What I've Been Doing, Part 2

Dead Laptop Screen

My last update was apparently truncated by Blogger. Or it might have been the antiquated G4 I've been using this week since I smashed the screen of the 'good' laptop Monday afternoon (It's being fixed, but can't get back home soon enough!)...who can say. The great thing about this resurrected dinosaur of a laptop is that we've sort of opened a time capsule - all of our favorite websites from four or five years ago! Photos we forgot we had! Silly MP3's we never bothered to put on the new computer's iTunes!

The not-so-great thing, of course, is that the computer is slow as hell, and most of the websites I need to do my job well either don't work at all (this thing doesn't even have OS 10) or are so slow I can make myself lunch while they load. It's better than nothing, though, and I've been able to find some apps for my Android to help fill in the spaces and cobble together some semblance of a work-week.

So what else have I been up to that Blogger apparently doesn't want you to know about?

Let's call it done.

Just yesterday, I bound off for the body of Tyler's sweater - here he is modeling it! I just need to knit the sleeves and he'll be ready for winter. I'm going to be bold (or crazy or stupid - I can't decide really) and attempt to do them two-at-a-time. I've done that many times before for sleeves, but they've never been attached to a big ol sweater. It's either brilliant or a huge disaster, I guess we'll just have to wait and see!

I also dusted off the ol' spinning wheel - I have two projects that have been sitting around, waiting to be plied for the last 4 months to a year. You know it's bad when you're bumbling around, trying to remember how to set everything up! However, I plied both of them and they are so beautiful I want to knit with them immediately. It's also renewed my interest in spinning, and I had a great time digging through my fiber stash - I have some really cool stuff that I completely forgot about! Some mystery fiber I dyed when I was still working at Lorna's Laces....unbelievably soft merino/silk in a lovely natural tan color....some black alpaca fiber I bought at Stitches 3 years ago...1 handpainted Falkland braid and 1 BFL braid I bought at YarnCon last year....yeah, I really need to get back to spinning. It's almost criminal.

I also have three socks going...yes, three. I'm working on the colorwork socks I'd posted about earlier, but needed something to knit on the bus, so I started some ribby socks from Nancy Bush's Vintage Sock book with the yarn I got for free at Stitches. I wasn't super excited about the socks initially - I knit a pair a few years ago, and they were really nice, but I don't tend to knit the same pattern over and over again. Anyway, I wasn't particularly jazzed until I realized the pattern was changing with each color change!
Total dumb luck, of course! Sock # 3 is an emergency test knit for a pal's soon-to-be-released sock pattern.

Finally admitting defeat, I frogged my Koukla Cardigan. There's nothing wrong with the pattern - the instructions (what I knit of them) were easy to follow and made sense. It's a great sweater, too...but for some reason I just wasn't excited about knitting with it, and it's sat at the bottom of my project bin all summer long. I found a different sweater pattern to try once I finish Tyler's - here's hoping I actually finish this one! I also finished a project that's been on the needles since April. I can't give any details because it's a gift, but it turned out much better than I could have ever hoped for!

That should pretty much bring us up to date. *crosses fingers that this post doesn't get mysteriously deleted once I hit 'publish'*

Australian Superfine Merino Yarn Review & Giveaway

After more than ten years of knitting, I can still have new experiences - even with well-covered territory such as merino yarn! This recent merino experience actually took me by surprise: I've spun with it, I've dyed it, I've knit with it, and I've even crocheted with it...I was pretty sure I knew all there was to know about merino! Turns out, there are four different classifications of merino fiber, sorted by micron count range . At the bottom of the spectrum is Strong Merino , which ranges from 26-22.9 microns; above that is Fine Merino , which ranges from 20.1-23 microns; next up is Extra Fine Merino, which ranges from 20-15.6 microns; and at the very top of the heap is Superfine Merino Wool , with a micron range of 18.5-15.6. If you're into numbers and wondering how these four classes stack up against other fibers you may be familiar with, here are a few for comparison's sake: BFL (Blue-Faced Leicester) has a micron range of 24-28, Cashmere goat down ...

App Review & Giveaway: Stash 2 Go

The developers for a paid Ravelry app for iPad and iPhone called Stash 2 Go contacted me earlier this year to see if I was interested in writing a review or their app on their blog. While I don't own an iPad or iPhone, I was able to gift a download to a knitting friend who had an iPad and was willing to let me play around with it for the purposes of this review! This is the first time I've ever accessed Ravelry via an app (on my Android phone, I typically use the m.ravelry.com site), and I found most of it to be easy to use. Some of the features weren’t intuitive to me at first, but once I got the hang of the idiosyncracies, it was smooth sailing. Stash 2 Go makes the most of API functions Ravelry has opened up to developers (there are still several areas which have yet to be completed in the Ravelry programming interface, so developers can only implement what is available through www.ravelry.com/api ). Most of the app's functionality allows the user to view the ...

A Finished Sweater, With Cat Hair

After losing Tilly and Robin within a year of each other, I sure didn't think I'd be finding cat hair in my knitting any time soon. But the universe had other ideas. Over the winter, a white feral cat adopted us. I'd noticed her when we moved into our apartment last summer - I would see her hiding in the bushes or sunning herself in the grass when she thought no one was looking. I assumed she was someone's cat until I realized how skittish she was around humans, plus she had a tipped ear, which is a universal sign that a feral/stray cat has been spayed. Neighbors confirmed that she was a feral kitty (descended from several generations of feral cats, in fact), and that she has survived on her wits and whatever food various residents put out for her. We had some bitterly cold days over the winter, and I just felt so sorry for this poor kitty! I started offering her treats and slowly gained her trust. She didn't even want to come inside our apartment at first, much le...

handmade by stefanie

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