the fiber fetishist

A REALLY crappy photo (the camera fell and uh, partially broke last week plus it’s not even light outside yet), but:

mmmmmalabrigo

Doesn’t everyone get up and wind (tangled freaking hanks of) yarn at 6am?

be still my heart

I haven’t been buying much yarn — small quantities for defined gifts mostly. I have plenty. The allure is not as compelling. Most of the time.

yarn hug

But I’ve been thinking about knitting a fingering weight sweater for myself lately and that’s a weight I don’t have a sweater’s quantity of yarn in. I was musing, thinking about it for a couple of months. Then I came upon perfection at The Sanguine Gryphon, in their Little Traveller superwash merino yarn. This is a lovely deep red, Groton.

couldn’t quit you if I wanted

It is taking a lot of restraint to not drop everything and work with it immediately.

one mad hatter

My youngest sister is out here visiting again due to a well-timed business trip. I got it in my head that she should arrive to a new hat. Why? Why not?

from the back

Some leftover Cascade 109, big needles (US10), and Rosi G’s (the soapy knitter)’s Capitan Hat… win!

mad

Except I ran out of the red yarn. I ended up working the row before the purl turning row on the brim in black yarn, a look I liked in the end. But I did not come up with enough red yarn for the strap across the hat, so it seems a little unfinished. At least the contrast color edge makes it look a little more complete.

The pattern is great and it knit up really quickly. I like it! And hm, I have plenty of black yarn left…

After having some painful dental work done today, I dropped by the library to pick up a couple of books.

maybe I should apply GTD to crafting

I’ve had The Modern Quilt Workshop on my “interested” list for a while. I kept coming across really awesome quilts on flickr from it. Just a few examples – love beads by tea_couture, outside the box by anna_levengood, once upon a time by emptybobbin. I just love the designs and the colors and how fun they are.

I’ve only flipped through the book so far, but it looks like it has a decent amount of information for a small book, plus templates. Someday I will have the courage to try to do curved piecing! This book details how.

the winner

Back in June, I made a few tawashi. I used them some, storing their colorful selves near the kitchen sink and tossing them in the washer and dryer with the towels every week (they go in dirty and gross but come out looking brand new. magic!).

In September we moved into this house and I moved the tawashi with me, putting them near the main kitchen sink. I have noticed that while I prefer to use my Trader Joe’s scrubbers, my lovely spouse prefers to use tawashi to wash the dishes. How cool is that? The one above is his favorite. It incorporates crocheted bobbles for extra scrubbing action!

E (PokingMyEyesOut) and I went to Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat last February and had a good time in the Latvian Mittens class with Beth Brown-Reinsel.

my completed mitten

The class list for 2010 Madrona has been released. I see a few classes I’d like to take — fair isle yoke design, Komi designs, and a bunch of spinning classes. I told myself last year that knitting classes probably aren’t worth it for me, but spinning would be.

What classes are you interested in taking?

tricksy, I am?

Sunday afternoon cast ons for company visiting later this week. Will I finish in time? We shall see!

Sometimes thinking about the next project is the most fun part.

this or this or something else entirely?

I’ve been thinking about henleys. I love henleys. The details of a henley push the top from a plain old thing to something with a little bit more interest.

These two henley style sweaters — Slinky Ribs by Wendy Bernard [ravelry] and Elizabeth Zimmermann’s seamless yoke with henley [ravelry] — have been in my queue forever. I have the yarn for each of them.

Who will be up next in the for-self-queue?

sanity check
excuse my duvet cover and flash light!

When knitting large sweaters in the round from the bottom-up, I like to do a sanity check before I get too far. I slipped Fugl onto some scrap yarn and compared it to Cobblestone, which fits the way N likes.

Success! Now to put it back on the needle and keep going with the miles upon miles upon miles of stockinette in the round.

There has been a movement to make this month Vestvember (flickr | ravelry).

hey, the ribbing is done

I’ve been focusing on Habitat and Fugl, but I pulled out this just-barely-started Honeycomb (ravelry | my project page) and shook it out.

I haven’t touched it since July, when we had that crazy-Seattle-heatwave. Maybe I’ll pick it up before the month is over. Maybe I won’t. But I am thinking about it.