02.13.08
Just Wanna Knit!
Wow, it’s 2:15, but feels like it’s way past 5:00 and way way past “time to go home.” I don’t know why I’ve been so antsy this week! Seriously, if I’m being completely honest, all I want to do right now is knit. Knit, knit, knit, I’m obsessed with it! I have $50 of birthday money to spend on knitting stuff, and I spend many hours each day thinking of how should I spend this precious cash: perhaps a set of interchangeable circular needles? Addi Turbos? some expensive wool for the hat I wanna make for My Chris? Should I buy a yarn bag? I should I just save the money and not buy anything? definitely not that last one…
I kinda want to play sick and leave early, but there’s no way I could bring myself to do that today, I feel too good to pretend to be sick! Even with Aunt Flo the old hag visiting this week I still feel great! Just too antsy to be sitting at work doing endless Expense Reports for my 3 bosses.. (seriously, how do they amass so many receipts in one month? I wish they’d spend less money for my sake. That’s a good enough reason, right? To save their poor Assistant the pain and suffering of entering countless 75-cent toll receipts and expensive donor luncheons at fancy pancake houses, the frustration of finally finishing a report only to have one of them dash in the room saying “don’t press print! I found 5 more stuck in between the seats in my car…” You’d want to spend all day knitting too.
I’ve been spending the afternoon taking note of and bookmarking all of the LYSs in my area. One of my favorite things to do on a Saturday is take and adventurous trip to a random yarn shop in some distant suburb I have not yet visited. Sometime I’ll have to drag Sonja with me to visit the Arcadia Knitting Yarn Shop in downtown Chicago, and any other cool yarn shops down there. Here are some other nice yarn shops in the Suburbs.
I’d Rather Be Knitting – a small shop in historic downtown Long Grove, very cute.
Three Bags Full Knitting Studio – this shop is in what looks like an older two-story house, which makes for a very cozy, appealing venue for those of us knitters who equate knitting with sitting in a warm, homey living room at grandma’s house. A nice selection of yarn too, and I spied a heaping full bargain barrel too.. always nice!
Mosaic Yarn Studio – my favorite shop I’ve been to so far – as a matter of fact, I plan on going there this afternoon on the way to the chiropractor to get my not-broken-neck adjusted. I don’t know why I like the shop so much, it has yarn, needles, patterns, a table to sit at and work and everything else that all yarn shops have, but it just felt so cheery and friendly when I was there last time that I want to keep going back! The place is just packed with yarn too, like I have to be careful with my clumsy self whenever I walk through the store because Im afraid I’m going to knock over a display and send hundreds of dollars worth of fiber cascading to the floor to be trampled in the wintery-mix of slush, ice, salt and mud that graces the floors of all Chicagoland businesses this time of year.
Shops I’ve yet to visit:
Magic Needle, Inc. in Highland Park
The Gifted Purl in West Dundee
Have Ewe Any Wool? in Elmhurst
I think I’m now two-thirds of the way through Sonja’s Plaited Scarf, I can see the speck of light at the end of the dark and dreary cable-knit tunnel! Then I can start on a hat for my Chris. Any suggestions on a pattern for a beanie/hat for a guy who doesn’t like to wear hats normally? Usually store-bought hats don’t look quite right on him, so I told him I’d find a flattering one for him. I’d welcome any pattern/yarn suggestions – preferably a hat that’s not very bulky or thick and that won’t draw unnecessary attention. Unless it’s a gorgeous pattern that he’d WANT attention for!
Only 2 hours to go… grrrr…
02.12.08
WIP updates…
I’m still working on dear-Sonja’s never ending cable-knit scarf. I feel like it gets shorter, rather than longer. After this scarf is finished I will take a hiatus from cables for… a long time. I won’t say forever, because I seem to forget my crafting frustrations/boredom/anguish pretty quickly after they’re over, but right now I’m ready for a cable break.
The scarf is lovely though, and the yarn is so soft and cuddly. Actually, it’s too soft for my tastes – the yarn is Caron “Simply Soft” and I feel like the yarn fluffs and pills too easily – like it’s not twisted tight enough or something. I just don’t like the feel of it while knitting very much.
This weekend while we were on the Senior High Ski Trip to Wisconsin (Yes, that makes two weekends in a row on youth trips. Gah!) I had lots of time to knit, and since I was really tired of the pink scarf I decided to try my hand at hat-making. so I cast-on SnB’s Kitty Hat, and in no-time it was finished! Why couldn’t the scarf go that fast?
I was going to put kitty ears on it, but everyone laughed at me when I said I was going to, so I decided not to. 
I started making pompoms for the stringy thingys, and I got so so so sooo bored with the first pompom that I decided just to plop it on top of the hat and call it quits. I think it’s pretty cute for my first hat!
BUT apparently this hat has to be knitted in the round. I tried knitting it flat and put a seam down the back, and the it resulted in an unsightly bump in the back where the decs on the edge puckered up. Whatever, it wasn’t important enough to me to redo the whole hat. The reason that I didn’t knit it in the round is because my Dear Doggies ATE 3 of my wooden dpns, and chewed up the ends on my aluminum dpns! Yes, they ingested the wooden ones and we found bits of wooden sticks in their poops. So now I have 2 leftover wooden ones and only 1 aluminum one that isn’t chewed up! I could probably find a file at the church to grind down the sharp metal edges on the needles, but it doesn’t seem worth it. I think I’ll just end up buying a new set.
Bad doggies!
01.28.08
Sonja’s Plaited Cable Scarf
Just Knitting Around » Free Pattern Plaited Cable Scarf
I started Sonja’s scarf last night. She found a scarf-sized piece of an afghan I started a while back (and never ever intend to finish) using Caron’s Simply Soft yarn and asked me if she could have it for a scarf. I said “No no no, that’s too ugly to give to my bff! I’ll use the yarn to make you a different scarf, a BETTER scarf!” Besides, it was a lengthwise-worked afghan, and it stretched out to about 7 feet long – not many people need a 7-foot long scarf. And, I needed a project that would teach me how to make cables! I don’t know what I was worried about, it’s a piece of cake. I don’t have a cable needle, but I used a dpn in the beginning and it seemed to work fine. I actually found a technique for cables on just two needles in The Knitting Answer Book, by Margaret Radcliffe. Great book, got it from the library!
Anyway, this is how far I’ve gotten!
