A Day In The Life - 5KCBWDAY1

It's that time of year again. It's knit/crochet blog week. I've participated the last few years, so I thought I'd give it a go again. Today's topic is: Talk about the day in the life of a project, completed or still being worked on. Without further ado, I give you the day in the life of my Pomme De Pin from the point of view of the Pomme de Pin.

So there I was, minding my own business whilst being knit upon. I was almost asleep when I vaguely heard something about "checking to see how big I really was". Usually that just means being measured. But not today.

Next thing I know I'm being dragged outside. Things weren't looking so good on the nap front.

I started to shout, "Hey, n- blub blub blub..." Since I was busy drowning, I protested by staining the water green.

After being dragged out of the water, I was shoved roughly into a towel and pressed until my stitches were flattened. This knitter was quite determined not to give me a breath of air.

All that was followed by a good stretching and pinning. If it was information the knitter wanted, I would have given it freely. I already knew that I was 15 inches long. There was no need for all the rough treatment.

Although I will admit that I do look quite attractive now.

Pomme de Pin Will Be Mine. That And Socks.

Now that the Skews are all done, I've cast on for All The Things. Let the record stand that "All the things" means 2 new projects. I had wound up this skein of Canon Hand Dyes Charles in the Fall Leaves color way awhile ago. Somehow a bunch of deadlines got in the way, so the cake of yarn stared at me... until now. It is going to be a pair of vanilla socks. 

Fun fact: this was the first skein of Canon Hand Dyes that I ever bought. We won't talk about how many skeins I have now...

Then I cast on for a Pomme de Pin out of Cephalopod Yarns Bugga! in the Nebraska Conehead color way. I've been knitting and knitting on this, and feels like growth is pretty slow. Don't get me wrong, it is an addictive knit. But I've forgotten how long a sport weight all-over lace sweater can take to knit. Also, it is one of those patterns where it looks much smaller before blocking.

It is really tough to trust a swatch, but in the case of this cardi, I'm going to have to. Once it blocks, it is going to be gorgeous!

I've decided not to cast on anything else until this sweater is done because I want to wear it now! 

Skew

I finished my Skews! I love how the colors pooled along the heels... and the cuffs... actually I love all of it.

The yarn is Handmaiden's Casbah in the Aurora color way. I did make some small modifications. Among them was changing the rib into a 64 stitch 2x2 rib. The details are on my ravelry project page.

Let's just spend some time looking at how pretty these are.

Usually I'm more disciplined with how many pictures I put up of one project. But every angle of these socks make me happy. Now I just need some cold weather so I can wear them.

Has anyone else got a project that has made them just as happy?

Spinning All The Things

My Ravellenic project this year was going to be spinning a 3 ply sock yarn on my spindle. I was making really good time on it, but after having a bit of a design emergency, the project sat. I just wasn't motivated to finish once the Olympics had ended. However, my desire for the yarn grew, so yesterday I finished off the second bump of wool. I only have one more to go before plying! 

Greenwood Fiberworks sock roving in the Enchanted colorway

Unfortunately, after finishing the second bump I tried to slip it off the spindle onto a knitting needle and it didn't go well. I had no problem the first time. I'm not sure what changed. Tyler suggested I wind off all the yarn with my ball winder. It took a couple hours, but I was able to rescue the yarn without having to cut any of it. (I won't lie... I did get close to making fiber confetti.) Now the singles live on toilette paper tubes... because that is all I could think of putting them on after winding them.

I hadn't spun yarn on my wheel in quite some time because I don't feel like I should start another project for the wheel without finishing the epic blanket project I've been working on for the last few years. But you know how that goes: no spinning of any kind has gotten done. I'm too stubborn to break the arbitrary no-new-wheel-projects rule I've made for myself. Having such a big project still sit around really started to bother me, so I spun the singles and plied this beast of a skein in one day.

And now that it is done, I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I think I have one more skein beast and one slightly smaller skein to go before I am done with the spinning! 

Scooter And Tangey

I realized that I haven't had a proper Scooter post since last August. Scooter hasn't been up to too much trouble since then. But the other day we saw his cat friend, Tangey, during walkies. Tangey (pronounced like the beginning of tangerine) hasn't been around much as of late. But whenever he sees Scooter, he runs out from wherever he is to say hi. There aren't too many cats around our neighborhood who are excited to see Scooter.

This is the only time I've ever been able to get a picture of Scooter and Tangey

Scooter loves Tangey. They sniff each other, which is rather adorable. Sometimes Tangey will roll over, which Scooter doesn't like very much. Even though Tangey doesn't use claws, he likes bopping Scooter on the nose. Scooter isn't into that.

During our visit, Scooter inevitably gets distracted and goes to sniff a nearby plant, so I pet Tangey a bit to thank him for coming over.

The Golden Fleece

On Saturday I had a delightful time at The Golden Fleece signing books and and helping people figure out what size of the Robin Hoodie would fit them the best. I almost left with no pictures until my Mum pointed out the beautiful display. Gunilla did a fabulous job. I've never seen all the Lit Knit garments displayed so well at the same time. Plus, Celestarium made an appearance.

I failed to leave without yarn. I had spotted this two weeks... and... well... it is a darn good yarn. Each skein is 600yds (540m) of single ply silk and I believe that the yarn is sourced from textile waste. The color way is Dark Sand and I'm planning to make an Hélène. Then there were beads. I think you all can see what happened next.

Has anyone else recently found a new-to-you yarn that you are excited about? I'd love to hear about it.

California Poppies Everywhere

This past weekend I went to visit my brother. On the way down south, we stopped by the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. 

This year was much better than last year. First off, it was green, and second, there were poppies.

Although there were quite a few poppies at the preserve, there were carpets of poppies outside of it. I've never seen an area that was just plain orange.

I got my jumping picture. And being the pro that I am, I remembered to tuck in my shirt on the first photo. 

This is probably the first time I've remembered to tuck in my shirt on the first photo

I also was able to get poppy sock pictures by the poppies. They came out really well, if I do say so myself.