Poor Sad Doggy

I am sorry but when I got the latest Lion Brand Yarn newsletter in my email on Friday, I died laughing at this picture:
Poor little dog. He just has this look on his face like "Would you get me out of this ridiculous ass dog sweater already?!"

Yarn Pr0n Monday, Vol 2

Mmm I didn't think I would have yarn to splash today but thankfully Knit Picks helped with that over the weekend when my order arrived on my doorstep!

It wouldn't be an order if there wasn't sock yarn involved. This is their Memories yarn in the Pansy color. This is really pretty. I can't wait to see it knit up. It feels pretty nice too. Sadly, it is hand wash only so I have another pair I will have to wash in Woolite. (Though, the good thing is that these will likely be made into socks for me, since I doubt that I would inflict my family with hand wash socks... Although I could possibly do that to my mom, although I take the risk of her forgetting and tossing them in the wash. Perhaps it will have to be superwash for her after all.)


I was the model of self restraint and just bought two sets of yarn with this order. The second is their Wool of the Andes Bulky hand dye in their Impatiens colorway. I bought this to make the felted pattern Hot Out of the Oven that is free on the Knit Picks site.

I was tempted to buy more of this yarn in the Spumoni colorway, it looks so cool in the pattern photos. I, however, was the model of restraint and only bought the Impatiens colorway. I am sure that the Spumoni color will end up in my basket if I need to pad my shopping basket to $45.

These were just two yarns that I had wanted for some time, I had no need to pad this order since I purchased my Knit Picks Options circular knitting needle set. I've been giving Santa a really hard time about not purchasing these for me for Christmas, but I've finally decided to lay off the guilt and finally just buckle down and buy them. I am pretty excited about having them at last. I think that their first usage will come when I am getting to finally knitting the body of the 5 hour sweater. (Which I need to hurry the hell up and knit, February 1st is coming up at an alarming pace)

Also on the knitting front, I have finally finished the last pattern repeat of the Paris Whiskers & Paw Prints socks. I am working on the picot cuff and should be done with them shortly. I just have to stop playing World of Warcraft:The Burning Crusade long enough to get in some knitting time. (I love their little flash intro that is launched here.)

At any rate, it's time to get some rest. I've been staying up far too late playing WoW!!

Introducing "The Crazies"

Here they are! These are my two Roborovski hamsters. Aren't they the cutest?! Man do they have a lot of energy, they run and run like mad in their wheels (there is a second one on the left side of their cage attached to the outside). I am so happy we got these little ones, they are hilarious!!

Work In Progress

Just a quickie post here to prove this is really a knitting blog and not a yarn buyer blog!

I am working on a 5 Hr Baby Sweater for my niece who is being induced on February 1st. This is the boy variation of the sweater that eliminates the lace holes in the sweater. I'm getting ready to work on my first sleeve, I'll add some varigated yarn at the cuff like in the pattern photo and then I'll do most of the body of the sweater with the varigated and then pick up the blue at the bottom.

I am also going to make a hat I think, though I don't think I am going to make the bonnet that is on the 5 Hour Baby Sweater page, I will probably make it a basic stockinette hat. Booties too, probably go with something basic since the other slippers are pretty girly too and the stitch pattern goes more with the regular sweater rather than the one I'm knitting.

Also still in progress are the Whiskers and Paw Prints socks in the Yarn Pirate Paris color. I'm almost done with the first one, I just have one pattern repeat to finish and then it's time for the picot cuff. Hopefully I'll finish these before my mother-in-law turns 63.


That's it for now. I may start knitting the mid-month dishcloth KAL pattern, it has cables this time and I think it would be a good one for me to practice cables on!

Yarn Pr0n Monday~!

Sigh. I started this and then Firefox decided to crash and burn on me. Hopefully this time I'll be successful. So I've decided to not wait to have a sock yarn pr0n Friday, I moved it up to Monday! First up, the delinquent photos of my purchases from Knitting Arts in Saratoga from last week. This is my Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in colorway 222 Sweetie. So gorgeous:

Next up is Filatura Di Crosa Baby for Tahki Stacy Charles in colorway 407. (Quick, alert the media, I bought something other than sock yarn!)


This is going to be used to make a pair of Fetching fingerless gloves for a friend's daughter.

On the day that I went to KA, I got my January sock yarn from Posh Yarn. Mmm posh indeed. This is their Lucia sock yarn in Twinkle:

Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of finally heading over to the OCK's house to dye some of the Knit Picks undyed superwash sock yarn! I dyed one batch in a rainbow colorway and the second batch was a hand paint in a mixture of red/orange/yellow. Man does this stuff still smell yummy:

I may just have to ball one or both of these up soon and knit a swatch to see what I get. It's so pretty. More pix to come I'm sure as the day was documented!

So then today while I was on my way back from getting my car repaired (after the bill I am convinced that the damn thing knows that it is now paid off), I decided to pop on into Full Thread Ahead in Los Altos on my way home. I was too enthralled by the fact that they had Fleece Artist in stock. (Though I just looked at their webpage and wow did they have a lot of Fleece Artist when it came in! They're down to under 20 skeins now I'm sure.)

First up from my FTA haul then is the Fleece Artist. This is the Nova Socks Kit in the colorway Blue Lagoon:

I think my favorite thing about this is the lovely variegation this yarn gets. It is random splotches of color without a big pooling effect. Very nice.

I also picked up a skein of Cherry Tree Hill's Glitz Supersock in the colorway Life's a Beach:



Very very nice shades of green/turquoise/mustard yellow. This one should be divine to knit with. Cherry Tree Hill has discontinued all of their non-sock yarn merino wool yarns so that they can devote their entire merino wool supply to their sock yarns. Nice to know (I'm a selfish sock yarn hoarder, what can I say) but it is a bit sad because they really do make some beautiful yarn.

My last purchase is actually a kind of amusing one. I totally forgot that my friend Cynthia sent me a link to this yarn and I thought "Oh yuck, shrimp and crab shell chitin!!" and then when I got home, I remembered that the whole "chitin" thing on the label was this stuff. haha So it doesn't feel grody at all, and according to their page on this stuff, they say that because of the chitin, it's naturally anti-bacterial. Yipee. (but still, seriously.. eww.) So this is SWTC Tofutsies (Toe-foot-sies!) in colorway 723 Put Your Foot Down. Pretty fine stuff, this one is gonna be on US 1 needles I think.


I am very happy. Some super lovely sock yarn is now in my hot little hands. Though I am sure it's not the last since I kind of-sort of paid for my Socks that Rock Club membership last week.. (I need to do the opposite of Wendy's 2007 Knit from your stash club and not buy any sock yarn for quite some time... on her stash knit, she has the clause that sock yarn is able to still be purchased because it is sock yarn.. I think I need a clause that I can buy any yarn as long as it ISN'T sock yarn! Though, I don't post the pics of my cotton yarns. I am quite enamored of them as well, though most of them are a few bux compared to the $12-20 the sock yarns run!)

It is now late o'clock and I need to get to sleep. Morning is going to come too fast!!

New Hamsters!

So our home is no longer without hamsters! We went out last night and got TWO new hamsters! The one pictured here is the long haired Syrian. She is similar in color to Rocket with long hair like Hammy. Very cute. Our second hamster is a Roborovski hamster. She is pure trouble! We were trying to put her in her cage and she exploded out of the box/hands/desk and wound up on the floor! We spent ~45 minutes trying to catch her and eventually found her under a bookcase and got her into a cup and back into captivity.

More pics later, possibly a film of the Robo since she's so fast, I don't quite know how otherwise I'll get a pic of her!!

Lazy Update

Ok, this is the quick and dirty updating post, I have been busy for a few days and haven't had time to take pics of my new yarn acquisitions so I found some photos of what I got. (I love the internet!)

First up we have a photo of the first sock yarn from my sock yarn of the month club from Posh Yarns in the UK. This is their Lucia sock yarn, which is 30% cashmere and 70% merino. Yum. The colorway is Twinkle. Very nice stuff, I am looking forward to having socks with cashmere! What a nice way to start off my week with this package:

Also on Monday, I headed over to Knitting Arts in Saratoga and I was shopping for some worsted weight yarn to make a pair of the Fetching fingerless gloves for a friend's daughter. I found what I wanted (it's 50% merino/50% acrylic I think, I'll post a pic of it too later...) and then with the 20% sale going on I couldn't help myself and I ended up getting more Lorna's Laces Sheperd sock in the Sweetie colorway (I loved the name, I am weak for cute things):

Mmm. So much sock yarn, so little time.

I am making good progress on my YP Paris Whiskers and Paw Prints sock. My mother-in-law's birthday has already come and gone, but I will get it to her as soon as I can. Although it suddenly dawned on me yesterday that if I am going to knit something for my niece's new baby, I need to get hopping as she just told me this week that she is being induced on February first!! (well, other than the Fran's Baby Sweater I finally finished.. that's on the slate to be photographed as well..) I bought some boy colored Cotton Tots ages ago to turn into some baby gear for her, I will have to bust it out and get going. I think it's time for more 5 hour baby sweater goodness, I am going to try a variation on it, someone changed the lacy panel part to be solid so that it is more boyish than the original.

Real pics will come later, I swear... hopefully of a new hamster too, we will probably get a new one this Friday after work. Likely a teddy bear hamster this time, we liked the Rocket's Syrian reddish color but we missed Hammy's fluffiness. We had seen a black/white teddy bear hamster when we got Rocket that we were interested, but when we went back it had been removed from the cage because it had wet tail. So maybe a black/white teddy bear hamster will be purchased! We're also talking about getting a Roborvoski (I think that's how you spell it) hamster, they are so deliciously cute and tiny (they are a dwarf variety).

RIP Rocket Dec 2005 - Jan 2007

OMG How Cute!!

Dude, so seriously cute!! And two of my favorite things in one! A hamster and knitting!

I hate it when vacation ends...

Dude, it's almost 1am and I wanted to be to work in like 7 hours. :( This seriously sucks!!

Happy New Year!

So here is 2007. I'm still wondering where 2006 went! I suppose I lost one third of my year to endless hours at my former employer, but the time since I left them has really flown by as well. Though I have enjoyed the time much more at my new-old job than I did at the company I left.

My new camera is awesome. I just transferred my first photos from it to my PC and it went really easily. The USB cable transfer rate is actually much faster than I expected, so I may not go out and get a card reader for the new camera. (Which is by the way a Nikon COOLPIX 8700...what a name for a camera, eh?) I guess it could get slower to transfer photos if I'm moving more than like 10 at a time, so I will have to see how fast they move when I get to taking a large quantity of photos at once.

One of the first real photos I took with it was of the dishcloth that I gave to my favorite knitter:


The pattern is the Lacy Round dishcloth from my Dishcloth Knitting group, it was the March 2006 mid-month KAL pattern. It was designed by Rhonda K White at Knitting Knonsense. She also has this pattern on her website here. The yarn is Peaches 'n Creme in Peppermint.

I also took a picture of some Lang Jawoll Cotton that I ordered from the Simply Socks Yarn Company just after Christmas. They sent it out lickety split and I am looking forward to making some socks with this yarn:

The colorway is number 174 and it is 49% superwash wool, 35% cotton and 16% polyamide. It feels pretty nice, I am tempted to knit a swatch just to see how it feels as a finished cloth and how the pattern looks in person (though the Simply Socks folks have a photo of it in the listing here). Also from this store I purchased a set of Addi Turbo DPN's. I neglected to really read the listing when I purchased these needles, but they came with the CUTEST bear needle huggers that are used to keep your DPN's together. I am really enjoying using them, they are keeping my sock in progress sturdily on the needles between knitting.

I am knitting another pair of the whiskers and paw prints socks for my mother-in-law's birthday. I am just about to turn the heel on the first sock, so conceivably if I don't screw around too much tonight, I could just about have the sock done. Although unlikely, I will give it a go. I will also doubtfully have these socks done in time for her birthday, but I will give it a go. I am sure that she will forgive me as soon as the socks arrive in the mail. The Yarn Pirate sock yarn (in the Paris colorway) is knitting up nicely, it is appearing to be self striping yarn now that I'm a bit up the foot as evidenced in these photos:


The way that the yarn is striping is reminding me very much of my Texas Longhorn sock yarn. (Aren't the bears just freaking adorable?) I am still digging this pattern. Since I just finished the other pair of socks, I still have the chart memorized so I don't have to go looking at any pesky scraps of paper. I found out that while my mother-in-law has smaller feet than me (8.5-9 vs 10), she has wide feet so I'm keeping the sock at the same stitch count as mine was, I'm just going to make it either a full repeat or half a chart repeat shorter (I have to get out my tape measure and see how long they are now).

I will end by saying I hope that everyone had a nice holiday season and best wishes for a great 2007. No resolutions here, though there are a few things that I would like to do this year and I am trying to have enough faith that I will be able to attain them before I lose hope of ever achieving these goals.

Oh, last but not least.. happy 18th birthday to my cat Bratty!!