Oh B-have!

It's Been over a week since I last posted (I am a Bad Blogger). Tomorrow is the deadline for my B themed post, and even though tomorrow will be spent at the Better Breathing conference, Blog fodder will be lacking. But I do have a photo of Big trees against a Blue sky. Speaking of Blue skies: My knittyBoard secret pal sent me some Beautiful green alpaca yarn (Blue sky alpaca Brand)! And here's the latest pair of socks that I completed - das Boot/Blueberry apricot. Yes, I am such an overachiever that rather than develop Second Sock Syndrome, I will soon Be in the throes of Third and Fourth Sock Syndrome. But I will Be working on socks 3 and 4, Because socks are much more portable than the sleeves of my Brooklyn tweed scarf inspired lines in the sand sweater - Besides, having to untangle the skeins at the Beginning of each round makes for Brain-numBingly slow progress.

Socks on a Plane

I'm back in BC for a week - we are taking a ski vacation. Big White was our "local" ski hill before we moved. As I was packing for the trip, I realized that there are some things about living in Kelowna that I really do miss - like having a cross country ski club and trails 25 minutes away, and a ski hill was 60 minutes away. Now they are a 4.5 hour flight away... On the flight over here, I had 2 different plane knitting projects: The Das Boot Socks I am knitting for The Gambler. This yarn is annoyingly splitty, but for the most part I was able successfully watch a subtitled movie on my in-seat-TV while I knit it. I also cast on for another pair of socks for me: Socks being knit out of Blueberries and Apricots by Seacoast Handpainted. This was the "podcast" knitting. It started out being knit in a pattern from a UK knitting magazine that The Gambler gave me for Christmas (he's so awesome - tracking down an imported knitting magazine for me!), but I realized after knitting a few inches that there was absolutely no pooling on the 2x2 rib cuff: ..but once I started adding in some slip stitches, the colours started to pool into thick spiral-type stripes. I often get that kind of pooling because I have to cast on extra stitches for socks to accomodate my large feet, so I decided to rip back, and just knit it in 2x2 rib, and save the stitch pattern for a sock yarn that was already pooling. Sorry - no photos of the pooling sock: once I decided to rip back, I did it right away before my resolve weakened. I of course packed several knitting projects for the trip - which is a good thing, because it looks like there is going to be a cold snap for the next few days. Which made this an excellent time for me to finish this: Antifreeze from knitty, or, as I have christened it, Antifrostbite. It had been sitting in a UFO pile for, well, almost a year now. I actually would have finished it last year, but I made some modifications on the face portion that didn't work, and I had to rip it back, and then last year's January cold snap had passed, and we headed to Toronto/Chicago for 10 days, etc. I still had to rip back a few times yesterday when I was finishing this, because I made some modifications that didn't work out well - I was paranoid that it wouldn't cover my entire nose, or that the face opening would be too big, and of course the opening ended up being too small. In the end, I added some extra short rows, and then did a garter stitch/EZ sewn bind off instead of the crochet trim as called for in the pattern. I'm going to wear it today: it's -10 Celcius, and it's going to be windy.

I dream of Ravelry

I am not someone who remembers dreams well - within a few minutes of waking, they have pretty well left my mind. However, the other day, I distinctly remember dreaming that I had 57 yarns stashed, and that I just needed to enter another 3 yarns in order for my stash to automatically be uploaded somewhere else. Yes, when my mind has completely free reign of topics to indulge in, it chooses knitting related internet activities. It could be worse - it could have been a medical dream. I've wasted many a good REM phase on those before. Somerset dreams of being in pictures: Here she is "helping" me photograph another WIP:Das Boot Socks. These are socks for The Gambler. The yarn is Lana Grossa Mega Boots Stretch that I picked up in Nurnberg. I started them last weekend because I needed wanted to have something to knit while we were driving to see various members of The Gambler's family. They are now my official purse knitting - came in handy when I had to wait for my number to be called when I went to apply for my provincial health card. And this is my newest WIP - Ella from knitty. That rayon/silk cone yarn just wouldn't shut up. This is my very first lace project. Up until recently, I had no interest in knitting lace, and may have at one point declared that I would never knit lace. Lifelines and p5togs - ick. No way, not my thing at all. So I have officially christened this project Ella Freezes Over. Actually, after knitting 2 dozen rows of Ella, I thought that I should instead knit a Tuscany Shawl, since Ella is written for worsted weight yarn. So I frogged it, and started knitting Tuscany. Then I got totally screwed up on row 8, thought that there was an error in the pattern, tried to knit it as I thought it was supposed to be knit, and row 9 totally didn't work, searched the web for any pattern errata, and then gave up. So Ella it is. Which works better when it comes to a project name, because I'm all about the apt, yet amusing project names. Gotta do something to try and build a readership.