wear fingerless gloves than a lace scarf, but who knows, maybe they just need a push into the realm of lace-scarf-wearing. My aunt Ann would probably rock a lace scarf. She's got style. Doesn't have many chances to dress herself up, but when she does, STYLE ATTACK.

Oooh, and I got Wendy Bernard's Custom Knits from the library the other day, and I loves it. It shall be going on my Christmas list.

(Sorry for talking about Christmas so much! Don't worry, I'm not listening to the music.)

my room smells like wet wool.

Because all this stuff is drying.



Note the knitting needles (stuck where a normal person's dresser would have a handle) acting as a drying rack. Go ingenuity!

There's something not fair about needing to wear all your woollies when it gets cold, but since it's cold it takes forever for them to dry. Grr.

I think we all know the drill, but I'm gonna say it anyway.

Butts to the polls, people. It's voting time.