You're never going to believe this...

But I finally got on with this:
Any guesses? Come on now, you can do it. Especially Pam. She knows, I know she does. That, my friends, is A SEAM. Of a SWEATER. In case you remain unconvinced that I've actually gotten around to breaking out the Chibi and finishing this sucker, I present Exhibit B, the horribly Are my arms really that big? Something must be done. unflattering "vest-in-bathroom-mirror-self-portrait" shot. At about 10:00 Thursday night I was reading Lolly's blog and realizing that she's completed not one but TWO sweaters in less than a month, and that I therefore have no excuse for why this sweater (my first) has been lanquishing so forlornly. So, I charged into the living room and dug out the sweater, and got on with it. My excuse, such as it was, had to do with poor lighting and dark stitches, but it wasn't that bad, really, and I'm pretty happy with my side seams. The shoulders are a bit lacking and might need to be done over. They'll be mostly hidden under the collar, but there's really no point in spending so much time on something only to slack at the end (ahem). I was all excited and thinking about sewing in the sleeves but I figured I should get some advice on my shoulder seams (and the sewing in of sleeves) before attempting that, and anyway it's getting a bit late. The long things hanging in the front are the pockets, in case you were thinking this is a really freaky looking sweater. And I'm happy to report that it appears it will fit, although the stockinette front pieces are rolling so much it's really difficult to see what they're going to look like in the chest region. I have to say that my procrastination on this was ridiculous and now that I'm back on it I hope to finish it up quickly. It took me only an hour or so to do the side seams and the shoulders. What have I been waiting for?

Congratulations!

To Jennifer, who successfully defended her thesis this afternoon, and who we must all now address as DR.!

Jennifer is the first Fiberphile to graduate (of those of us who are currently graduate students), and we are very proud. Plus, she gave us permission to knit during her defense - can't beat that! Rachel and I took her at her word and sat in the back knitting away while we listened to Jennifer's talk; the rest of the Fiberphiles were more well-behaved :) I'm disinclined to post this photo as it's not my our most flattering, but such is life, right? Here we are celebrating with cheesecake (already consumed) and champagne (still in Rachel's hand):

For orientation, from the left: Rachel (nice handknitted sweater, no?), Daisy, Jennifer, me (please ignore bad hair/glasses slid down on nose/double chin/tendency to be own worst critic), and Shibani. Congrats again, Jennifer, you give us all hope that there is an end to the tunnel!

In other news, you may be aware that we are having a "weather event" here in Seattle. What does that mean? That means it snowed. A little. And got cold. Quite. And the roads froze and everything is in disarray and you really don't want to get me going on how quickly this city shuts down in what I would consider to be minor leaque winter conditions. In our neighborhood (one of the least-badly hit because we're on the water and at the bottom of the hill), we only got a tad of snow, but enough for Dave to make this wee snowman while we were walking to a coffee shop to study last night.

Aren't they cute? Dave and I both grew up in regions with serious, proper, worthy-of-the-name winter, so we get all excited about the snow. However, we have agreed that we're rapidly losing the ability to cope with the cold living here in Seattle, where it rarely gets below freezing. I guess we're disacclimatizing, if that's a word. Unacclimatizing? You know what I mean.

I have been knitting SO MUCH, and none of it is bloggable, and I'm really sorry about that, since all you get to hear about now is the weather, and that is truly dull blogging if there ever was such a thing. After Christmas there will be a solid week of Christmas gift posts! I did start a new project (for myself) this evening, using some lovely Malabrigo I bought a few weeks back. Here's the yarn. Project photos to follow when I get a bit further into it! The ivory mass is one of my first knitting projects, a very long scarf using fuzzy yarn (for coziness) and sequins (for bling). I still wear it all the time!

Fresh Powder!

Instead of eating turkey for Thanksgiving, Dave and I woke up well before the crack of dawn and went skiing. There was a LOT of snow. We had to break out the chains for the first time (an experience I wisely observed from inside the car). Whether we needed them or not is debatable, but they can't hurt when the road looks like this:

Can you see the road? Exactly.

Mt Baker has over 7 feet of base already (pause to think about that for a minute - that's a LOT of snow). They had gotten 14 inches in the last 24 hours and we figure about 8 more while we were there today. It was snowing so hard that the visibility was pretty much nonexistent. I didn't ski with the camera because I knew there wouldn't be good photos to be taken, but I took this as we were leaving, and you can get the gist of it.

That's the base, and you can probably see how hard it was snowing, and it was much worse at the top of the mountain. Dave had a lovely time with the fresh powder, and by the middle of the afternoon I was making a game stab at dealing with it adequately. I say that because, while I was making it down everything I skied without incident or even falling, panache was lacking. Maybe next time. The powder is new to me, I need time to adapt!Big smile for the camera! Don't you just love my oversized googles? A friend of mine gave them to me last winter when he got new ones, and they're probably a bit big for me but they work and having them is a lifesaver (probably literally, really) in conditions like those we encountered today. My jacket is also too big, never mind about that either...I can fit many layers under there...

Dave wants to go back on Saturday (they're predicting a lot MORE snow). We'll see. The legs may be sore and not up for much for a few days. The first skiing episode always entails a painful recovery process!

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you all had a good one!

Setting the mood ;)

Just kidding...

This was the scene in our apartment last night. We got home and discovered that the power was out, so out came many candles (I knew they would come in handy some day!) and our bike lights/headlamps. It was a very localized power outage - as far as I could see it was just our block. Driving into the parking garage (I park 2 levels in the basement) was a real experience - being down there in the dark was really disorienting. The power had been out since mid-afternoon, and most of the emergency lights in the stairwells were already burnt out, so I used my cell phone to guide me up the stairs! Dave came with me to my knitting club meeting (and sat elsewhere) to get into some light, and then we went to Barnes and Noble to kill some more time. The power didn't come back on until 4:00am, so it was out for about 14 hours. We did have quite a lightning/hail storm yesterday, I assume that did the damage. Apparently our problem was that the transformer that needed to be repaired for us is underground and was flooded, so it took them a long time to pump out the water and then get us back up and running. Anyway, it was kind of fun. While it rains a lot in Seattle we don't really get much of what I would consider severe weather (thunderstorms, blizzards, etc), so I was excited to have the power out! Yes, I'm weird.

My Knit Picks order finally showed up yesterday, but I had already gotten impatient and cast on for my grandmother's socks:

It's just ribbing so far, and I'll transfer it to my new pointy-as-all-get-out needles tonight, but it's been nice to have a sock going. The folded up scarf is the finished (still unblocked) mulitdirectional scarf. The sock is going to be the ubiquitous Embossed Leave sock from Interweave. I'm sure there will loads of progress soon, once I get really into it, since I'll be using my snazzy new needles!

The weather is getting colder, and I decided to break out my green North Face fleece today. Now, I don't wear this fleece often because it has a bad attitude. Namely, it doesn't get on with my grey Marmot fleece, and gives it attitude in the closet, such that they have to be separated by the mediator fleece, an ivory number from Eastern Mountain Sports. I'm not sure what the problem with this North Face fleece is. Apparently it feels that since it was the first fleece of the current closet crop, it is the best. However, I think even it should realize that it's slightly ill-fitting and a bit roomy, whereas the Marmot fleece is much sleeker, and the peace-loving EMS fleece is much softer. When I got this evil fleece I loved it, but the relationship has soured, and while it might be time to just let it go, I hate to think of the carnage even suggesting that might cause - it'll probably rip the beloved Marmot fleece to sheds! (Yes, I have three expensive fleece jackets. No, I do not see this as a problem, and would love to have a snazzy windstopper fleece, preferably from yet another expensive outdoors company (Arc'Teryx?) to create more interfleece snobbery in the closet. Nor do I think it's odd that I've personified my fleece jackets. If you knew them you would understand).

Dave and I plan to go skiing tomorrow. It's been raining like crazy and that means it's snowing somewhere, so we'll be getting up early and heading for the fresh powder at Mt. Baker. Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Lead with cute shoes...

Since there are no knitting photos to discuss, I've decided to distract you all with cute shoes:

This is a funny photo in that my feet look really tiny in relation to my calves, due to the angle of the legs and the camera (although as I've mentioned before I do have fairly sizable calves, and I also have small feet). I love my new teal and brown shoes, as well as the brown tweed cabled socks I'm wearing with them. The shoes are made by Palladium and are from Zappos. I also got a pair of brown flats (it's VERY hard to find cute brown shoes that aren't dowdy), which I'm not sure about keeping. They look great with socks but without, well, there is some toe cleavage, and I'm not sure I can deal with that. Zappos has free shipping and free returns, so there was no harm in trying! What I'd really like to have (aside from the brown shoes) is good red shoes...I have great red boots, but some shoes would be good for those non-boot days, you know? Anyway...

I finished the multidirectional scarf last night! I didn't take any photos because they'd look like what I posted a couple of days ago. It's not quite done in that its not blocked or fringed yet, so I figured the photoshoot could wait. I think blocking pre-fringe is the way to go, right? Let me know if I'm horribly mistaken on this.

I was sitting in a seminar yesterday thinking about what knitting I have going, and making a list (I do this a lot, make knitting lists during scientific seminars. Don't judge. If you went to as many talks as I do you'd do the same). I realized that I don't have that many projects on the needles. No wonder I've been itching to start something new...

Current Projects

1. Hike sweater - 90% done. Needs sewing up and finishing

2. Bamboo tank - 95% done. Needs finishing around the neckline. Seriously, that's it. No excuses.

3. So-called scarf - 45% done. This is killing me, as I mentioned a few days ago.

4. Elfine's socks - 10% done? I'm in the middle of the first foot. I haven't touched these since early summer, and while I like them, they're getting pushed aside from simpler things and gift projects.

5. Red armwarmers - 50% done. These were going to be to sell, but I've decided to keep them since they look really skinny (although they're very stretchy, I feel people might be afraid of them) and I love the color. So there. They will be for me (which lowers their chances of completion significantly).

6-9. Gifts for Christmas - One of these is about 40% done, another is swatched (Gram's socks), and the other is not started (same as gift one, so they must be done in succession). I'm half done with my Christmas knitting and it's only mid-November so I'm pretty confident that it'll get done without too much stress. Aren't you all just itching to see the Christmas knitting? I know I can't wait to post about the gifts after the holidays!

Things I WANT to Start

1. A lace scarf. I have one on the needles, started back in July (1 inch done?), but I'm not happy with it. Mainly I'm not happy with the way the pattern makes me move my stitch markers around (my fault, not its, of course). And it's a huge undertaking, with very fine yarn, and I think what I want is to knit something less ambitious for my first real lace project. To that end I bought Victorian Lace Today, which many other bloggers have raved about (although I bought it pre-raving, and thus was finally ahead of a blogosphere trend). Click that link if you want to see some scanned photos from the book. Kathy has done a very nice review and included many project pictures. I love this book. The photographs are amazing, the patterns appear to be relatively straightforward, and, most importantly, there are many rectangular stoles/scarves/etc. I'm not a circular shawl person. The concept is fine but it's not me, or my wardrobe, and in fact I'm not even really sure I can pull off a lace scarf, but I intend to knit one and find out. I have some appropriate yarn for said scarf, but of course not enough of any one thing that isn't multicolored, so I might have to make a quick trip to the LYS for some Misti Alpaca laceweight. I have nice pointy needles on the way from Knit Picks and I'll be all ready to go!

2. Something tweedy and cabled. I really want to knit myself a tweed cabled sweater. I have several patterns and yarns ready to go, but I keep stopping myself from starting, because there are too many other things I should knit that are more likely to be completed in my lifetime smaller and more managable. We'll see. I'm keeping those cabled armwarmers as a teaser for myself...

3. Many small projects. Orange alpaca armwarmers (waiting to be designed), Malabrigo scarves, felted bag (by Christmas), my turquoise mohair/Lamb's Pride ribbed scarf, stockinette socks with pretty yarn (for me), Dave's sweater (not small, and could be cursed so should probably be avoided), a red scarf for me, another cabled hat (will start soon, using Kristen's attempt at making one with my guidance as an excuse. Thank you Kristen), more armwarmers to sell, knee socks (I'm obsessed with knee socks at the moment), the Lizard Ridge afghan (not small, but at least modular), too many things...

Have a good weekend! Dave and I are headed down to Tacoma for a cyclocross race on Saturday and then down to Portland Saturday night to see Pam and for Dave's race on Sunday. These are big races, the last two in a national series that brings out all the big shots. It's been raining and it will be muddy!

Sometimes I show actual knitting content...

As usual I have more UFOs/WIPs/WTFs than I can keep track of, but the WIP getting the most attention at the moment is this one, the multidirectional Silk Garden scarf (pattern here).
I'm using Noro Silk Garden and size 8 needles. The whole scarf is done in short rows, hence the multidirectional pattern. It's a fun pattern (very easy) and deceptive, because each triangle seems to take forever and not be getting you anywhere, and all of a sudden you notice the scarf is getting quite long. I initially ordered (from Ebay) three skeins of yarn, based on this statement from the pattern: "It takes approximately 200 yds. of yarn to make a 4’ scarf, 300 yds. to make a 6’ scarf." Later on they mention something about 5" being a good width, so I assumed those measurements were for a 5" wide scarf. Assuming 100m/skein, I thought three skeins should be sufficient for my 6' long scarf. Well, after about half the first skein I realized there was NO WAY it would be enough (perhaps I should've used larger needles, but I like the density of my fabric, and I don't start over, in case you hadn't realized that already). So I ordered another skein. Of course now I will probably have too much, but I want fringe so all is good.I do have a pet peeve/rant about Noro in general though, and it concerns the inconsistencies between skeins of yarn in the same dye lot. Now, I understand how they dye their yarn, in very long hanks that are then reskeined, so some differences between skeins are to be expected. That said, it seems to me that each skein should at least have the same colors! This may not be apparent from the photos because of my artful scarf folding, but there was NO green in the first skein of yarn, and there has been in the next two. The second skein had hardly any red, and all three have had much more brown/black than advertised. I'm not sure I'm happy with the colors I've ended up with (having chosen a colorway that appeared to be, and was advertised as, blue, purple, and green, with some brown), but I'll take it. It's also a bit odd that all the purple keeps ending up on one side of the scarf, making it look a bit unbalanced. However, these are problems that it's likely no one else will care about notice, and like I said, I don't rip things out and start over!

Mud and mistakes

Guess what? It's SNOWING in the mountains! I'm very excited about this. I keep eyeing the pass cameras on the Washington Dept. of Transportation webpage, and I tried to save one and upload it but apparently blogger doesn't approve of the file type. You can take my word for it that it's pretty snowy! Several of our local ski areas are opening this week, so if I'm not at work on Thursday that's where I'll be...all that precipitation has resulted in some muddy bike racing, which is always exciting. This man was the picture of futility:

Look what he's doing. He's sweeping water off the course. What I ask is the point of that? It might help for a couple of minutes, assuming you sweep the water into the grass and it stays there, but what was really happening was that he was pushing it to the left and it was just heading right back where it came from as soon as he turned his back. I found it hilarious.

Here's Dave after his race yesterday, looking very muddy and very happy about it. He is happy because he loves mud (and does better the worse the conditions are) and because he came in 12th, his best place this season (there are 50+ people, so that's pretty good!).
As you recall, I borrowed Daisy's ball winder and swift last week, and this is what I've accomplished thus far. The red cakes are Cascade 220, destined for a very cool felted bag with grommets around the top that I hope to knit before I go home at Christmas so that I can use my parent's grommet maker to finish it off. The purple is the second skein of Manos for my so-called scarf, which is killing me. I really wanted to finish the first skein last night (you might recall I've been working on this thing off and on since about June) but my hands couldn't do it. I'm really wishing I'd have gone up a needle size, but I didn't think of that until far enough into the project that there was no way I was going back to square one. So, I'm suffering through it. It's beautiful but so hard on my hands. Eh. The brown in the middle is also Cascade 220. I was thinking armwarmers but now I'm not sure, and really I just wound it because I had the equipment and I Oliver loves watching the swift spinning. The green stuff on the top there is mediumweight Socks that Rock, in Beryl, and is going to become my grandmother's Christmas socks. I don't recall if I mentioned it, but I've ripped out the socks I was making her. I wasn't happy with the yarn/pattern combo, and there were a couple of problems that multiplied when I tried to correct them (many thanks to Rachel for making a valiant effort at salvaging them, but to no avail as I screwed them right back up). The straw that broke the camel's back was what you see here on the right. Look closely. Observe the top right needle - the one with stitches very close to the tip. Perhaps you can also see the stitches that are NO LONGER ON THE NEEDLE? That did it for me (although it did sit on the table for a few more days before I put it to rest). How did this happen? Well, I am an idiot. Basically I was looking for a size 1.5 DPN to do the heel on the RPM socks, hoping that going down a needle size would increase sturdiness, and I grabbed the wrong needle. Instead of the extra needle, I pulled on one that was (apparently) in use. No wonder the needle didn't slide towards me easily, eh? So last night I swatched with the STR (why? I've made three pairs of socks with this. Swatching shouldn't be necessary, really). I swatched because drew a blank on what weight STR it was (never mind about the folded up tag in the cake o'yarn). I got all excited to try my new Knit Picks metal DPNs (size 1), and off I went. Amazingly I got gauge on my swatch (7.5 st/in), but as soon as I started the stitches were WAY TOO TIGHT, which shouldn't have been shocking to me since I'VE MADE THIS MISTAKE BEFORE. But the needles are great (so slick and pointy!), so I promptly went and ordered me some size 2s. So you'll not hear anymore about this sock until three weeks from now, when Knit Picks gets around to shipping them to me. I love Knit Picks, but they really do take their 'your free shipping will take 5-14 days' thing seriously, in that they really err on the side of 14 rather than 5 days. Why can't they be like Amazon? Their free shipping is slower than what you pay for, but your stuff generally arrives faster than you could drive yourself across the country and back to pick it up, which is more than I can say for Knit Picks. Right - rant over. Tomorrow I'll have a new project to show you!