White Rice Is Exciting

Hello friends! The last two and a half weeks have been quite a challenge. The special diet I was put on left me completely exhausted. This week I was told that I am allowed to start reintroducing things to my diet, but I'm being careful and adding only one new thing a day. (As a side note, you know your diet is strict when the idea of plain white rice fills you with joy.) There are more doctor visits to be had, but I'm just celebrating the little things as they come... you know, when I'm not stressing out about all the things I haven't gotten around to.

One of the things I have managed to get around to is finishing up the two baby Giraffe Hat samples. They came out cute! They now live at Green Planet Yarn, which is where you can find kits for these hats.

I also finished my Geographer Socks. They only took me... three months. There was a time I could get a pair of socks out in 8-10 days. Actually, I'm not sure how people can get socks done so quick. Either they knit faster, or, more likely, they have smaller feet than me.

I'm so happy with how these came out: matching and my size

With the Geographer socks finished, I got to go into my stash and pick out my next pair of socks. Out came Stray Cat Socks yarn in the Jaffa color way. My feeling on socks is the louder the better. If I can still hear you when you talk to me, my socks aren't loud enough.

Confession: I just went to Stray Cat's page so I could give you all the link. I'm really tempted by the Lilah color way. So very tempted. I'm going to be good because I'm knitting so slowly and clearly don't need more yarn. But if I needed more yarn, it would be that ball.

Since the Jaffa socks were the only thing on the needles, I decided it was high time to cast on another Equatorial Nights. It should have been for Mum's birthday last month. You can see how far I got on that. It might be awhile before it is done, but at least it has been started.

That's all the current knitting, but not all the current work being done. I've got a shawl pattern to put out this week. If things go well, it will be out tomorrow, if not, Friday instead. So me and my celery juice will be working on that for the next few hours.

Disclaimer: I hate celery and am torturing myself with doctor prescribed healthy things in an effort to never have to go on this terrible diet ever again. Also, I've decided to never drink another straight celery juice after this one. It is salty and weird.

As The Needles Click

I have not been well for awhile. The last time I mentioned that things were not right was in April. I thought I was on the mend back then, but it wasn't to last. Since then I have visited many a doctor and been probed, scanned, and prescribed. After ruling out some really scary things, I made it to my nutritionist and it looks like we may have found an answer. I'm on a rather strict diet of meat along with certain fruits and vegetables now. I won't lie, I am mourning the loss of cheese, butter, and grains in my diet. (We just bought fancy cheese! Drat.) But if this works, I'll finally feel better.

While this has been going on, I've done my best to keep on knitting, designing, and being generally creative. I've had quite a few days of being exhausted, so progress has been slow. Never the less, I do have a little knitting to show off. I've been working on some shop samples. A baby giraffe hat and the cow variant of the baby giraffe hat.

After the second hat is complete, I'll put together the ears and horns

With all the doctor visits, I've snuck in a round or two of my Geographer socks. I was almost at the toe, but I noticed that there were two consecutive rounds that were rather loose. I don't want these socks to wear out prematurely, so I went ahead and ripped back a little to fix the problem.

Now that the Pucker socks are done, I feel I can use the white to mend my Sheep May Safely Graze socks. It turns out that the white I eventually chose, Rosy Green Wool Cheeky Merino Joy, is really too weak for the heels. Heels are my wear point and after wearing the socks three different times, I have had to mend the heels two different times. I'm planning to rip out the heel (and maybe the toes for good measure) and replace it with some Baa! La Jolla in the La Perla color. I think the Rosy Green Wool will last just fine for the rest of the sock. I'm looking forward to being able to put my sheep socks back into regular rotation.

Being Still

It has been slow going here at the Bear Ears household. After getting better from one illness, another set in. And as I started to recover again, my poor computer developed a crack in its screen. (I was told it was flaw, not something I had done. I knew that. I baby the thing and the crack appeared while sitting quietly watching a video.) All of this occurred right before leaving for a trip we had been planning for a few months. Knowing that there was no way to go on the trip unless I got better, I dropped everything and became still. I'd forgotten how important it is to have times of silence and thoughtfulness. I had run myself down much lower than I had realized. Not just physically, but emotionally and creatively as well. Being sick was a blessing in disguise. 

While being more still, I also was able to finish up a design that has been in the works for the past two years. (Knitting counts as still, right?) It is off with the test knitters at the moment. It is everything I wanted it to be and it only took many months of hair pulling to get it right.

As with everything else that has slowed down, so has the sock knitting. Two months ago I was putting the toe into my Pucker sock (left) and working on the heel of the striped sock (right). I've hardly made it down the leg of either second sock.

I do have a little bit of happy yarn news though... well happy for me. While we were gone on our trip, a new skein of yarn appeared in my mailbox. I purchased it in March and waited to have it dyed. It is the Monopoly Money color way from Desert Vista Dyeworks. It is pretty and I love it. It seems like the kind of future socks that would be great to wear at a game night.

I'm a bit more motivated to get a sock done so that I can play with my new yarn. Mmmm.... new yarn.

We're All Mad In Here Redux

Could it be? I have a FO? After being stalled on all sorts of projects and finding motivation in none, I decided that every day I was going to knit one more stripe in these socks and eventually they would finish themselves. 

The heels match, like usual. I don't care if they laugh at knit night. I'm sure they are just jealous of my self-striping heel matching prowess. 

I've knit these socks before. We're All Mad In Here color way was the first Canon Hand Dyes I ever knit with. Unfortunately they faded. 

The sock on the left is the faded one. It almost looks like it is in shadows compared with the new one on the right.

Here is a close up of the damage. I've since been re-fixing all of my socks to help them resist fading. These were far from the only pair to fade, but because they had been neon, the contrast was much more stark. Luckily the old socks won't go to waste. Mum has found that she not only likes hand knit socks, she likes them even better when they've been worn in. Apparently they are more cozy. That works for me.

The sock on the left is in the Oscar base. The sock on the right is ion the Charles base.

Of course finishing my on-the-go pair of socks meant I could start a new pair. I didn't realized I had been so starved of a new project until I started knitting  this one. I blinked and I'm already at the heel.
The yarn is from Opal's now discontinued Little Prince series, the color is The Geographer, and there is a mildly embarrassing story as to why it needs to be knit now. I bought the skein back in November of 2013. After that I carted it around everywhere I went. I think it even came with me to New Zealand in 2014. Wei Siew saw it and was enchanted, so I found a skein at Stitches 2015 and sent to her. The embarrassing part is that she knit up her socks with her far newer skein before I got around to mine. So I'm knitting them now.

Progress has been steady on my other WIPs. I got more yarn for the shawl I'm designing. I had to unravel a few rows so I could blend the new skein in better. It took some time, but the shawl is now ready to be knit again. The Pucker sock is growing slowly but surely. I am ready to put in the toe on the first sock. (Finally!) I just need some quiet time to figure it out. The toe is a little different than my usual one because the mosaic pattern is 72 stitches around and I need it to be 64 stitches early on. I'm glad I have my Geographer socks to keep me sane while I work on the other two projects that need brain power.
There is one more thing in that photograph that I want to share and it also has a little story. I was reading Alicia's blog and saw a delightful bag. (See the second picture down.) I lusted, but decided I didn't want to buy a kit I wasn't interested in for the bag. The same day while reading Monica's blog that I saw a second bag and lusted over it. (See the third picture down.) After a bit more research I realized that those bags were both made by Jenna Rose. It was going to be a birthday present, but the bag accidentally got sent to our old address. We tried to get it back, but it was long gone. (I hope whoever stole it likes it a whole bunch.) So we ordered a second one. It became more of an anniversary present. It is my new favorite. It sits open really well and, well, I love that Jenna dyes and screen prints the fabric herself.

So that is what is going on in my knitting life. I'm still painting and learning all I can. It is exciting to have a new area in which to be creative.