Knit Intensive Week

Wow, last week was the most knitting focused week I've ever had, except when I've gone on knitting related trips.

Thursday night I was lucky enough to see the Yarn Harlot speak at St. Thomas. It was a dreadful day - snowing and cold and dreary. In April I've had enough winter and I hate to see snow. If it was just me, I probably would have skipped it altogether. But I was going with friends and we were driving together, so I decided to be a good Minnesotan again and venture forth. I'm so glad I did. I'm so behind in my blog reading that I haven't read the Harlot's blog in months, but she's still in fine form. Hilarious thoughts about how the rest of the world views us knitters and how much we benefit from this crazy knitting-obsessed lifestyle. After the talk a few of us went over to the Chatterbox Pub for more knitting and music bingo - so much fun.

Even though we were all super tired from our evening the night before, we ventured forth again on Friday for Stitch, Bitch 'N Die, Joseph Scrimshaw's latest production at Bryant Lake Bowl. I've mentioned on this blog numerous times how much I love Joseph, so it's probably not hard to predict what I thought of the show. It's a comedic murder mystery in which all of the suspects are the members of a knitting group. Seeing two of my worlds collide like that was fantastic and I thought the play was hilarious - and somewhat insightful of knitting groups, believe it or not. It's playing this weekend and next weekend again, so as always, I suggest you check it out.

As if all of that knitting fun wasn't enough, Saturday was the annual Minnesota Knitter's Guild Yarnover. I had a conflict on that day last year and skipped it and I forgot how much fun it is. It's just great to see a bunch of your knitting friends all in one place. And of course there's the market. I managed to kind of restrain myself. Sort of.

I took two classes. The morning class was Twined Knitting with Beth Brown-Reinsel. I really didn't know much about what this technique was, but I wanted to take a class with Beth Brown-Reinsel, so I signed up. I'm so glad I did - I love it! Twined knitting is a Swedish technique where you knit from both ends of a ball of yarn, alternating which end you knit with each stitch. It creates a fabric that is very thick and cushy and warm and you can make lovely textured patterns. One layer of stitches can sort of sit on top of the other layer of yarn, making it look very three-dimensional. I think it's lovely and I loved the technique. We started a sampler wrister in the class:



I finished up the wrister at home and I'll definitely be making the other one and trying this technique again in the future.

The afternoon class I took was a Beaded Knitting Bracelet class with Lucy Neatby. I've done a lot of beaded knitting before, but again, I just wanted to take a class with Lucy Neatby and of course I love beaded knitting, so there you go. I can't say I learned a ton of new things, but I really enjoyed the class. And I did learn how to get beads from a hank onto your knitting cotton in a quick and easy way. I was just stuck on the concept when I had read about it before, but having her show me how to do it did the trick. We started the bracelet in class, but I haven't finished it yet:



And to cap the whole week off, I finally finished Jessica's hoodie (just in time for the warm, sunny weather we're having now):



Project Name: Olivia's Sweatshirt
Designer: Julie Carles and Jordana Jacobs
Pattern Source: The Yarn Girls' Guide to Knits for All Seasons
Yarn: Crystal Palace Merino Frappe
Yarn Source: Needlework Unlimited
Date Started: 12/21/07
Date Completed: 4/13/08

Comments: This should have been a quick and easy knit, but it ended up taking me a long time. I think I just didn't have enough knitting time to work on it regularly. I had no problems with the pattern though - easy to read and understand and no errors that I found. I loved the yarn - it's a brushed merino, so it sort of feels like fleece. As I mentioned before, I ended up having to buy one more skein of yarn to finish the pocket bands, so if you make this sweater, buy an extra skein of yarn just in case or use a different yarn for the pocket linings as Cathy suggested. If I had thought of that before I sewed the linings in, that would have been a fantastic solution.

Jessica agreed to model it when I had just pinned the zipper in:



and the hood view:

Other Fun

Besides going to the movies, I've had some other fun too. I think I forgot to mention I read this book:



I know, I'm late getting to these. I try to read each book right before the next movie comes out, so I have the book fairly fresh in my mind and I don't know what's going to come next when I see the movie. But after I finished book 5, I couldn't wait that long to read book 6, so I read it now. If you read the Harry Potter books, you've probably already read this one and if you don't, you probably don't care, so I won't describe it. I'll just say that I really loved it and I'm really sad there's only one more book left. So far I've managed to avoid any spoilers for the final book, so I may read that last one this summer before I do stumble across something I don't want to know.

I also read this book:



I'm trying to go through all of my books and get rid of the ones that I realistically will never read and read some of the ones that I've had for a long time. This is a mystery that's part of a series about a woman who is an attorney and grew up with hippie radical type parents. In the series, she sort of struggles with her identity and where she really sees herself in the world. I started reading this series either when I was in law school or shortly thereafter and really loved it and identified with the character. For whatever reason, I set the last three of this series aside and never read them. I wish I had read this when it first came out. It's set in the mid-90s and a lot of it is about computers and technology and all of that stuff is now incredibly dated. I'll still read the last two of the series because I enjoy the authors writing and the story and characters, but I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to others to pick up now.

I also did a little visiting for Easter. I dyed Easter eggs with my niece, Alexis:



My nephew Jason, wasn't really sure about the taste of eggs, but he sure liked playing with the plastic Easter eggs:



Isn't he absolutely adorable? He turned 1 just after Easter, so I got to celebrate that with him too. Also adorable is my new "nephew", Dexter:



Alexis just loves him. He's so wiggly and puppy-like. Love him!

And finally, I've done some knitting. I had the absolute pleasure of meeting up with the Uberstrickenfrau while I was in Sioux Falls. We both managed to overcome our shyness and fear of meeting strangers from the internet to have coffee and knit and it turns out it's almost like we already knew each other and weren't really strangers. Huh, funny that. You can read her hilarious (as usual) tale of meeting on her blog. She's not as far behind in blogging as I am, so you'll have to scroll down a little bit. She even captured the moment for posterity with a photo like a REAL blogger. I'm so glad to have met in person and super excited to have someone to knit with when I'm ready to strangle my family (not those cute kids, just the adults).

As for the actual knitting itself, I am almost done with my other niece, Jessica's hoodie:



I absolutely ran out of yarn, so I was just going to sew on the zipper and call it done, but when I put my hands in the pockets, I think they are too shallow, so I'm going to see if I can still get another skein and knit on the pocket ribbing on the top of the pockets too.

I also finished the first of my Cable Lattice socks. What a difference a few stitches make:



In the ankle area, where I had a lot of stitches, the striping disappeared and the colors were sort of randomly spread out. By the time I decreased down to the foot size (4 stitches less than on the leg), the stripes had morphed into flashing. I actually kind of like it. I think it looks cool and so different. Here's how it looks on the foot:

Actual Knitting Content

I know I've been promising, and here it finally is. I've been knitting up my Elann samples from the last six months, so that's kind of boring to look at. But I've almost finished the Olivia's Sweatshirt for Jessica:



That's kind of boring to look at too. It's just plain blue stockinette. The real excitement is feeling it. It's a very nice, soft fabric that I think Jessica will like. All I have left is knitting and sewing on the hood and installing the zipper. Just in time for spring! :-) Oh well, you can always use a hoodie when it gets cold at night, right?

I've also been working on a pair of socks:



These are called Cable Lattice Socks - I got the pattern in an old issue of Knitnet. I'm using Socks That Rock yarn in the Little Bunny Foo Foo colorway. I'm in love again! STR is definitely my favorite sock yarn. It's so pretty and also so soft and cushy. This particular colorway is extra yummy because it looks like ice cream - chocolate, caramel, strawberry. Mmmmmmmmmm.....