flash your stash is tomorrow. I have not begun taking photos of it (I will tonight). there is no internet at home. therefore, the stash will be flashed a bit belated. but, here’s a few pics to hold you til then:

The Stash Containment Zone. (close ups of some areas/yarns in the gallery)

as for the projects…
sock knitting continues. I’m getting mighty sick of working the foot of my sock (again). I think it’ll be more tolerable in a not solid yarn. stripes and patterns emerging make things less boring.

birthday project is going pretty well. I got all the beads for the first part strung and made it thru almost one repeat of the upper pattern. it’s not travelling, so a bit slow going. pics to come on Monday.

bouyed by this recent surge in the desire to knit socks, I ordered a bunch of the sale sock yarns from Knit Picks. most will be for me (dancing in jig, a few of the memories colors, a pair of the striped ones in blue), but I did get some (not on sale) to make dh’s socks. eventually. in a plain brown yarn (work socks, you know). anyone got a basic manly pattern so I don’t feel the need to impale myself on the dpns while working the foot of a plain-yarned sock?

so, there’s a birthday coming up next month (well, more than one, but I’m only concerning myself with one right now). and I’ve gotten it into my head that I should make this birthday person a pair of socks. (nevermind the fact that I still haven’t finished MY pair of socks that dh is threatening to steal). but b-day person is small, so they should go quick, right? so, Friday after work I’m searching the personal knitting library for appropriately sized socks, since I’m too lazy to call and find out the actual current foot measurements. I was going to do your standard basic pair in some self striping yarn (cuz there’s plenty of it in the stash), when I found the cutest pattern in the 2006 Knitting Pattern a Day calendar. which required I buy some solid machine washable sock yarn and appropriate sized beads. what an adventure.

I found some solid yarns in my stash, but I was worried I wouldn’t have enough (each color is 1 oz, the pattern wants 50 g. and I didn’t want to go the cuffs in color A/feet in color B route). darn, cuz the bead stash contained beads that would have fit on said yarn nicely. hence the requirement to buy yarn & beads.

so dh and I go down to IKEA to buy our sofa (IKEA sent us a coupon. unfortuantely the sofa didn’ t fit in our vehicle, so the coupon paid a good portion of the delivery fee. we’ll have it on Thursday). on the way down, I’m informing dh of every exit which will take me to a yarn shop. I’m surprised he didn’t kick me out of the car (I think we passed exits for 5 shops - not including the southern Mpls ones that I forgot to mention). anywho, I had to stop in St Paul for something, so I convinced him to take me to Three Kittens. happy dance, they had solid machine washable sock yarn. (Dale Baby Ull). (Koigu was tempting me, but I didn’t think it was worth it for a pair of socks likely to be outgrown pretty quick). we did a few more errands, then dropped dh off at The Village in Anoka for his Pirates game. and I went back down to Coon Rapids and hit up JoAnns & Michael’s for beads to match my yarn. bought a few, but it turns out that the “E” beads are too big and the 10/0 seed beads are too small. *sigh* but I did get some swatching done, and I’ve already got the cuff pattern memorized (actually, I had it memorized after 1 test repeat on Friday with the ‘not enough of it’ yarn. had I had needles with me, I could have started swatching while waiting for dh to finish his game). so yeah, more swatching, and I’m still stuck. so Sunday after dance, I raced down to the Mall of America and poked into Bead It! (and the Atlantic something or other bookstore). found the right color beads in the 8/0 size (which is what the pattern recommended). I’m hoping they’ll fit on the yarn. that’s the goal for tonight.

I’m still working on my socks on the bus. almost done with the toe increases. then on to the never ending foot part. I’m so looking forward to that part! lol

gotta go before I miss the bus home… more in the bday sock saga tomorrow (hopefully)

which may or may not be a good thing…

I bought a Bond Sweater Machine thing a couple weeks ago while dh was out of town. I was doing ok with it for a while, but then it kept missing stitches on the ‘cast on’ row, so I haven’t used it for a while. (I’m attempting a baby blanket with some of the random ebay acrylic that’s in the stash).

I’ve also started buying the yarn for the the sweater in KnitSimple. I thought I liked it when I first saw it, and then after seeing Trillian’s Olympic success, decided I definitely wanted to make it. I’m being boring and making it in the blue (cuz it’s more likely to get worn than the other yarn color options).

what else? oh, I scored a large box (think the size that copy paper comes in) of coned yarn at the thrift shop for $5. lots of odds and ends. one rather large cone of (dirty) white acrylic, a rather large cone of a light pink really thin 100% wool, and lots of other stuff that I’m not sure the fiber content or size of cuz the labels aren’t very helpful, fell off, and/or are in weaving terms (size 2/11 type stuff). Thankfully a couple of people on the knittyboards led me to some sites to help decifer all that. Pics to come, probably not til Flash Your Stash day though.

on the knitting front, Eli’s sweater has the shoulders attached and a collar added. I tried attaching the sleeves, but that’s really hard to do while on the bus. so it’s back in project limbo.

the legwarmers are still stalled, thanks to stitches in the ribbing jumping off the needles. too difficult to fix on the bus, so it’s also in project limbo.

I’ve pulled the cat bed sides out again and have been working on it while watching movies/TV. not much progress being made, but it is progress none-the-less.

oh, and since I got frustrated with the above ‘not suitable for the bus at the moment’ projects, I’ve pulled out the socks again. I abandoned left the first sock just above the heel shaping cuz I’m not sure what I want to do for the leg. I figure I’ll sort it out by the time I get the second sock to that point. So I started sock #2 earlier this week. got frustrated with the figure 8 cast on, then realized there was logically only one place to start knitting from. got annoyed at the M1’s cuz they seemed impossible. consulted the pattern - oh, that makes more sense, and resumed happy knitting. got a few rounds into it and decided the holes from the M1’s were bothersome. figured out how to make (twist) them properly and continued on (leaving the holey ones in the earlier knitting). this morning, I pulled out sock #1 for comparison. wow, that’s a lot smaller than the first one. is my gauge off? (it has been 4 months). attempt to count stitches between the two. consult pattern. A-HA! I cast on 12 loops total instead of 12 per needle (24 total). DOH! ripped it out (the M1 holes were bothering me anyways) and cast on the proper number of stitches, making sure to properly twist the M1’s. ah, much better now!

I also swatched the KnitPicks Wool I bought for Samus. I changed my mind - I’ve decided I want to use it for Chic Knits’ TWIST instead. I think the color will suit it better. (and it gives me an excuse to buy more yarn to make Samus at a later time). anywho, I think I’m close to gauge. I have to experiment with the next size needles a bit to be sure though. and then I think I’ll be good and abuse the swatch to be sure all is well. (or so I say now.)

in site news, I’ve updated a bit - adding and deleting pages & categories to reflect the 2006 changes and to clean up that which was getting stale. more updates to come soon, I hope. (like maybe getting the WIPs back in the sidebar. and adding pics.)

I finished another xmas gift hat Saturday night. The Tychus for my sister’s hubby. I only did 4 wedges - apparently I wasn’t thinking about the fact that row gauge was also important in this design, so the hat went quicker than the pattern. (I highly doubt that his head is THAT big that it would have required the final wedge. the hat fits me, and Melanie and I both determined that, per the Yarn Standards, we have man-sized heads. so it should fit him. at any rate, it should stretch.)

now, the goal is to finish Eli’s sweater (that was nearly finished back in August. what have I been doing?) and get everything in the mail. in my great foresight and planning, I aimed to make a sweater size that would fit him around this age - hopefully I chose the larger of the two sizes (the 6-9 mos, not the 3-6 mos) so it still will!

in other news, the Olympic legwarmers are still progressing - I casted on the ribbing for round 3 (legwarmer #1 is being redone so it fits this time) this morning.

oh, and I made dh (not a knitter) read snippets from the Yarn Harlot’s ‘meditations’ book while I was reading it. now that I’ve finished it, he’s actually reading it thru - I swear he was laughing nearly every page last night! (unfortunately, this means he will now be wise to some knitterly secrets. maybe I should take it away from him…)

of some xmas hats and the new Yarn Containment Zone. see the gallery (2005 Christmas Gifts and Other categories - or go to the bottom of the page to see the latest additions)

I’ll get them linked to the earlier postings here soon, as well as adding some Olympic knitting photos.

(In the meantime, I have a bus to catch)