Black Friday Booty

So like a good little American consumer, I ventured forth on Friday in 40 degree weather at 6:05AM to shop. Yes, I went out into the hell that is Black Friday. But it was in the name of fine yarns at a 30% discount, so all was good.

First stop, was Purlescence Yarns. Mmm. Look how happy I am to be shopping for yarn at 6:15AM! This store loooves to stock the sock yarn! (We love stores that stock sock yarn!) Seriously, they're brand new and haven't totally got their inventory solid yet and half their store is Cascade 220 yarns and the other half is sock yarns.

The first haul of the day is some worsted weight sock yarn (yes, how weird is that? fast socks I say!) from Cadenza. This is their colorway 70 raphael.

The next lovely sock yarn is from Lornas Laces, colorway 56 Mt Creek. I'm happy to finally have some LL, I've been hearing so many good things about it.


The final sock yarn from Purlescence is from Claudia Hand Painted yarn, colorway Peony. This stuff is yummy, I think it will feel a lot like my Hill Country Yarns socks.

So on the day before Thanksgiving, my friend Cynthia (the other person in the photo at Purlescence with me) sent me an email about how Knitting Arts in Saratoga was having an after Thanksgiving sale also. And oh, how convenient that their 30% discount window was from 6:30 to 8:30AM! We arrived at 7:30AM and continued our yarning! First up, Koigu KPM sock yarn, colorway 2120. I do already have some Koigu to knit, but that one is variegated so this time I'm going with a solid. It's similar to the Claudia Hand Painted colorway I got but that one is slightly variegated. I think I will use this to make a lacy sock (whenever I figure out what pattern that might be!).

The final sock yarn on the menu from the day is this gorgeous, rich sock yarn from JitterBug. This colorway is jay 85. I love the color of this yarn. I picked it up to look at it and just could not put it down. I may knit with this one next. I am quite enamored with it.


The final yarn purchase of the day was actually NOT sock yarn! (I know, be still DaFawnz, I bought something other than sock yarn.) This is Cascade 220 and it is for the marvelous Drake the Dreaded Dragon backpack pattern from Marnie Maclean. I ask you, how could I NOT buy that pattern?! So freaking cute. I need to get some circular needles before I start this one. I asked Santa to bring me some Knit Picks Options needles. Hopefully, they will make their way into Santa's sleigh! Anyways, I bought 4 colorways for Drake. The green is 8894, the white is 8505, the pink is 7805 and the purple (yes, that is purple. it would not photograph for me!) is 8886. Slightly different colorways than are suggested in the pattern but I think they go together really well. These are really rich colors, I think he will turn out very cute! I got half the yarn at Purlescence and the other half at Knitting Arts. Purlescence didn't have the white and I looked at the green I ultimately bought at Purlescence but I wasn't sold on the color until I saw some different options at Knitting Arts.

That is all the yarn I got for the day. We were wiped out after the shopping, but we sure enjoyed ourselves. Now I just need to stop knitting dishcloths and get back to knitting socks!! (Or Christmas presents. Perhaps those should come next...)

Best comic strip EVER

Thanksgiving Aftermath

So all is well here in the house of Teenuh. I lived through cooking for another Thanksgiving! I did have two last minute runs to the grocery store. The night before Thanksgiving I discovered that the can I thought was pumpkin was not in fact pumpkin. Well, it's classified as pumpkin but it's that pumpkin pie filling crap that tastes bleh. So we had to go get some pumpkin. Then on the day of Thanksgiving, I discovered that I had no more brown sugar with which to candy my yams with (this is a huge crisis, I cannot go through Thanksgiving without my candied yams!! and none of that marshmallow business!) so I made a run to Alberston's again. Speaking of yams, good lord did the Safeway have the biggest freaking yams this year. They had none that were smaller than the size of a football. Take a look!

Normally I can fit like 4 yams in this pan for my Black & Decker countertop oven, but this pan was absolutely refusing to accommodate my third yam. Good grief. At least they cooked up well:

A new addition to my table this year was another of my mother's recipies, the delicious cauliflower in cheese puff. She's made it for quite some time now but I never got the recipe. I had a friend who likes to try to introduce new side dishes at his Thanksgiving meals was asking me for a recipe and for some reason this one popped into my head. Man I am glad it did because it was super yummy!!


I did bake two pumpkin pies and I made cranberry sauce too but I didn't take pictures of either dish. I suppose I could fake it and go take a picture of the full pie that is still left but I don't feel like staging right now. I have company and I think they thought me weird enough for taking a picture of a dishcloth as it is (more on that in a bit).

Last but not least, there was the yummy turkey! It was 19.5 lbs. I think there are probably 15 lbs left I swear. (Ok, maybe not that many pounds but there is a good amount left on that bird still) Mmm. Stuffed to the hilt with my mom's bread stuffing recipe and slathered with olive oil and poultry seasoning. It came out delicious. (Apologies to the vegetarians that might wander on through, I'm not veggie so perhaps you can spend some extra time licking the monitor at the aforementioned cauliflower in cheese puff. It's awesome stuff, I swear. Even with the cauliflower. I'll email the recipe to whomever would like it. Just drop me a line at teenuh at pacbell dot net and I'll pass it on.) Anyways, without further ado, here's the turkey!


And here it all is in their starting positions. Please ignore the crafting supplies off to the side. We'll not be discussing my mess.

Here are my inlaws sitting on the sofa waiting to stuff themselves on dinner. They are visiting for a couple of days from Oregon.

I was kind of tense this week while I was playing my other addiction, World of Warcraft, so I started knitting the mid-month dishcloth from my KAL group. I knew there were bobbles involved in it and I've never done them so I wanted to give them a try. The cloth is a poinsetta and it is hugely long so I followed another knitter's instructions on how she turned her dishcloth into a towel. I'm pleased with the result:


I tried Photoshopping this one to adjust some of the brightness but it didn't totally fix the over exposure. Though it did a nice job of tinting my white satin tablecloth in a green hue. Now that's attractive. I was kind of wondering what to do with this one, I thought I did a good job on it but I didn't know who I would give this one to (or why) but when I flopped it down on the table for people to see, my mother-in-law thought I had given it to her. I was relieved at the pressure being relieved of what to do with it so I just went with it. I'd actually considered it but hadn't decided on it until she was all excited to get it. I think she was jealous that I'd given my father-in-law a dishcloth as his belated birthday present (he got the poppy cloth, I figured it was appropriate since he's a veteran). So it's made out of more Lion Cotton in the same pink that I used for the dress dishcloth. (I think it is Fuchsia but don't hold me to that. I'm feeling lazy and don't want to walk into the other room to get the label)

I did go out on Black Friday to shop. And shop I did. Ouch. Yarn stores with 30% discounts = evil. Mmm I hit two with my friend Cynthia, Purlescence Yarns in Sunnyvale (30% off from 6-7am) and Knitting Arts in Saratoga (30% off from 6:30-8:30am). I will post pics of my loot after the company has left and I don't have to point out directly how much I bought. ^_^

The only black spot in the past two days happened when my beloved Longhorns lost to the asshole Aggies. Man, I dislike them. This year was no different when late in the game, Colt McCoy was hit late in the 4th quarter by Kellen Heard. Thankfully Heard was ejected (and seemed pissed about being ejected, ass) but a couple of plays later Colt was out of the game for good after a hit by Michael Bennett (a low hit to his jaw, no penalty called but I'm trying to take the high road and not get too pissed about it). Sigh. Oh well, I still wore my beautiful Texas orange socks today. Hook 'em Horns. On to their next game. While I would be glad for them to get into the Big 12 championship game, I think it would be better for them to just get Colt healthy for a January 1 bowl game. Ok. Enough football talk for now. ;)

I hope y'all had a great Thanksgiving however you chose to spend it!!

I love love love these socks!!

So it really is the wonderful world of Teenuh today. I have finished my Hook 'em Horns colorway socks and oh man are they wonderful. But I will tend to other business first!

On Friday, I went to the one year anniversary sale for the yarn shop in Los Altos that we saw the Harlot at, Full Thread Ahead with my knitting friend at my client. They were having a sale for 20% off everything in the store plus an additional 10% if you donated a hand knit item for a newborn/preemie or a scarf for the red scarf project or if you donated $5 to a local charity. I found enough goodies that I gladly made my $5 donation to get an additional 10% off my booty which included:

Plymouth Brand Sockotta line yarn in self patterning fair isle colorway number 6669"

I also got some Cherry Tree Hill Supersock yarn in the Northern Lights colorway:

And then the final delicious yarn that I bought was from Interlacements Tiny Toes yarn in color summer fruit #204:


I know I'm a newbie to knitting but the Interlacements yarn had some of the most vivid colorways that I've seen. They were really spectacular, it was so hard to not buy some of every color.

I also got a pair of the clear garden clog shoes that are perfect for showing off your lovely hand knit socks but due to technical issues I didn't snap a pic of them yet with my socks on. I'll do that another time. ;)

Oh I do have another FO to boast about how cute it is completed. I got a link from a member of the dishcloth group that they had found this cute pattern for a dishcloth that looks like a dress. When I was getting ready to put my presents together that I had bought for DaFawnz's DD's birthday I thought that that dishcloth would be a perfect thing to wrap around a bottle of Little Mermaid bubble bath (all the other gifts I had bought her were Little Mermaid themed). I went to WalMart and while they didn't have specific Little Mermaid bubble bath, they did have a really cute bottle of shampoo that was the Disney Princesses and the top to the bottle was a pink crown. So perfect! (Esp since I put a crown inside the birthday card I made) So this is the cute dishcloth:

See?! Such awesomeness. You can't really see the neck of the dress (that I had to single crochet after the knitting was done) but it's a ring basically that connects the two tabs of the top side of the dress. The pattern is from Knit n Sew studio but it is on an archived site here. So cute and extremely easy. The hardest part/most time consuming part of the cloth was the crocheted neck area. It all just coordinated together so well. Very pleased with the outcome of this gift. I think it will be loved by the girly-girly birthday girl!

And now.. at long last! The fabulous socks I knit from the Hill Country Yarns sweet feet sock yarn in the Hook 'em Horns colorway!!!

So so awesome. (Yes, I edited out my gnarly white girl legs and the dirty carpet from the photo. It was late and I just couldn't bear to torment you good people of the internets with that much yuck in one spot. Plus I'm kind of jazzed about matching the background to the orange. lol)

So there you have it. That's the love fest going on in Teenuh land. I put on the socks for the photo and they feel just sooo yummy (mmm 100% merino wool) that I couldn't bear to take them off. I am SO EXCITED that I finished them in time for Friday's big game against the Texas A&M Aggies. I will be proudly wear them and cheer for a Longhorn win that will send them to the Big 12 championship game!! Hook 'em Horns!!

Oh so pretty!

The dishcloth love fest continues!! I am so loving how fast and easy these cloths knit up. The yarn is inexpensive but very pretty and very useful objects come out of my efforts! So much love!

This first cloth I knit for my mom's dear friend that came out to San Jose for a wedding last week. I didn't really have a reason other than I hadn't seen her since my niece got married in 2001 and I knit so I knit for her! I am so in love with this cloth. I paid a whole $2 for the pattern, I am so going to make a million of these for gifts. Another clever knitting project, I just love how the leaves are built up each row.

Pattern is for sale at Rhonda K White's site Knitting Knonsense. The yarn is yummy Lion Cotton in Sherbert Swirl (I love the way Lion Cotton feels, it's my favorite of the three 100% cotton yarns I've used for the dishcloths).

Here's another pattern I bought, this time from Alli and Lisa over at Knitwits Heaven.

This one is a poppy cloth for veterans, but I just thought it was gorgeous the first time I saw a picture posted on my dishcloth group. This one is HUGE compared to the other cloths I've knitted. I think I'm currently out of other dishcloths that I've knit so I can't do a side by side comparison, but the next time I make one I think I'll do a side by side comparison because it's big. The yarn is Sugar 'n Cream in Red (same skein I used to make the football helmet). I ended up with maybe 2 feet of yarn left. I was getting nervous at the end when I saw the dwindling ball, but I'm glad to have used it so efficiently!

I have another cloth I've knit that is nearly done, I have a little bit more finishing work to do on it. I'll post it later this week, maybe this weekend since it's a gift for a young lady whose birthday party is coming up.

Hook 'em Horns sock #2 (even though they suffered loss #2 this past weekend :( ) is now on my needles thanks to a lengthy doctor visit this afternoon. I still need to take a pic of sock #1 but I'm so in love with this yarn. I also have it in a pink/white breast cancer colorway so there will be more lovely socks in my future! (As if there isn't with all the OTHER sock yarn I have queued up!)

Birthday Presents

So the ducky dishcloth here is one that I knit for my great nephew's birthday. The pattern is from Rainky Kimbrough, available here. Yarn on this one is Lion Cotton in Sunflower.



This is the second dishcloth I knit for my great nephew for his birthday. It was designed by Carol Callaway and it's available through her Yahoo group, Knitted Kitty Dishcloths. This one is knit out of Sugar 'n Cream yarn in Red.

This is a dishcloth and hand towel knit out of Lion Cotton in Poppy Red. I really liked the heart pattern on this one. It knit up easily and has a really nice look to it. The pattern for this one is available from Knitting at Knoon Designs and is called "Piece of my Heart". I knit this as a birthday present for my niece.

So I think that is the tour of my knit dishcloths for birthday presents. There is of course the palm tree cloth that I had knit for my sister, but I've already talked about that one here.

I can happily report that all of these gifts were finally sent out on Monday. My mom's answering machine busted and I had the same phone (yay for Sony b-stock sales!) that we weren't using anymore so I sent mine to her so she didn't need to buy a new phone. I tossed the lacy dishcloth in there for her and then I also boxed up my great nephew's birthday presents, my sister's dishcloth and the heart towel/dishcloth for my niece and sent that off to Atlanta. Since my mom told me that she got her box today, I would have to guess that my niece got the box in Atlanta today too. I hope I will hear tomorrow if everyone liked their presents.