When I got the email on the 10th of September that the Snapdragon Tam was up, I knew it would be mine.  I hadn’t entirely planned on it being mine quite so soon, but my original plan for a next project (the Clasica Coat from IK Fall) hit a small snag, so I went stash-diving and came up with some Alchemy Synchronicity in “Foxglove”.

After a few days (and some rehearsal knitting time), I had this:

It’s SO cute!  And look at the patterning:

Ysolda does some really beautiful work, doesn’t she?  The best part is that it LOOKS really complex, but it’s really quite a simple pattern, mostly because it is so clearly written.

I made the largest size, and I probably could have done a smaller one.  What I may do once the weather (eventually) cools off is add some elastic thread to the ribbing just to snug it up a smidgen.  Or not, we’ll see. 

Oh, and for my dear smartass friends, we didn’t EAT the yarn.  We SWATCHED the yarn.  We ate the cheeses.  Silly, silly people.    (And no, it’s not an accident that “smartass” links to that option of the three of you… )

Today, it’s my Milkweed Shawl.  I’ve been seeing this all over the place, and I just loved the combination of the garter stitch and simple lace, so I knew it would be mine.  The pattern is really well-written, and was very easy.

I picked up this yarn (Spud and Chloe Sweater in “Toast”) on my first trip to fibre space, fully planning to make Milkweed with it.  It’s a lovely soft cotton-superwash wool blend, and was very nice to work with.  It’s also a worsted weight, and as the pattern calls for fingering weight, I was obviously going to change that.  My thought was that if it worked in fingering to give a shawlette, the worsted would size it up enough to make it a full-sized shawl.

Ta da!  Success!

It’s soft and squishy, and since it’s a neutral color I think it will come in quite handy this fall to grab when I don’t need a full-on jacket, or as an option when I want a scarf this winter.

Oh, I picked up some more S&C yarn last night at fibre space (Amanda and I went down for a yarn and cheese tasting event – it was great!), which I’ll have to show you later.

Pre-blocking, laid out on the kitchen table.  Already big.

Taking a little bath. Sadly, this will be the last time I soak anything in this salad spinner. I’ve been using it for 4 years to soak my knits and handspun, and it developed a crack across the bottom. It leaks. Looks like I need to pick up a new one.

A little dye bleed from the yarn. Wasn’t expecting it, because I didn’t get any on my hands working with it, but it rinsed out quickly.

Pinned out on the guest bed.  It just barely fit on the queen sized mattress.  Think I can convince Kris that we need to get ourselves a king sized bed so I have more blocking space? 

Unpinned.  Yeah, it’s bigger than my wingspan.  It’s more than 6 feet across the top edge, possibly 7 feet or slightly over.  (No, I haven’t measured.  I’m lazy.)

I’m pretty damn happy with it.  Can you tell? 

Pattern: Icarus by Miriam Felton from Interweave Knits Summer 2006.
Yarn: Ellen’s Half Pint Baby Alpaca and Silk (80/20). I bought two skeins at Stitches East in October 2007 for this pattern. Unfortunately, when I got home, I double checked, and I didn’t have enough yardage. Luckily, I saw Ellen at Rhinebeck the next week and lamented my mistake. She still had another skein of the yarn in the same dye lot. Yay for small independent dyers! It’s lovely stuff – I really enjoyed knitting with it.
Mods: Since I had the third skein, I now had a fair chunk more yardage than needed, so I added two repeats of chart 1 before beginning the lace at the edge.  That took it from a nice big shawl to a HUUUUUGE one, which makes me so happy.

I started Icarus on July 4.  It wouldn’t normally have taken me two months to finish it, but I took a few weeks to work on a sample for a friend, which I (obviously) couldn’t blog about.  It’s a neat pattern, though, so I’ll be sure to mention it when she publishes it.  Overall, I really liked knitting this shawl, although I whined from time to time about how boring the center section was.  It actually got to be pretty good mindless knitting, and I worked on it quite a bit during rehearsals.

Now, on to the next project – it’s the Milkweed shawl in Spud and Chloe Sweater in “Toast” I’ve seen a few examples of the shawl around, and I decided it would be nice to have something solid and neutral.  How unlike me, I know, but I like to shake it up every so often. (Oh, and yes, those are Ravelry links.  Apologies to any non-knitters who were curious about them.) I started it yesterday, and those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook know that I made some decent progress before goofing up and having to rip back everything I knit at last night’s rehearsal. Happily, while ripping all of my new Beatles cd’s today, I caught back up and have now progressed beyond where I had been.

I don’t remember how much I told you guys, so if I’m repeating myself, well, welcome to Kris’s world.

I started out planning to do the pattern that LCharvon had suggested, using the BMFA Luscious Silk in “Raven”, but they just weren’t working well together.  Also, I was concerned that the yarn wasn’t black enough.  It really is more of a silver-grey, and that dress needed BLACK.  So, I poked around online and ended up ordering some Artyarns Regal Silk in black from FabulousYarn.com.  Great shop with great service, BTW.  I had ordered the Lacy Shrug pattern as a freebie with the yarn, and they accidentally sent me the wrong freebie pattern.  I emailed, and they sent me a pdf of the pattern within just a few hours.

I love the pattern, and I’m VERY happy with how it came out, but it is definitely NOT a beginner, hand-holding kind of pattern.  The instructions expect you to be able to read your knitting and make intelligent calls on what to do, so if you are the sort who isn’t comfortable unless every step is set out for you, I’d skip this one.

Kris and I, outside the Chesapeake Bay Beach Club before the reception:

I’m very happy with how it fits, and I love the way it looks with the dress.  It was pretty much exactly what I was picturing.  Yay!

She soaks…

And then she dries!

It ended up about 52″ across the top and 28″ down the center, and I’m hoping I won’t lose toooo much of that size when I unpin it.  I’m so spoiled by the humongousness of my STR Charlotte’s Web that everything else feels kinda small by comparison.  I’m quite happy with how it looks, and I really love the colors.  This is a great colorway – it doesn’t have that very prevalent Noro trend of pretty color-pretty color-pretty color-utter and complete ass color-pretty color…  I ended up using about half of the second skein I picked up last week, so I would have been really peeved if I hadn’t been able to find it. 

Oh, and thank you all for the words of commiseration and encouragement on the biking adventure. I appreciate that it’s something a lot of people enjoy, but this was far beyond just me being out of shape – I was really, really terrified – and that was the same whether we were on the bike path along the road or through the little bit of woods.  There are enough other options out there for workouts that I have no problem with the idea of never getting on a bike again.  In fact, it’s rather appealing to me.  Plus, the bike was a loaner from Mary’s neighbor, so it’s not like I bought it and it will sit there judging me if I don’t ride again.  We have a stationary recumbent bike, and if I can find a space for it in the living room (it’s in the garage at the moment), I may start doing a little of that to break up the walking.

We’ve been here since Friday night.  In the airport before we left, I cast on for Rosi G’s Scrunchable cowl, using something I’ve never used before – my own handspun.  It was kind of awesome to get to knit with yarn I’d spun myself – I need to do that more.  Anyway, after a 5 hour flight, followed by a Saturday evening hanging out with my parents, my brother, and my brother’s friends watching UFC at his friend TJ’s house, I finished it!  I still need to get a modeled picture, but for now…

Sunday, we spent the afternoon at my brother’s house watching the Steeler game.  I was working on my Eye of Partridge shawl, but I hit a snag.  I got off-pattern somewhere (seriously, how do you get off pattern on freaking EOP?!?), tried to rip back to fix it and, well… it’s now a ball of yarn again.  The silk was just to slippery to rip back.  So, now it’s in time out until I figure out what I’m going to do with it.  Unfortunately, that meant I no longer had a project for the plane ride home.

Happily, I did get out yesterday to find the LYS – Gail Knits.  It’s a cute shop.  A little heavy on the high-end novelty yarns for my tastes, but I found some O-Wool Balance and some Cascade 220 Tweed that I really liked.  Between last night and this afternoon, I finished up two hats – the first is a gift for Tom’s roommate Talker (they all have nicknames – Talker, Frat Boy, Three Pair, Broccoli… I figure it’s better not to ask).  I decided he needed a little something for letting us invade his house to watch the football game, since he’s not at all a football guy.

It’s Weezalana‘s Lucky 7 hat in O-Wool Balance in “Graphite” – took me less than a skein!  It’s an awesome pattern, too.  Well-written, and fun to knit.

This hat (which I just finished) is also in O-Wool Balance, in “Lapis”.  It’s for TJ, since he was nice enough to invite Kris and I over to watch UFC having never even met us.

The pattern is called Claudia, by MJ over at exartstudent.  Another great pattern – I love the lattice detail along the bottom.  I’m turning into a hat junkie – I finished one up for Kris last week before we left.  It’s in his jacket pocket at the moment, but hopefully I’ll get a shot of him wearing it soon.

Next, I have to decide what to make with this:

That’s the Cascade 220 I picked up at Gail Knits.  I’m considering a Hemlock Ring Blanket, but I just can’t decide if it’s worth it for me to knit a wool blanket to live in the house of too many furry beasts.

I’ve also got some of the O-Wool Balance in green for me, but I’m giving myself a little break from it.  It’s nice yarn, but the cotton was giving my wrists a little grief after two straight days of knitting with it.

Pretty, though, isn’t it?

I also finished up a SUPER quick project yesterday – the Om Eye Pillow.  I spotted it on Glitty Knitty Kitty on Friday, and I knew I needed to make one for my uber-fabulous yoga teacher Joan.  We start back to class this Thursday for the winter session, so I’ll give it to her then.

Unstuffed:

Stuffed (I made an inner pillow of cotton and filled it with flax seeds):

I used Patons Organic Cotton in “Hemp”, and I really liked working with it.  The label calls for US7′s, but I used US3′s, and it came out as a nice soft fabric with plenty of drape for the pillow.  I hope she likes it!

In other news, I finished up the mittens yesterday morning while we were waiting for Mindy to recover from Saturday night. I won’t go into detail, but let’s just say it’s probably not a wise move to make the statement that one has never played a drinking game when in the presence of one’s husband and friends. The marathon game of Asshole ended around 3AM. She was mostly vertical by, oh, noon-ish.

Anyway, the stitches are still a bit uneven, because I haven’t blocked them yet. I LOVE them. They fit perfectly, and I think the pattern is just too cute.

I tweaked the pattern a little from the original, in that I only used three colors (the designer used a fourth for that solid stripe between the ribbing and the hand), and I added an additional repeat of the motif so that the mitts were a little longer.

So, what am I working on now? Well, when you’ve got kick-ass mittens, you need a hat to match them, right?

I adapted the chart from the back of the hand, and I think it’s going to work well for the hat. We shall see!

I even managed the grafting at the end of the tubular cast-off on the second try. That’s a fairly huge accomplishment for me.

It goes beautifully with my new shawl pin that I bought at Stitches this year.

I really like the way it fits.

Plus, it’s really, really cozy.

I can’t wait to wear this!

Explaining to Meeko that claws + sweater = repercussions for the owner of said claws.

Plotting the placement of the shed.

Squinting at the sun (it was the only shot I got of the collar. )

Chatting with Lola.

I’m really thrilled with how it came out, and Kris loves it.  It’s soft, it’s warm, and it FITS!  Yay!

Now, I tackle this pile.

Here’s hoping I can finish both by the 30th!