Newly released blog!

Hello!  If you have been following me on here, it's time to update your feed!  I'm now to be found at http://norichanknits.com.  Please favorite my page and follow along on my adventures there!  New patterns and whatnot shall be found there.  :o)

Making Do

So, I brought one of my projects to work with me.  It happens to have cables every 4th row, and what did I forget?  My cable needle.  Of course.  *le sigh*  Well, luckily I went searching and found this guy here:

An allen wrench!  Whew!  Saved.  :o)  Unfortunately, this guy had a good number of dents, and it kept grabbing at my yarn (which is a single... yikes!).  But I made it through the work day, and that's what matters.  ;o)

I know at this point, most of you are going to say "you know, you don't need a cable needle to do cables."  And I'd like to say, I do realize that, but I don't enjoy doing cables without a needle.  I did a Koohaus hat entirely without one, and have done other projects without a cable needle, and I can say that I don't enjoy the process anymore and would rather do a project without cables all of a sudden.  The other thing is that I had already started this project with a cable needle, and I find that doing them without the cable needle pulls the yarn a slightly different way and causes the cables to have a slightly different appearance from one another, and my OCD would never let me live with that.  It's part of why I had to continue doing the entire Koolhaus without one.  ;o)

Frogging

Do you remember this from the other day?  Well, it's now just a cake of yarn.  :o(  I managed to make assumptions, and had messed up from step one.  Ok, step 2, because I did do the garter tab beginning correctly.  ;op  

Basically, I was supposed to increase 4 sts every RS row, and 2 sts every WS row.  I glanced at the directions, and missed the whole increase on the WS thing.  I was only increasing on the RS!!  So, by the time I finished 3 lace repeats of 18 rows each... I was off by 108 sts.  >.<  I did the only thing that I could reason.  Frogged the whole thing and put it on hold.  I'm actively working on 5 projects right now (let's not talk about how many UFOs I have)... I think maybe that's too many.  I'm going to put this one on hold until after I finish up a couple others.  Maybe then I will actually read the directions correctly.  ;o)

Strange Breakfasts

So, I had this for breakfast a little ago.  I don't normally eat this sort of thing for breakfast... but I decided to get tested for food allergens/sensitivities.  While I don't think anything is up, I do sometimes get bloated after eating things such as pizza.  I am suspecting either a dairy intolerance or a wheat intolerance (duh...).

Anyways, the test is a saliva test (I spared you any pictures of this), and it tests for 4 things:  egg, cow dairy, wheat, and soy intolerances.  So, I had to be assured that I got all 4 of those things into my diet the same day as the test.  This odd contraption manages 3 out of the 4.  I added soy sauce to my lunch that day.  ;op

It was ok.  The pizza, I mean.  I wouldn't say to run out and immediately go try it out.  But not as terrible as I thought it might have been.  :o)

Silly Kitty, Freezers are for Food

Really, Izi?  She's been trying to explore this space under the freezer for awhile now, actually.  This time she finally figured out how to get under and in, though.  Oh, silly kitty.  

Oh, and for anyone who wonders, those frozen things are from Trader Joes.  Trader Joes has the best frozen Indian meals I've ever had.  ;op

Rose City Yarn Crawl

To those of you who don't know me personally, I once lived in Portland, OR.  I made a lot of friends, and am still friends with a lot of them.  Every year, they have a truly epic yarn crawl involving 15-20 (depending) yarn stores in the area (not all of them are necessarily right in PDX proper, but all fairly close).  I love their yarn crawl.  In fact, it has spoiled me a little in terms of yarn crawls.  When I went on the Central Texas yarn crawl, I was surprised by how far apart all the stores were (seriously, as far as 2.5hrs away from where I lived; which is pretty central to the stores) and you had to pay to be a part of it!!  Oh, and there were about 1/2 the number of stores involved, also... but I do have to admit, you don't expect a ton of yarn stores in Texas.  ;op

In comparison, the furthest store from PDX proper was about 45 min and it's free.  This year (and last year) they have been doing a mystery shawl KAL and CAL.  I didn't partake last year, and while I won't be going on the yarn crawl itself... I decided to join the mystery KAL!  The pre-reqs are two coordinating skeins of fingering weight each roughly 400 yds each.  Here are my two:

I actually already had the pinky-orange variegated in my stash.  It is Abstract Fibers in what they now call Alex (50/50 merino/tencel).  While I had lost the yarn band, I'm fairly certain it's this color based off of pictures.  The blue is by Alexandra's Crafts in Baby Silver Falls (60/30/10 merino/bamboo/nylon; now discontinued) in the colorway "Navy."  I purchased the Alexandra's from my favorite PDX LYS, Pearl Fiber Arts.  The store owner is so nice, and does concierge shopping.  Find Pearl Fiber Arts on Facebook!  It's so easy.  I sent her a picture of my yarn, and told her I was having trouble finding a match b/c of the fiber content.  She looked, and found 4 different appropriate colors, took a picture of them, and let me choose.  Both Alexandra's and Abstract Fibers are local PDX dyers, so I think this will be a very appropriate shawl for the PDX yarn crawl.  If only I could go!  :o)  

Now, Alex used to be called Mighty Sock, and it also used to have 380yds/skein based on research I've done.  I know I have the Mighty Sock instead of the Alex, so I'm a little worried about running out of yarn.  So, I've swapped for smaller needles, and I'm loving the stitch definition I'm getting even out of a variegated yarn!  I think this will work out well:

I've got 2 more repeats of the lace to go, then I will be done with Clue 1, and ready for Clue 2!  :oD

FO: Code: Armonika Cowl

Drumroll please!  Ta-da!  It's all done!  This is January's MegaKAL selection.

My Armonika

Pattern:  Code: Armonika Cowl by Rutast Design

Yarn:  StitchJones Yarnageddon 2012 (?)  500 yds of luscious 50/50 merino silk single ply!!  

I was a little worried as I kept knitting this that it would actually be too long.  In the end, I have a cowl with a circumference of 52" and width of about 9".  I think this is a great size!  With that much width, it needs a bit of extra length to be able to comfortably wrap it around your neck.

  Here you can see it wrapped double.  I think it looks pretty snuggly, if I do say so myself.  :o)

And in this last picture, you can see how much yarn I have leftover.  Tape measure there for size comparison.  I might've gotten another row or two in there, but I was really out of steam by this time.  I had already knit 7 extra repeats (4 rows each, so 28 extra rows past what I wanted to), just to try to use up as much yarn as I could.

I'm going to wrap it up, and save it for Christmas.  I hope the desired recipient is going to like it!  And with this, I'm already done with my first gift of the year!  I always say I'm going to make my gifts early, and not stress in December... every year, I fail and end up making 3 gifts in December.  :op  Let's see how well I prep for this upcoming year.