Moving right along!

Hey people! Last night I finished the Bell Curve Skirt, while watching Alice in Wonderland and MST3K with Sarah Jo. I only realized when I was nearly done with the star stitch hem that I had neglected to stagger the stars as the pattern said. Instead I just did k1, make star for every round, instead of make star, k1 every other round. But I didn't really consider ripping it out because just those few rounds had taken hours (probably because I was so engrossed in the movie), and it didn't look bad, so I just left it and finished it as it was. Bound off, and tonight I'm going to wash it so it will actually be WEARABLE and not leak dye all over EVERYTHING! I'm thinking about taking pictures of all the different places in my house that have blue handprints all over them, just so you can all see what I'm talking about.



Here's a picture of the skirt, but not done, because I haven't uploaded the finished picture yet. I'll do that after it's washed and I can model it for you. Sarah Jo says it's going to shrink a lot in length when I wash it, so I made it longer than the pattern called for, added some extra rounds. I'm also a teensy bit worried that the star pattern will leave see-through-able gaps, and my underwear/skin will be slightly visible, but Sarah Jo said that the shrinking will probably close most of the gappy areas, and if I just make sure to wear dark underwear it should be fine. It's a fairly heavy skirt, so I may end up wearing stockings under it anyway. But it's adorable! I love it. After washing it, all I have to do is sew in the elastic waistband, weave in ends and it's done!


My Karira sock!



Another woefully inadequate picture-- it doesn't even show one quarter of the GORGEOUSNESS of this color. It's like a beautiful jadey-seaweedy color, and the pattern and color combination definitely give it the seaweedy-feeling.

After a few requests from other people in the Ravelry KAL, and my own personal issues with the charts, I wrote out both of the charts into written instructions, which is helping me a TON. I just really dislike reading charts, and it makes it frustrating to knit, so the written instructions = awesome. I posted them on the KAL group and hopefully others will get some good use out of them too. So far I've finished two repeats of the lace pattern. One more and I'm ready to move on to the foot. :) Which is my favorite part of sock shaping by far. I did discover that I was accidentally using one size 1 circ and one size 2 or 3 circ by accident, which might be the reason why the sock is kind of loose. So I switched it out for another size 1. I don't know if it'll make much of a difference, but at least I'll feel better about it.

Yesterday at work I added some more gorgeous yarn to my stash:


It's Malabrigo Kettle-Dyed Worsted Merino. It is SO SOFT and SO PRETTY and it wasn't even very expensive. I know what I'm going to make-- a winter hat. (To match my fictitious Noro coat.) It's going to be GORGEOUS.

Did I mention my Noro coat? I got the idea to knit a thigh-length coat from either Noro Furoside or Noro Iro, which are both worsted/bulky weight ish, though Iro is heavier. I like Furoside's colorways better, but the Iro is definitely more heavy-coat material, so I've got some thinking to do. I have a vision in my head. A Stockinette Pea-coat inspired garment, kind of long, like to mid or lower thigh, with garter stitch hem and sleeve cuffs, in all different crazy colorways haphazardly thrown together, with a heavy traditional folding collar, a few large buttons, and deep pockets. I'm sorry, but it would be gorgeous. And I'm going to make it. It is also going to be very expensive, since one skein of Furoside is $18.75 and one skein of Iro is $20.25 or something like that, and I'll probably need at LEAST five or six skeins. But I don't care. I feel rich when I have beautiful yarn. It actually makes me happy to glance over at my work table and see skeins of deep, richly colored, soft yarn sitting there waiting for me. It fills me with more joy than cash does, so I don't feel a bit guilty and you can't make me!!!!!