Lockdown Brioche

It has been a fun couple of weeks here.  My broadband went out.  With no phone or internet, there was no way to contact my service provider to get it fixed.  I wrote a note to one of my neighbors and he called it in for me.  What a nice man!  All is well now.  I got a cheap cell phone so I have some way of handling the situation should something similar happen again.  Why didn’t I have one before now?  The service was not very good here in the past.  I was throwing money at something I didn’t use.  I have learned the hard way that sometimes you need to do that just in case.

No internet meant I had no access to any of my project patterns.  I was finally forced to finish the body of the sweater I was working on.  Then I knit a pair of socks from a book pattern.  No internet also meant no podcasts, no BritBox, and no PBS Passport.  I pulled out my Gilmore Girls DVDs and spent many happy hours in Stars Hollow.

When I got back online, Social Distancing had become a thing.  I consider myself very lucky because it is a lot like how I function in non virus times.  My sympathies go out to people who are out of work and those whose businesses have been disrupted.  I am spending more on yarn than I usually would.  Shipping is slower than usual (as everyone probably knows), so pictures will appear when the yarn does.

With more people off of work, there have been more knitalongs popping up.  I decided to join one called Lockdown Brioche School.  I wanted to try my hand at brioche so this seemed like a good idea.  This is partway through the first lesson.  It isn’t perfect, but I think I am catching on.

I will be working on it while I watch Rose in a little while.  It is the first episode in the Doctor Who relaunch fifteen years ago.  Knit along, watch along, Tweet along.  It is good to be back online.

Grab bag

Between Jimmy Beans and Must Stash emails, my stash is getting some totally unnecessary enhancement.  I haven’t done the Must Stash thing yet.  There’s another national parks kit coming up and it is one I have visited (Acadia), so you can do the math.

As for Jimmy Beans, they had a grab bag with Madelinetosh yarn which I like.  I chose the pinks and purples bag and was happy with what I got.

The yarns are all one of a kind colorways of Tosh Merino Light.  The bag was the yellow thing in the back, a Namaste Snap bag.  The brown thing is a notebook with dotted pages.  It is handy if you find it necessary to graph out patterns.  The box with the pink and purple things in it are blocking pins.  They have a row of pins about 1/4 inch apart.  It looks like it will make blocking much easier.

Wibbly Wobbly yarn clubs

I have been working on finishing projects, with varying degrees of success.  The National Park project is nearly done.  It involves an old but rarely used chair that several felines decided was a scratching post.  I will post more when it is complete.

The bird sweater is taking forever.  I am only about 5 inches below the arms.  It is insane.  I measured it, knit for an hour, and measured again.  No freaking difference!  It drives me to working on little projects instead, like these Catchalls.  They cover little glass yogurt jars and are decorated with some buttons I picked up at a flea market in Paris.

I have managed to not start more socks.  The goal is no more than one pair per month.  It is an Olympics year, so I will be doing Tour de Sock.  The rule is suspended for that.

With most of the paths to fiber mischief blocked, it should not be surprising that I joined two yarn clubs.  I discovered Indie Untangled while hunting for national parks yarns.  It is doing the Where We Knit yarn club.  Designers and indie dyers are paired for each shipment.  Wobble Gobble is the dyer and the colorway is Frozen Magic.

The pattern was pretty but it was a cowl and I don’t do cowls.

The other club is (big surprise) the Doctor Who themed Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey club from The Dyeing Arts.  The colorway is The Doctor’s Wife.  There are tiny silver sparkles throughout the yarn.   It definitely wants to be used for something where it can catch the light.

First new yarn of the decade

I finished the last two pair of patchwork socks.  I am officially over my infatuation with the pattern.  I might do a simplified version of them next time I want to fool around with some of the self striping stash.

I have been mostly burned out on the Dolores kits.  The patterns have been cute but the yarn has frequently been not fun to work with.  I discovered that some of the patterns from discontinued kits are available from WEBS.  I have three of them in my Rav queue.  Don’t tell Dolores.  She really wants wear something besides her holiday sweater.

I managed to make it halfway through January before some new yarn successfully called to me.  The dyer is Yarn Baby and she lives in my old stomping grounds.  The Colorado flag made me a bit homesick.  I got over that fast by remembering the magic word Snow.  Do not like.  I bought it, though.

She had a mystery yarn sale, with odd skeins at a good price.  You could even indicate color likes or dislikes.  I was happy with my mystery skein called Sour.

Knittish New Year

I jumped right into 2020 with my Birdsong sweater.

As soon as the bird part was done, I got bored.  I zipped through a pair of Patchwork socks.  They look odd and are too thick to wear with any of my shoes.  They are also warm, fit well, and are lots of  fun to knit.  I am going to go cast on another pair.

That’s the front of both socks, by the way.  Not exactly obvious, is it?

Obsessions and whims

My latest projects and things I got myself for Christmas were all fairly whimsical.

I caught up on a couple of years of My Favorite Murder podcasts.  The result was a cross stitch picture of the podcast’s tag line.  It also included a purchase of several skeins of yarn from Colorful Eclectic’s Murderino collection.

I am watching a Doctor Who marathon.  The new season starts New Year’s Day after a ridiculously long wait.  I stitched up a TARDIS tissue box cover on plastic canvas.

I love a sock pattern called Patchwork Mix Socken.  The construction is unusual and the yarn used for the design results in a wild pattern.  I went a bit crazy  bought three balls of Opal Hundertwasser so I can make more.

I liked the Smoky Mountains National Park kit I got from Must Stash so much that I ordered the Denali one when it was offered just before Christmas.  

I got a gradient set from Miss Babs that was meant for a shawl pattern.  I have sworn off of shawls so it is a bit concerning that I can’t remember why I bought it.  It turns out that it is perfect for a hat I want to make.  More on my hat obsession later.  I need to get back to the hat:  128 stitches in an I-cord cast on.  Arrrrrgh.

A little bit every day...

...for 24 days.  I am doing two different advent KALs.

Doucet Winter socks uses little bits of leftovers and mini skeins.  The designer says that doucet is Middle English for sweet.

I started a second pattern when I found it on sale.  Walking into Winter is by Sivia Harding.  The KAL is being done by Must Stash.  They make the nicest self-striping yarns.  I am tempted into buying more all the time.  The yarn for the KAL is Hobbit Christmas which I like but I absolutely need to knit up some of what I have.  That’s why I chose Lykke, which might be Danish for happiness.  The pretty stripes do make me happy.

I am working on the second of three ghost sock patterns.  This one is Black Friday.  The KAL had some cool looking yarns from the Lucky Violet Color Co.  I managed to resist somehow and am using something from stash.

I have not been cured of giving in to yarn temptations, though.  I have been listening to podcasts lately.  I have been working my way through My Favorite Murder, a comedy true crime podcast.  I happened upon a yarn dyer who is doing a series of colorways based on some of the podcast’s catchphrases.  She is making a donation for each skein sold to an organization dedicated to reducing the backlog of untested rape kits.  Worthy charitable donation?  Connection to something fun?   It was a no brainer.  Santa is bringing me three skeins for Christmas.