Vacation

Knitting up a storm while I'm back in New York for the summer. Right now I've got three ongoing projects and two hibernating, and a few more planned.

I've started three new ones since I've gotten here. In order:

Carousel socks
Found these on Knitty. I like unusually constructed socks so I pulled out a sock blank from a few summers ago and wound it into two balls. It was dyed in a graded pattern, darker teal at the bottom, moving towards lighter until it was a very light teal. It was fun, knitting it in a round spiral and attaching as you go, but I began to be worried that I wouldn't reach the deeper teal at all. Here it is now, sans cuff:

 

You can see that the dark teal is only present now as the cuff, which is the last part of the sock. I did it in this order: sock body, heel, toe, cuff. Instead of picot like in the pattern I'm just doing a 2x2 rib. It's very tight, so it's not the most comfortable sock. In other words I'm not itching to start the second one, though it was a pretty quick knit, done mostly on the train.

Baby Blanket

 My cousin and his wife are due with a girl in September, so I dove in to a baby blanket using the same yarn I used for my friend Michelle's baby blanket last year, since I have a lot of it left. I chose a pretty lace pattern because it's a girl, instead of a more geometric pattern like the one I used for Michelle's, and a leaf motif which I think fits in nicely with the whole autumn thing:

I really like the pattern, though it's complex and not easily memorized and I have to refer to the pattern every thirty seconds. Even though I added a repeat it's still not very wide, so it won't be so big, but the other blanket I made stretched a LOT so it will grow. One skein yields about 11" of length, so I'll probably end up using two or two and half skeins. I'd like to finish it before I leave so I don't have to bring it back to Israel and then mail it back to New York, but I'll have to do a lot of quick knitting to achieve that. However, I think it is possible.

Mom's Scarf
I asked my mother if she wanted me to knit her anything while I'm home, and she requested a nice grown-up scarf, on the sole condition that I make it using yarn I already had. So I began a lovely cabled scarf with some old gray acrylic that I used to make her a skirt two years ago:

I missed cables!! I haven't made anything with serious cables since last year. The pattern calls for double moss stitch on the side panels, but apparently that requires a lot of blocking and looks kind of messy besides, so I'm using the suggestion of another Raveler to change it to regular moss stitch instead and hopefully it should require no blocking whatsoever. So far it's nice and flat. I really want to work on it, but the blanket is sort of my priority. Mom also wants a matching hat, which I'll have to improvise but it should be fun to do.

Yesterday I visited Michael's-- how I miss that store!!! Oh how I wish we had something comparable in Israel!-- and bought some new yarn. I got yarn for a cute little short-sleeved top, a new yarn, it seems, classic Caron Super-soft in a light weight:

 

I also got a few skeins of sock yarn for possible Hanukkah presents, but I won't post them here for that reason. Wink. I can't wait to go back and get MORE! But every time I go to shop for new yarn I think guiltily about all the yarn I have and don't use . . . but whenever I buy new yarn I'm like, no, it's different this time, I will USE this! . . . Silly me.  There is no stopping The Stash. 

And on another, very exciting note, some of the books that I worked on for Cooperative Press during  my internship two years ago are OUT!!!!!! Shannon sent me copies and I got them yesterday-- SO EXCITING!!!!

Gorgeous!! When I was there, we were just entering the development stage-- picking the patterns, contacting the designers, setting them up with yarn support, etc. That's what I did-- and here are the fruits of my labors! Beautiful designs, gorgeous yarn, all put together in a sexy series of fun little books! The first four of ten are out now-- Scarves, Shawls, Men and Sweaters. Hats, Bags, Mittens & Gloves, Kids, Toys, and Home will follow. I'm listed as the Developmental Editor for each book. BUY THEM IF YOU SEE THEM!! They're worth it! The patterns are so cute! As you can see I've already marked lots of patterns I want to try!

Loving hanging out at home, watching Law and Order, knitting, playing Scrabble with my mom, shopping, and eating lots of junk food.