sad and happy in cambridge

sadly, I have no digital camera still, and therefore no photos of my own of my roadtrip (lots on my travelling companion's camera!). also sadly, a few of my knitting needles are wandering aimlessly around the driveaway car I just drove cross-country, and will be very hard to retrieve.

happily, I made it to cambridge with relatively few mishaps and without overdrawing my bank account! (that's a first for any major vacation of mine). also happily, I bought some really fun, semi-variegated orange-ish yarn at Ewe Can Knit in Pittsburgh (which is a cool store and an even cooler city), destined to be a scarf for Hannukah or Xmas for some lovely manly friend of mine.

finished but for finishing:
1. my knee highs!
2. a very fun cozy... pics next time!
3. my brea bag
4. fi's loop-d-loop gloves (cheating here, actually, because I still have to knit 1 thumb)
5. one of my travelling companion's super cool birthday socks! the other one is not even begun. soon, though!

loved (in no particular order): little towns outside boulder, pittsburgh, hanging out with my parents' friends, tribeca, the george washington bridge, highway 1, burbank, visiting my brother, the grand canyon (especially talking about furries and fluffers and so on in french and bambara with my friend on her birthday while we hiked!), santa fe, ann arbor.

hated: nebraska, the ridiculous toll roads on the east coast, getting hit while parked by some asshole at night in DC, getting pulled over, having such a full car, going to target and wal-mart today, having to capture a cockroach in winthrop house.

also, I am very sad that the roadtrip is over, happy to have a few plans for the next year, sad to no longer be in arcata with my good friends, happy to be in cambridge with other good friends, sad to have to stick my nose to the grindstone, happy that I get to choose so much of that grindstone, sad to have to apply for fellowships, and very very happy to get to write a million very exciting letters in the next few days.

and that's about it!

crafting in my backyard

This is what I'm doing instead of reading Sartre on this beautiful summer day:

no sock blockers?

no problem!




i feel so clever.

actually, I think you can blame The Decemberists. I just started listening to them, and they're making me cleverer than I really am.

This is a really cute little victorian lace sock (from the six sox knitalong, which I just joined), knitted toe up in elann.com baby alpaca silk yarn, with a picot bind-off. phew! I was supposed to sell it and its so-far-hypothetical mate to my mom for her friend's three-year-old, but she felt the price was too high ($20? for your daughter? psh), so I'm going to make her some plain stockinette socks and see if I can sell these on etsy instead. I love my little sock blocker.... if you can't tell from the pictures, I traced the outline of the sock onto the back of an old spiral-bound notebook, and then just cut it out.... now it just needs to be waterproofed. I think covering it with packing tape will do the trick, but I'm not sure.

In other news...

my mom bought me this yarn from Solutions*
because I only have ugly purses
and she wants me to knit
a new, non-ugly one.

* Solutions: Arcata’s Environmentally Sound Products Store 928 9th St. Arcata, CA 95521. (707) 822-6972. They have no website.


It's destined to become an eco-friendly Brea Bag. Good road trip knitting, I think! (I'm driving from Arcata to Boston with a friend, starting on the 20th)

So, that's the knitting news. Now I'm off to Redwood Park to knit purple little stockinette socks for a three-year-old, bask in the sunlight, and, maybe, read Sartre. Happy knitting!

wow!

I started an etsy shop, finally. phew! Fiona, I promise not to become an annoying hipster who sells silly plastic earrings. I don't promise not to become an annoying hipster who wears silly plastic earrings, though. ;) anyway, although the vast majority of my knitting is still gift knitting, some of the stuff is in the shop! Here I am! (that's http://www.annemerteacozy.etsy.com), in case the link doesn't work for some reason. Anyway, I'm very sorry, dear blog, for not posting in so long, but I have to go work on Sartre and the Victorian Lace socks (which I'm doing toe-up in a child's size).
See you soon!

this is just to say...

blogging will recommence in earnest after finals. Sneak preview:

*vibrator cozies
*enough debbie bliss silk alpaca to knit a shrug for a friend, from said friend's mom
*STR kneesocks
*socks galore, actually
*sweaters?

until then, bonne tricotage!

frogging the non-knitting stuff

So I am not doing super-great.

I mean, blah blah blah, two science classes is too many science classes in a single semester, taking the Critique of Pure Reason was crazy (I love the professor but I have no love for Kant), yadda yadda yadda. I'm not shaping up to be a good student right now. Also, there's your run of the mill problems with interpersonal crap that I don't want to get into on the internet, but the upshot is that I feel like it's time for some kind of big, radical change.

I mean, I guess I'm having a little mini-identity crisis, but there are some good things about it. On the school front, for instance, I've realized that cutting-edge metaphysics is perhaps not for me in the way that I had thought it was for me... it's very exciting to read and all, but I don't actually enjoy doing the cutting-edge metaphysics, I guess, so I'm refocusing myself onto Sartre and memory and phenomenology because, let's face it, it's incredibly satisfying in a way that metaphysics and philosophy of science just can't be for me.

And then there's the knitting....

I've told myself that if I can get my crap together finishing up homework and midterms and also apply for an internship at McSweeny's before monday, I can order yarn and pattern for the sweater I want to make (isn't it pretty?).

Whoah. A sweater. Crazy.

I mean, not that I don't love socks anymore:

I wish I could make these knee-highs but I'm afraid I'm going to run out of yarn. The yarn is Socks that Rock, the colorway is Downpour, and I bought it in Seattle over spring break. Yum. I keep frogging bits of it to prolong the joy, because it's not often (read: never) that I decide to plunk down twenty-one dollars for a skein of sock yarn.

In other news, Craftlit is amazing, and I'm trying to work up the courage to listen to Turn of the Screw.

one monkey don't stop the show

So I fell off the blogging wagon for a while. So what? I've been knitting!

I broke my crappy digital camera, though, while travelling, and I have a ton of homework, so this was just a post to convince myself to post. More later, when roomie gets home and I can hijack her camera... though I may just switch back to the Asahi Pentax (ca. '71) single-lens reflex, because I do love it so.

That photo up there is me and the shmee and polly the cat in my native land (Arcata!), using a futon and some towels to block a 6-ft plus lacey scarf I knitted out of the Noro Kureyon fiona gave me for Christmas... sadly, it was my first attempt at blocking, so I stupidly blocked it with the smooth side of the stockinette up... so
it curled right up again soon. BOOO.
Hopefully the "extra-long, extra-narrow" college bed will work for blocking attempt no. 2!

I am doing a strange thing.

It all started like this...

I have an ugly sweater.

I have an ugly sweater made of beautiful yarn.

It cost two dollars, several years ago, at Vintage Avenger in Arcata, CA.

Its brand name is Geiger, and I kind of bought it just for the cool metal thing that says "Geiger". I was into Geiger counters at the time. I had bought an old one for my mom for christmas.

Judging by its ugliness, it was made circa 1985, but was still in perfect condition.

Details: sleeves about 3 times the size of my arms (and they are not tiny arms), also too long. Body too short. weird poofiness from shoulders down to too-tight, too-high waistband.

It did have lovely buttons, though. And the yarn! It's 67% wool, 17% mohair, and 16% acrylic. And it is SO SOFT! And those colors... it's a short of red/purple/black blend, but not variagated --- I think it's one strand of purple/red and one strand of a very dark blue or purple. Very fine. Almost small enough to be fingering weight.

I HATE this sweater.

And I LOVE this yarn.

So I am doing a strange thing.

I am chopping this sweater into pieces (sleeve, sleeve, body) and ripping the yarn out. Now, because it's steeked and the seams are machine sewn, I end up with a TON of pieces of yarn, between 1 and a half and 3 feet long each.

My floor is covered with little bits of purple mohair.

And I'm BY GOD going to knit me a new sweater. Probably from this pattern. Though with full-length sleeves and no stripes, obviously. I am a no-stripe gal. Pluswise, where would I ever find a contrasting color worthy of this yarn?

Color photos forthcoming, as soon as I get a paycheck or sell off some possessions or something and the moratorium on buying things like camera batteries (and *sniff* yarn) ends.

Also to come: socks from very vintage (and very tiny) yarn, socks for my Shmeeble (read: boyfriend), perfect fingerless mitts for mom, and other exciting items!