Vlog!

Here it is! Enjoy!

FO: Billie!! At last!!!!

But first, let me introduce you to Lindsay David:

He is a Worrible and I got him for my birthday. He’s the most squishable, cuddly, anti-anxiety guy out there, and he’s my new best friend. I thought you should know.

Anyways, Billie is finally done! I’m wearing it right now and it is warm and cosy (except for the cuffs that are still slightly damp, but poo on those). I took oodles of pictures for your entertainment and amusement:

Billie is A Lot Of Sweater, especially in the bright orange I picked. I am quite okay with this, I just expect to get a lot of Looks when I wear it out and about. Also you can hardly see the bit of wrong orange on the one shoulder, which is excellent. All’s well that ends well! Plus I learned from my LYS how to sew seams together the Right Way, which is pretty exciting.

Pattern: Billie by Kim Hargreaves
Time Span: 16 May 2011 to 10 May 2012.
Materials: 25~ skeins of Valley Yarns Sugarloaf and a little bit of Fibranatura Sensational
Ravelry link: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/annanlove19/billie

Other stuff’s been going on too! I got the last of the Dawn I’ll need for my Rumble, so now I just need to decide on the second color and slowly stock up on that, too. It only takes four skeins, which isn’t too bad, but they’re still $20 each.

I also got a skein of Cascade 220 Superwash to make worsted weight socks because, y’know, worsted weight socks. It’s a lovely marigold that doesn’t really show up here:

A few days ago I did a Bad Thing and cast on Anisette with my Ella Rae Latte. It’s super soft and silky and shiny and wonderful, and the pattern is a good amount of interesting-but-not-too-boring-and-not-too-complicated. Here’s a really shitty picture of my progress so far (please note the donut stitch markers):

And that, my friends, is it! I know it’s Friday and this isn’t a vlog, but this post lended itself better to being written out. Expect a vlog update sometime this weekend.

Health Problems and a little bit of Knitting.

First off, yes, I am aware that I misspeak the name of my blog. It happens. For some reason as soon as the camera comes on I just can’t think of the name of my blog. It’s silly.

Secondly, this is a very personal, difficult vlog for me to share with you, so please be kind. Not that I’ve ever gotten any negative comments, but today in particular we’re all about the positivity.

And so, without further ado, here is today’s vlog:

Outside Times.

Hey guys! Sorry for the lack of posts this week; I’ve been going through a really rough time and it just didn’t lend itself well to blogging. I was going to do Vlog Day early yesterday, only yesterday was the worst of all the bad days, so that didn’t happen. But things are looking up, it’s beautiful outside, and I’m actually posting! Hooray!

Also, I noticed while rewatching this video that I keep rubbing my nose a lot. Happy allergy season, friends! The perils of doing a vlog outside.

 

By the way, I remembered my other warm weather yarn from that grab bag! I got some Classic Elite Premiere, which is 50% cotton and 50% tencel, in a fabulous chartreuse color I can’t wait to show off. I’ve also got some Sublime Organic Cotton from a previous grab bag that I’ll hopefully get to use sometime this summer. It wants to be a Lauriel, but there are a lot of other things higher up on my queue, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get to it. And there you have it, just in case you were wondering about the innermost details of my stash and couldn’t sleep until I remembered absolutely everything 😛

Squares!!!

 

ETA: for some reason when I uploaded this from my phone it was password protected. Oopsies. Everything is better now.

A brief update.

Emily the Spinning Wheel got returned today. While in theory she seemed perfect, I ended up not enjoying spinning on her at all, I wasn’t having any fun and it just didn’t work out. This resulted in my LYS owner being pretty miffed with me, which, while understandable, is still quite awful on my end.

I’ve also decided to put Hunter into hibernation until next fall when it’s weather appropriate. It was kinda stupid to start a superbulky winter pullover when it’s been being 80 degrees out but hey, stuff happens. That’s what hibernation is for 🙂

My First Vlog

Hey guys! I made a vlog! It’s a little shaky at the beginning, but then I kinda get the hang of it, mostly.

 

What do you think? I’m thinking it’s a lot of fun and maybe a once a week sort of a thing? I promise I’ll get better at not being super shaky and also not ridiculous closeups!

Blooper post to follow 😛

Socks, An Interlude.

It’s not that I’m bored of sweaters, because I’m not. It’s just that sometimes it’s nice to start a project that one might reasonably finish within, say, a week. And also, I have many sweaters but I have only two pairs of socks I’ve knit. This needs to be rectified.

I also bought a copy of Sock Innovation by Cookie A. a while ago but never cast anything on from it, and it was making me feel guilty and also like a crazy person. A whole book filled with incredible sock patterns, and I couldn’t find the time to cast on even one? The real problem was that my sock yarn stash, while absolutely excellent, is filled largely with brightly colored things that stripe, pool, and otherwise interrupt patterns.

Shibui Sock to the rescue! I’m a huge, huge fan of this yarn, even though this is the first time I’ve actually knit anything with it. It was a brilliant decision to stock up a bit, and I finally cast on a pair of socks a few days ago. It took me for-freaking-ever to decide on a pattern, and eventually I just went with doing it alphabetically because I am a nerd like that. Thus, I now have Angee on my needles!

They’re a lighter purple than the picture would have you believe, but I was having a ton of trouble getting an in-focus picture, so darker purple won. If you look really closely, you can see that the first 30 rounds or so of the pattern are knit incorrectly; that’s because, in a bout of incredible stupidity, I forgot that charts are read right to left and not left to right and so my whole sock is backwards. That in and of itself isn’t a problem, but since I didn’t realize I was doing it backwards until a significant way in, I didn’t switch the k2togs and ssks until then. It looks a little bit messy, but not bad enough to frog, and I’m happy with it.

In other news, I pulled out an old WIP that had been set aside due to decrease panic. I kept not liking how it looked, but upon closer inspection, I was being really silly and it looks fine. See?

It’s a Tortoise and the Hare sweater, and while I wouldn’t expect to see too much of it up here, it does in fact exist. And sometimes I even work on it. Sometimes.

Also, you guys, I got a really pretty dress yesterday and it makes me feel like a fairy princess.

Could it be?

I have a new sweater project (yes, yes, another one, I know) to get my Knitting Mojo back. It was picked for its ease and speed and adorableness, and while I can’t wait to show you real action shots, right now it’s dark and my camera is far away. But I will give you some hints!

It is this color:

And has 19 of these on it:

Could…could it really be?

Yes! Yes it is!

In roughly no time at all, I will have myself my very own one of these:

I am really, really excited.

p.s. For those of you who don’t know, that right there is Kate Davies’ Owls. And it is awesome.

FO: New England Fog; WIPs: Mysteries!

So first, this happened:

That’s what happens when you forget the palm-side of a glove is supposed to be stockinette instead of rib and you don’t want to rip the whole thing out because you’ve already completed two and a half repeats of the cable pattern (14 rows each) and you’re at the thumb gusset, so you decide to drop back each of the purl stitches and bring them back up knitwise. To be fair, it only took an hour, which isn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting, but still. Added a day to a project that was already taking too long.

But lo! Then they were complete.

Me and my glove ❤

That lovely photo was actually taken with my phone, because my camera’s battery died. I’m obscenely happy with it.

Showing off our cable-y goodness at the piano...

Letting our love for Adele be known...

Playing a bit of Someone Like You...

Having a morning cup of lemonade...

And bringing peace to the world through crappy webcam photos because my camera apparently doesn't believe in peace. Ignore the crazy eyes.

Pattern: Vancouver Fog by Jen Balfour
Time Span: 3 February to 12 February 2012
Materials: Classic Elite Lush that I got on sale from Butterfly Yarns in Wakefield for only eleven dollars for two skeins!
Ravelry link: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/annanlove19/vancouver-fog

Also, other knitterly things have been going on! But they’re not really in a state to be shown off, so have some Mystery Photos:

Mystery #1

Mystery #2

And as for February Photos…I’ve been busy having a CFS flareup and also a cold, and so I’ve kind of given up on them. Alas, ’twas fun while it lasted.