Gothic Spire socks After finishing Bob’s socks, I IMMEDIATELY cast on the Gothic Spire socks by cookie. I’m using Wollmeise sock yarn in Gewitterhimmel colorway. It’s going v.e.r.y. s.l.o.w. There’s these weird wrappings around stitches that I think I’m pulling too tight. This is for my secret pal, I sure do hope it fits. I have a hard time figuring out what size to make. I had her measure her foot and I just subtracted 1 in off her foot circumference. But then they had a leg circumference measurement which kind of confused me because what if one measurement fits but the other doesn’t? There’s nothing you can really do I guess, except maybe increase needle size or something. If anyone has a “rule” they use for choosing sock size for knitting a sock for someone other than yourself (and they can’t try it on), please let me know!!!

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Boyfriend Socks for Bob My first custom sock wrapper Finally done with Bob’s boyfriend socks made with Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Baltic Sea colorway! It took 10 days. He wanted the socks to be mid calf, so I made it a little longer than normal. Don’t know why since he says he scrunches it down to his ankles anyway. But here it is ready to be shipped of to him on Monday. I also made my first custom sock wrapper.

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Piece of Beauty yarn in Dark Matter and October Day colorways

Sushi kit from Pick up Sticks

Felting patterns from Pick up Sticks

I got more yarn from Piece of Beauty. Yeah, I know. I’m terrible! The yarn is on the expensive end but it is oh so soft! I also got some new felting patterns to try from Pick up Sticks. I also bought some sock yarn on ebay and wasn’t too thrilled about it. The colors were blah and the yarn itself wasn’t all that great.

I am still working on Bob’s socks, it’s coming along. I’m done with one side and almost done with the other (just the cuff left!). I should be done with it in a couple of days. My next project will be the Gothic Spire socks from CookieA. I broke down and bought the pattern. I’m going to knit it for my Secret Pal. I had problems printing it out so I emailed cookie and actually got a response from her! I thought I would get a generic email or from an assistant or something. She was really nice and it turned out that something is wrong with my Adobe Reader on that machine because I tried it on another machine and it worked fine. I told her that she needs to come to Europe to do a sock design workshop. That would be a dream come true!

I also decided to knit things for charity this year. So my goal this year will be to knit 5 caps for chemo patients in honor of my cousin Lynn, 5 preemie hats/booties/socks in honor of my boys being preemies themselves, and 5 helmet liners or socks for the military. I think this will be very rewarding for me and make me feel like there are people out there who really NEED it. The only bad thing is that I can’t just knit whatever, there are very specific details - like baby stuff should be made out of cotton or acrylic (oi!), the military things need to be in black/camo type colors and also very superwashable, none of this fancy schmancy yarn that I like, and the chemo patients need things to be really soft (again cotton or acrylic) using patterns with no holes.

So that’s all the news fit to print for now.

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Finally blocked this scarf! I put this off for so long and I had a debacle getting something to block this scarf with. So what I ended up doing was getting it wet, laying it on the floor and just flattening it out. The whites don’t seem to be so white anymore after washing, but it’s ok. This is a light enough scarf I can wear in the spring.

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Like the pooling? A dear friend of mine in Seattle has a birthday coming up and I decided to knit him socks. This will be the first time I’m knitting socks for someone other than me or Michael. I didn’t want to do plain socks, but didn’t want it to be overly flashy. There isn’t a whole lot of selection for men’s socks. Why can’t men wear lace patterns??? So I opted for the boyfriend sock that I last knitted for Michael. It was between that and the Bavarian Twisted Stitch, but the BTS would’ve taken a lot longer. He said that he likes olive and tan colors, so this was the closest that I had to that. It is Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Baltic Sea colorway. The pinkish color comes out more than I would like and there’s some interesting swirly pooling going on. I hope that he’ll like it. He promised that no matter how hideous he thinks it is he’ll wear it and I will also make him take “Seattley” pictures with it (since he’s also a photographer). Maybe even a whole collage around it. Heh.

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Booga bag #1 pre-felt Booga bag #2 pre-felt Well, I scoured the internets to find information about felting in a front loader. It was a little surprising at how hard it was to find detailed information. Or maybe I’m just an idiot. Everyone made it seem like it was not possible or extremely hard to do. For my first bag, I threw it in the wash in a zippered pillowcase along with one of those color catcher deals. Then I also put in 2 pairs of jeans. Since everyone was saying that they had to put it through several wash cycles, I set the wash to the maximum temp (90 deg. c) and max time and let it rip. I also had our water cooker and added a couple of liters of boiling water while it was going. I put the water in by opening the detergent drawer and just pouring it in there. I also put in about a 1/2 cap of Woolite. Once it was just about to start spinning, I turned the knob to drain the water and checked the progress. It felted TOO MUCH! I don’t think I’ve read about this happening, everyone always said you need to put it through 4 or 5 times. Maybe it was the yarn I used? Or maybe European washers are different than the US ones. The bag even fused together and I had to pull it apart. There are a few lines/creases that was created because it felted too much and I’m kind of peeved about that. It rolled itself up into a ball and stayed that way. But it’s still a cute bag. IMHO. I am blocking it using Harry Potter 4 & 5 hardcovers. Hand felting in the sink Blocking The second bag (same bag, different yarn), I decided to hand felt to see how hard it is and the differences between the two. Also, Noro is more expensive than the Wollmeise yarn, so I wanted to have more control over the process. I got my water cooker, some gloves, woolite and did it in the sink. I followed the instructions from here. I think it turned out really well, I may put a cardboard covered in fabric on the bottom so that it keeps it’s bag shape when in use. Noro felts really easily, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have sore arms! I think I will embellish it a little with embroidery along the edge and maybe a leaf on the front? Never embroidered before, but it seems like it will make it more complete. It is now being blocked using “Programming Windows” and “Abstract Data Types”. Over felted Almost finished, just need to attach the handles Finished Booga bag #2

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I forgot to mention that Secret Pal 10 is underway and I’ve heard from both my upstream and downstream pals. I am really excited and revved up for this one and I will spoil my SP rotten! My downstream pal (the person I’m sending stuff to) might be a little disappointed that she received someone from the same country as herself, so I’m trying to make my packages as international as possible. It’s a bit of a bummer that I can’t really post about the projects that I’m making for her (or the stuff that I’m going to send). And it’s hard for me to not sign my emails with my name. I know it will slip sometime soon. Of course, she may not “search” for me, so it might not matter. I try to keep myself in the dark about who is spoiling me because I think it makes it that much better to receive things from someone you don’t know. And then at the end to find out who it is, is really fun. This is only my 2nd secret pal, but I would like to do these all the time.

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Yarn for felting projects

OK, this yarn acquisition is bordering on crazy. I am obsessed with felting now and want to make lots of cute bags. So of course I had to get some Lamb’s Pride to try my hand as well as some patterns. I always wanted to make the Fiber Trends’ clogs and I love these little cute gelato bags. We’ll see how it goes in the front loader.

A couple of days ago, I decided to make my SP10 a booga bag using Wollmeise’s worsted weight yarn in Amazonas colorway. It knitted up really nicely, let’s hope