Plath’s Adventures

Favorite Color Swap
Originally uploaded by plath.

My favorite color swap package arrived the other day, and here it is! I got some wonderful green Knitpicks Wool of the Andes, some orange novelty yarn, great stitch markers, a fantastic tinkly frog windchime, a mini garden gnome (so cute!), and there’s also a copy of the Summer IK hiding under there. Thank you so much Missprissknits!!!!!

I’ve done a little knitting this week, but my focus has primarily been on embroidery as of late. Here is my first embroidery work:

And here is my second:

They’re both tea towels, and I used patterns from the Stitch-It Kit. I really love her patterns. In fact, I’ve already ordered her new book Sublime Stitching: Hundreds of Hip Embroidery Patterns and How-To. I can’t wait for it to arrive! I also ordered a few patterns from her regular site, as well at Sublime Stitching. I also plan on attempting to trace a few coloring book pages for ideas to stitch, and I have a couple of tattoo flash pics from one of Jason’s tattoo magazines planned, too.

I guess you could say that I’ve definitely caught the embroidery bug I mentioned before that I did find a little something to purchase at the Michigan Fiber Festival, and here is my lone purchase:

Sock yarn from Shelridge Farms. I love the colors. We also checked out the animals, and Jason is actually considering getting alapacas! I doubt it will happen, but we are zoned agricultural, so it’s definitely possible for our area.

Awesome new search engine with prizes to win, like Blingo!

Whenever someone in your “group” wins, you win, too. Ahhh I love stuff for nothing. LOL

The Fiber Festival was nice, but I didn’t buy much– only 2 hanks of sock yarn. That was a bit of a disappointment, and I almost hate to say it, since we drove 6 hours round trip, but I think I like the Yellow Springs Wool Gathering festival a bit better. There were definitely more animals at the MI Fiber Fest, though, and Jason appreciated that. I may have him almost talked into getting an alpaca! We shall see.

The Nascar race was a blast, but unfortunately both Jason and I came down with food poisoning that night. We’re still recuperating, so I’ll post more later this week. Took a sick day yesterday, but I’m at work today, and feeling awful still, although definitely better than yesterday. I have *never* been so sick.

I hope to come back with lots of exciting pictures for you after this weekend. Thanks for those of you who left tips on my Green Gables, but I went for broke and this is now what she looks like:

I lost a little yarn in the ripping process, so I’ll probably have to buy a new skein or two, but I plan on casting on for the smaller size sometime soon. I’m not as torn up about it as I thought I would be. It was actually sort of empowering to know that I did it so I will have a fabulous fitting (crosses fingers!) sweater that I’ll actually wear.

I did, however, get to wear my other FO– Cavern Cardi to work this week. It was super-comfy and I love the little ties.

I’ve been in the mood to start a new craft lately. I even stopped into a big box craft store on my lunch hour this week for some inspiration on what to try next, but I came out empty handed. But I was stopped dead in my tracks after seeing the embroidery on the Sublime Stitching Website. Embroidery it is!
I bought this kit from Amazon:

It has instructions, 2 tea towels, 35 iron on patterns that are cool and retro-y, a hoop and a needle. I’m so excited to try it out! Just what I need– another obsession. I already added her newest book with patterns to my Amazon Wishlist:

It comes out in October

Well, I have lots to catch up on house-wise. We have an exciting weekend planned, so I won’t be able to do the whole clean the house routine I normally do on Saturdays. Saturday is the Michigan Fiber Fest, and Sunday we’re going to the Nascar race. We’re not huge fans, but Jason got us vip tickets and pit passes, so it should prove to be fun. The last time he went, he got to meet a lot of the drivers.

Sitting here at work, I’m feeling an overwhelming urge to create. Darn silly job!

Anyway, I have good news, and bad news.
I cast off on Green Gables last night! (that’s the good news)
Modifications:
I made mine a bit longer than the pattern called for, and did 5 rounds of ribbing at the hem, instead of just 3. I also added a row to the sleeve ribbing as well.

Pattern: Green Gables by Zephyr Style
Yarn: Knitpicks Main Line yarn in Silver Sage. 5 1/2 balls. I really do love this yarn, contrary to what you might believe from my previous post. I think it was the bag they put the yarn in that added a bit of stinkyness. I’m already eyeing more for future projects Too bad it’s not 40% off any longer, but I do have a little stash of the Dusty Lavender.
Needles: Denise size 7 and 5
Cast on: August 6
Cast off: August 14
Size: 34

Overall, I was pretty happy with this pattern, but not so happy with the fit (that’s the bad news). Other than a few typos (which always annoy me), it seems to be pretty well-written, but it’s a very basic knit, if you don’t take the lacework (which is easy, too) into consideration. I know a lot of people have issues with the Zephyr Style patterns because they don’t provide schemantics, but the patterns have no seams, and I’m a sucker for seamless patterns. I’m awful at finishing. Really bad.

Now on to the fit. I know I have narrow shoulders– always have, always will, but the neckline on this is huge on me. I’ve peeked around at all Green Gable FOs out there in blogland, and no one else seems to have this problem, so it must just be me. Unless I want to wear it slightly off the shoulder with a tank, ala Flashdance, it’s a no go. So throw the no finishing out the window, I’m going to have to come up with some kind of “taking in” to make it work, or it will be frogville for Green Gables. Sigh. I guess I should have knit the smaller size, but I’m pretty happy with the fit elsewhere.

Full body picture:

Sorry for the crappy bathroom mirror shots– Jason is out of town, so it’s all I can get right now.

The offending neckline:

Next up? I’ve joined the knitalong on the Cotton Ease Yahoo Group, and have started a Something (Red) Blue in Blueberry Cotton Ease. I should have lots of knitting time available to me in the coming weeks, as dh will be out of town tonight, and then most of next week and the week after. I actually cheated and cast on last night while watching the finale of Hell’s Kitchen. Boo. I wanted Virginia to win.

However, I do have more good news (cross fingers!) –we’re planning on going to the Michigan Fiber Festival this weekend. I’ve neglected to post about this as of yet, because it’s 3 hours away (think of all the car knitting!), and I felt for sure that Jason would back out, but he still seems game. Cross your fingers he doesn’t bail! After the Fiber Fest, I must go on a yarn buying curb. I just bought 4 skeins of Southwest Trading Company’s Soysilk Ribbon from Wild String’s going out of business sale. I don’t even like ribbon yarn really, but it was only $5 a skein and I’ve been dying to try soysilk!

I am now officially cool

I finally have one of these courtesy of my mom and my belated birthday present:

I’ve been listening to podcasts non-stop.

Definitely love:

Lime & Violet
Really cute and quirky, with lots of stash enhancement and yarn raves.

Tim Gunn’s Project Runway Podcast
He provides great insight to the show and behind the scenes tidbits.

Knitcast
Really nice interviews.

Cast On
I didn’t think I would like the music interspersed throughout the dialogue, but I really enjoyed her music choices, especially in the latest– Josh Woodward’s song. I also liked the little snipets into her life– much like a blog, I love reading/hearing about people’s lives along with their knitting.

D.I.N.K.S. on TV- Project Runway Now I do like their Postshow podcast, but not their pre-show. I really do enjoy their input on what happened on the show, though. Their preshow felt like it just kept going on and on.

Not for me, but you might like them:

Knitting News
Seemed a bit redundant to me.

Knit2bTied
Difficult for me to hear what’s going on, and not a lot of actual knitting content.

While listening to knitting podcasts yesterday, I managed to weave in the ends to my Cavern Cardi, and get it blocked. Here’s a sad blocking picture. I had to mess around with the flash to get it to take right, and it looks splotchy because it’s still damp.

Yarn: Cotton Ease in Licorice (can’t remember how many- sorry!)
Needles: Denise
Pattern: Cavern Cardigan

As I mentioned last week, I did cast on for Green Gables as well. Here was my progress as of yesterday afternoon:

And here is what she looks like this morning:

I’m using the Knitpicks Mainline, and I do like it quite a bit, although it seems to be a bit sticky and stinky. Has anyone else experienced this?

I didn’t do much yesterday except laze around listening to podcasts and knitting. It was quite nice. Here’s my lazy Saturday Sky. I stepped out onto the porch to take it– it’s a view from my front yard.

I’m contemplating signing up for Tote Exchange 2, but I think I’m going to pass. I’m getting a bit panicked about Christmas being here in only a little over 4 months, so I don’t think I should commit to something that takes up a ton of time. I love drooling over the totes everyone came up with for Tote Exchange 1, though!

However, I did sign up for Rox’s dishcloth exchange. I found a great pattern for a dishcloth that I had to test-knit over the weekend, and I love how it turned out, so I figured why not? Alternately, there’s also the mystery dishcloth along if I get bored with the pattern I chose.

I just realized that I hadn’t won anything on Blingo in a while, because I switched back to Google for some reason. So don’t forget about Blingo! If you’re not already signed up, click on my linky to win movie tickets, visa gift cards or ipods just by searching. It’s super-easy, and I’ve already won at least 5 movie tickets.

Yarn Junkie let me know that unkymoods is back, though now renamed punky moods! I love the cute little graphics, and was just thinking of how I missed them the other day.

Finally, I swiped this from someone’s blog and don’t remember who. If you’ve read this far, consider yourself tagged!

Five items in my freezer:
1. Breyers Lowfat Mint Chocolate chip ice cream

2. Quorn “chicken” nuggets

3. Morningstar parmesan ranch “chicken” patties

4. various bits and ends of homemade bread, waiting to be defrosted and whirred into homemade breadcrumbs

5. frozen veggies

Five items in the closet:

1. giant pile of shoes which need to be sorted

2. giant pile of purses which need to be sorted

3. some cotton yarn I picked up a thrift store a while back

4. England things waiting to be scrapbooked

5. a rug I haven’t seen since I put it in there because it’s piled full of the above LOL

Five items in the car:
1. a book– Goodbye, Jimmy Choo

2. first aid kit

3. emergency tampons

4. my sing along cd mix

5. a pencil. no I do not know why I would need a pencil while in my car, but it’s there.

Five items in my purse:
1. dark chocolate and mint candy bar

2. Orbit cinnamint gum

3. Whole Foods grocery bag

4. the book Lolita, which I’m reading for the Knit the Classics read/knitalong

5. 3 sugar in the raw packets I stole from starbucks (before you lecture, I got decaf!)

In exciting knitting news, I finished my cardigan, and now just need to weave in the ends and block! I also promptly cast on for Green Gables on Sunday, and am already past the lace part, and onto the main body. Woohoo!

I leave you with a very addicting website http://www.oceangram.com/ You can send a virtual message in a bottle to be picked up by any random person, and you can also pick up other people’s bottles and add to their messages. It’s very addicting waiting for that bottle to appear! (yes I do actually work on my job, kinda)