Finally some knitting!

The scarf was a minor distraction, especially since I had a Halloween time crunch with the yarn not arriving until Thursday - my fault for ordering late; KnitPicks has extremely quick delivery. But I've still managed to sneak in another half sock for (I thought the disembodied hand picture was particularly appropriate for Halloween!)
Socktoberfest has been great! I feel like I've been able to "meet" lots of new bloggers and I've seen some fantastic WIPs - quite inspiring. Thanks again to Lolly for starting such a fun and popular (wow - close to 300 knitters?) knit-along.

the BUZZZZZ

And no I'm not referring to my early morning alarm clock. Surprise! Secret Knitting has been going on around here, and this may explain why I've been semi-neglecting Socktoberfest, though I do have a half sock to show later this evening. I'm a Queen Bee:



Scarf: KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in Daffodil and Coal, 1.25 skeins each, so I have enough left over for a coordinating hat! And hey! These just happen to be Hufflepuff colors, so I'll be ready for the next Harry Potter movie :)

Happy Candy and Pumpkins to all! (knitty post later today)

Random Sunday Fun

I've seen this quiz posted on a lot of blogs while clicking around through Lolly's list of Socktoberfest participants (so many great socks and other inspiring projects!). So here you go - back to knitting tomorrow...

Your Aura is Purple Your Personality: You're a dreamer and visionary. You believe you were put on this earth to do something great. You in Love: You're very passionate but often too busy for love. You need a man who sees your vision and adopts it as his own. Your Career: You need a job that helps you make a difference. You have a bright future as a guru, politician, teacher, or musician. What Color Is Your Aura? Take This Quiz :-) Find the Love of Your Life (and More Love Quizzes) at Your New Romance.

ThankYou!

Thanks to everyone who left such sweet (hahaha candy!) comments for me :) I will post contest results tonight and get in touch with the winner to arrange mailing your prize...

Edited to add: So I wrote up all the names of the wonderful contest participants and added them to the mix in Spongebob's pineapple abode (a gift from my SP5!). To ensure complete fairness, Spongebob did the drawing and Patrick served as a witness.

AND THE WINNER IS:

Congratulations, Chris! I hope you will enjoy the yarn and any other treats that sneak their way into your package (cough, Reese's, cough).

Blog-iversary and a Contest

It's hard to believe it's already been a whole year since I started this blog (I know everyone says that, but it's really true). Especially in the last few months it has been so wonderful to have feedback and support from so many other knitters, and I'm looking forward to another year of sharing my projects with all of you and seeing what you all are making :)

As a small token of appreciation (but also just because contests are REALLY FUN), I have a skein of KnitPicks Laceweight in some of my favorite colors that will go to one reader/commenter.
(Everyone say "ooh" and "aah")
It's super easy - just tell me about your favorite Halloween candy in a comment by Midnight on Thursday, and on Friday morning I'll draw from among all the names for a lucky winner. Pass the news on or make the pool small by keeping it to yourself, but in any case thanks so much for being a reader!!

Sock Scrap Swap!

Wow, try saying that ten times fast - yikes!

Anastacia sent me what is basically the motherload of cool sock yarn, and now I am both completely jealous of the neato socks she must have and really excited that I get to make one or two pairs of socks that will look as neat as all hers combined (hahaha)!
We have beautiful blues

KnitPicks fruit-ish colors that I think I'll use first because the orange reminds me of Halloween

And Opal, which I have never used and am really looking forward to trying!

Thanks so much, Anastacia, and thanks to Katie for organizing the swap :)

Girly Toes

I've started using my KnitPicks sock yarn in the Paper Dolls colorway, and I think it's really cute!

The color repeats, aside from the green, are really short, so it will be interesting to see how it looks once I move from the short row toe into the body of the sock fully in the round. I've also chosen a fairly subtle lace pattern for the top of the foot and the leg, so with any luck it will look alright with the variegated yarn. More updates soon - hope everyone is having fun with Socktober!

FO(s) Alert!

Latest

Socks...

Fortissima Colori Socka Color, #9096, a very plain sock pattern of 60 stitches and all stockinette except for a mistake rib cuff (which I'm actually not sure that I like - it's not quite tight enough). I love the color and I think these are going to be perfect Chicago-winter socks - thanks again, Secret Pal!

Remember my secret knitting project? Here is the cute recipient kindly showing off his new scarf... in weather that he tells me is more appropriate for shorts than knitted goods. Oh well, eventually it will be cold even back in California, right?

That's all I've got for today; it's back to the homework pile for me.

Self Portrait Tuesday - Where I've Been

A few places I've been today ...

Progress

While I'm waiting for my onions to sautee (love me some sauteed onions woohoo), thought I'd give a quick update on the Secret Pal yarn socks. They're so close to being finished, but they'll have to wait until tomorrow after I finish up with the rest of this week's assigned readings. Oh, and fun fact that might not be apparent from the picture - the stripes are actually matching up remarkably well, so I may end up with really and truly matching socks :)

Cupcake Day

This awfully sweet guy I know sent me a package, and when I opened it there were CUPCAKES inside! How fun is that? Not only cupcakes, but a whole container of frosting, the kind that comes with its own sprinkles. Needless to say, I made myself a pretty little cupcake and ate it right away. *The picture is pre-eating :)

Oh. And to make the day even better, SocktoberFest is going along swimmingly - I love seeing all the other blogs, especially ogling people's pretty sock yarn haha! Here's some sock progress with yarn from my Secret Pal 6

Extra fun because it almost matches my shoes in the bottom left corner. Okay! That's all for now. I might have to go eat some more cupcakes...

TWO Lucky socks

Plus also some lucky feet!


I'm not sure which stripe patterning I prefer, so I guess it's lucky that I get to keep both :)


Some details:
KnitPicks Sock Memories in Carnival, approx. 2 skeins (though I have some left over)
basic toe-up pattern, short row toes and heels, 3x3 ribbing on top of foot and leg. And sock #2 was a 24 hour sock - woohoo!

SPT - documenting a day

Today...




That is sour apple tea (so delicious!) and the second lucky sock, which will be debuted as an FO tomorrow :)

Knitting Bee?

Wow what an eventful weekend!
First things first - my SecretPal6 sent a fantastic package from Seattle. I'm so excited about all these goodies... little sticky notes that are already marking pages in my reading (200 pp of Weber this week), a sheepy note pad, sweet rubber ducks to jazz up my very plain bathroom, and the cutest halloween bear ever! Ooh and the yarn... this calls for a closeup:
The perfect colors for me, no? The candles are actually from my sister, but the bear needed to be propped up with his little pumpkin belly. There were also new taste sensations included in the package. So looking forward to trying sour apple tea! Who knew? (Imagine that this picture is not sideways....sorry)

Thank you so much Secret Pal! This package made my afternoon :)

I both went to a knitting bee (haha that name makes me laugh) and was a busy knitting bee all weekend. Friday night was Knit Night with the girls from seminary, who are all totally sweet - so glad I got a chance to meet everyone and hang out. I got a huge chunk done on my secret knitting project and actually finished it after a few extra minutes on Saturday morning. I actually blocked it, too - first time blocking anything!!! Here's a hint pic of the unblocked state, in case the recipient happens to check out my blog before the post office delivers his treat.

I'll post pics of the secret surprise in action as soon as I get some.

And my other mini project of the weekend - a shawl/scarf with scraps from secret surprise and some purple yarn also sent by my sister, who is the queen of care packages, I swear! Once I stop being lazy and get the ends woven in, I'll show you what it looks like on.

Finally, all of you should join me and go to Lolly's blog to join in the

de-Capoeira-tation

I wanted to share about a very fun experience I had yesterday evening. It's not about knitting, exactly, but it makes me appreciate knitting in a way I never thought about before.

So I saw a Capoeira (Brazilian cross between dance and martial arts - amazing stuff) demonstration about a week ago at one of those new grad student welcome events "Come drink free drinks! Collect free raffle tickets to try to win free pizzas! Listen to some awesome blues! Oh yeah, and watch these crazy Capoeira people spar with spinning kicks and handstands!" I was thoroughly impressed and thought to myself, "Self, I bet you would really like to try that." I was so convincing that last night I went to my first class, right on campus, a mere half mile walk from my apartment (this particular half mile walk comes into play later, so don't forget).

I put on some comfortable workout clothes, remembered to reinforce my outfit with an extra swipe of deodorant, pinned my dumb old growing-out bangs back, and spent the next two hours in a complete haze of kicking, ducking, blocking, doing cartwheels, attempting one move that sounded like it was called "mauna loa in the fridge" but that felt more like "spin around and kick your leg above your head over and over until it feels like your leg weighs as much as a fridge", trying to bend over totally backwards into that scary pose the girl uses to crawl down the stairs in the (new) exorcist, losing buckets of sweat, and turning my left butt cheek into a useless mass of jelloid muscle. They need to change the name of this stuff from Capoeira to de-Capoeira-tation, because it makes you feel like your head and various other body parts are about to fall off.

So at the end of the two hours, most of which are actually a blur this morning, I paid my eight dollars and started to walk home. Except that when your left butt cheek is made of jello, walking is not exactly the correct term to use. It was really more like limping home. And that measly little half mile seemed a lot more like a 6 mile hike than a 6 block stroll. Since it was dark out, too, and the school keeps trying to warn us about personal safety, I was of course freaking myself out a little bit about the possibility of being mugged. If anyone had approached me, I'm pretty sure I would have fallen to the ground blubbering something about "no more high kicks, please!" since I would have been unable to actually perform any of the evasive maneuvers I had just been taught because, that's right, my legs don't want to bend anymore!

Today I am still having trouble with that whole walking thing, and I have basically decided that I can be perfectly happy for the rest of my life if I never do Capoeira again, even though I am very glad I was brave enough to try it. Perhaps the handstand kicking is just not for me? I think I'll stick to running 4 miles 3-4 times a week, since that actually makes me feel energized instead of burnt, or dead.

Here is the part about the knitting. After careful consideration, I have come to realize that if I really need self-defense I can just pull those pointy pointy dpns out of my backpack. Besides, the only way knitting can negatively impact my left butt cheek is if I happen to sit on a stray knitting needle!!

Am I Now?

You are Merino Wool.


I'm working on 2 secret projects at the moment, one of which will hopefully get a large chunk done tomorrow on my free Thursday. So I have no pictures of my knitting to show today... I'll get Lucky's sister started soon, though!

SPT Little Miss Reads-a-Lot

Another Self-Portrait Tuesday...

So I'm slowly getting readjusted to this whole homework thing.

And the self-timer function on my camera. Woohoo!

Success!

Lucky is now a finished sock -

no second half of the pair, but I think she is doing okay because at the moment she is still probably under the delusion that she gets to remain matched up with the infamous Celebrity Sock!
Now all you bloggers know you recognize the amazing handiwork of this lovely lady. Do not be distracted by the gorgeous Arcadia yarn, the Yarn Harlot herself is hiding somewhere in this picture!
Stephanie was hysterical in person, and I was so excited to pop over to her blog this morning and see that picture of Weenie-Man's feet and realize that I actually got to HEAR that story! Now I can imagine her wonderfully sarcastic humor every time I read new entries - and I've already laughed my way through my new copy of At Knit's End (hooray!). I have to say, Steph, being a new L-rider myself, it was nice to know that sometimes I may even get to run into people who smell like waffles instead of just people who may have taken just a little bit much of some woohoo drug before coming on the train (this may be slightly distracting to your average rider, but knitting can absorb one's attention so successfully, that I think we may be partially immune to uncomfortabe situations).

I DID meet someone nice on the L! Melissa, over at http://www.empusa.net/rkm/ , not surprisingly ended up on the same bus back to the campus area as well, and I'm so happy to have found my first truly local knitter here in a new city. M, you'll definitely have to show me what you end up making with your fabulous yarn selections!

To sum it up, Saturday was a complete success. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go prance around my room for a minute wearing a single Lucky sock, basking in the glory of my brief brush with knitting fame!

The Story of Lucky Sock

Once upon a time there was a very lucky little sock. Actually, at first she wasn't even a sock. She was just a skein of yarn that came in the mail from the BEST yarn company ever. So little lucky skein sat on a shelf for about a week, while Allison let herself be distracted by reading 400 pages of Durkheim. The lucky skein noticed that Allison's set-up for doing all that reading was actually more conducive to napping, but the lucky skein was very polite, and didn't point that out.
Lucky skein and her sister (not-so-lucky-yet skein) got wound into balls, since they were so patient while all that reading went on. Last night the lucky little sock was born. Why is Lucky so lucky? Because she gets to accompany Allison downtown to Arcadia Knitting for a big Chicago adventure, which may involve meeting a certain celebrity sock and having her portrait taken with said famous sock... Can't you tell we're both super excited?!!!
Details tonight!