Swamp Thing

I finished another pair. These are for the Scarefest:

I knew a shiny object would catch my eye and I'd go off in another direction. The 1200 yards of Candy Skein yarn sat next to me on the desk. They kept telling me I needed to do a search on Ravelry for a nice pattern for them. I picked Celestarium. It's a circular shawl with northern hemisphere constellations on it. I haven't started it yet because of yet another possible distraction. There is a group doing a sweater in a month knitalong in October. I've got a pattern and yarn gathering dust that I've not gotten around to starting, so maybe this is the right time to do it.

Or maybe not. What was that shiny thing in the corner of my eye?

Dreadlocks

The One Love pattern may call them tendrils, but I'm convinced they are dreadlocks:

It's a minor miracle that I actually finished something. I've got two or three pair of socks in progress and a pair of mittens. In the midst of this, I got a craving to spin something. I got my new spindle out and did a couple of ounces. I (surprise, surprise) got bored with it. I'm spending fiber time alternating between spinning and knitting. No doubt a shiny object will catch my eye soon and do something else.

Yarnbox, take 2

I was happy to pull these out of the Yarnbox today:

Note that my attempt to tweak the color muddied it up a bit. It's really a nicely shaded purple.

It's three skeins of fingering weight from CandySkein in the Black Currant colorway. The box also contained codes for free patterns for two designers. Both designers and CandySkein offered discounts on their products. The other version of the box offered a DK weight yarn from Annie Yarns. I think I'll go check that yarn out.

I decided to continue my subscription at least through the next cycle. I hope they do another Indie Box like this one.

Sheepy Solids

Here's the latest from Sheepy Time Knits Time Traveler club. The color's called Noble:

I'm glad that the last several offerings in this club have been pretty much solid. Here are the previous two, The Veiled Detective and Pandorica.

The knitalong through Stephanie van der Linden's book is going to require a whole lot of solid colors.

I am knitting again. I found a Mock (mystery sock) that's a lot of fun. The pattern's called One Love and it requires one to use the craziest wild multicolored yarn in your stash. I used a skein of Mad Color yarn. I thought it was crazy and wild until I saw some of the other colors people were coming up with. The sock has options for a tame version, but I'm having more fun with the wild one. It has dreadlocks.

Vacation from knitting

My second Scarefest sock was a fail, as is the picture of it:

It's supposed to be ivy climbing up a brick wall. The ivy was fine. I did something squirrelly with the brick pattern and it didn't work out correctly. The foot would've been enormous. I would never have worn the socks if I finished them. I chose to chuck them in the frog pond and move on to something else.

The something else was this set of Doctor Who-inspired little shop signs. I'm going to redo the TARDIS one, but am satisfied with the rest. The plan is to do a bunch of embroidered pieces and put them together with fabric patches and make a patchwork pillow.

My Doctor Who swap person gifted me a mitten pattern called Starry Night. I'm going to try that next.

Double Idiot

I'm beginning to wonder about my brain. Today I got my Doctor Who swap. It was a great box of goodies. One of the things I got was this yarn:

It's Allons-y from Skeined Alive yarns. I thanked the sender for introducing me to a new yarn and that I liked it. I made her laugh because the yarn wasn't totally new to me. It was actually on my etsy favorites and that is why she bought it. That alone was enough to make me want to beat my head against the wall until it started to work correctly. It wasn't the only thing, though. I also thanked her for this:

It's the front and back of a pillow. I thought it was a bag. D'oh! I made a pillow form to put inside of it and it's all finished off now. I did remember how to use the sewing machine.

I think it might be sleep related. I haven't slept more than 4 hours at a stretch in a couple of months.

Super Scare Sock 1 (or maybe 2)

I'm not entirely sure of how many socks are in the Super Sock Scarefest. This is the first official one, called Faces in the Wallpaper. The heel was a little different than usual. This resulted in counting problems (do you count the wrapped stitch when you wrap and turn or is it a stitch unto itself?). I fudged it and it came out okay but not perfect.

Stash -4, Books +1

There's one thing that's certain in my life: if I have a positive balance in an online paying account, it won't stay that way for long. This week I was able to send off four balls of yarn I bought by mistake. How does one buy yarn by mistake? When one sees the yarn as a great bargain and then neglects to note the yarn weight. I thought it was fingering and it turned out to be DK.

Last night I was poking around Etsy. I decided to buy a couple of cross-stitch patterns I'd been wanting. I may be working on a cross-stitch project until my brain remembers how to knit properly. I still had a positive balance after that little shopping expedition.

It was Ravelry that finished off the rest. I happened upon a group that's going to work through Stephanie van der Linden's new book. I really enjoy her designs, so I got sucked in. The book, Op-Art Socks, hasn't been published yet. Interweave's got a deal right now where you can order the book and get the e-book immediately.

Not bad for a shopping mistake.