More Gifts

I finished some more gifts. The first is a pair of Suri socks. I bought two skeins at Stitches of Frog Tree. The yarn is so soft and light. The socks are great. They are a little big for me. Since they are for a man, I wonder if I should dye them a darker color. I like these socks so much that I think that I am going to use some maroon alpaca that I have upstairs to make another pair.

I knitted a pair of socks using Fortissima Colori. Not only did I mess up the size of the second sock, but the yarn isn't even close. The one sock has a blue colorway and the other skein has a red colorway. So, there is one pair of socks that I won't take the time to complete properly. Who would want a pair of socks that don't even come close to matching.



I knitted another scarf using Knitpicks Felici in Patina. This time I used Crystal Palace Lace Yarn which made the weave more open and the scarf lighter. I like the colorway of this one better than I do the other scarf.

Thanksgiving

This year, I am celebrating the fact that Mike and I are together for this so American of a holiday - Thanksgiving. And a celebration cannot be without lots of great food and drink.

On Wednesday evening I made the pumpkin pie and cranberry jelly. I also broiled the brine, let it cool, and started soaking the turkey. What a turkey. I ordered it a few weeks ago from our butcher down the street, "Let's Meat on the Avenue". It's a 15 pound free-range never frozen turkey.

On Thanksgiving day, I made the bread and garlic mashed potatoes and of course roasted the turkey and Mike made Gluewein.

And there was knitting. Here is a striped scarf knit in Knitpicks Felici in Dakota. With that scarf finished, I have just a few more knitted gifts to finish.

I knitted two more Monmouth caps and another gift - a Liberty or Death Cap for a friend's baby. I will add the pom-pom later.

I hope your Thanksgiving was spent with loved ones as well.

Progress of Too Many Unfinished Projects

I have been playing around with indigo-dyed wool in making Monmouth caps. Eventually, I would like to have a pattern that I can sell. I believe I am really close. Here are three of the latest "test" caps.

I finished the ribbing on top of one of my Noro stockings. Still have the other to finish. Doesn't the cochineal-dyed wool look great on the top? Seems to fit right in on the color scheme.


What is currently keeping me from finishing the Noro stockings is my Baby Cables and Big Ones Too sweater. I have ripped it out three times now because I didn't like what I saw or there were some major mistake. I am afraid that the dark color is going to "suck up" the cables. We'll have to see.

Close Up - see no cables

I started from scratch again this morning. I am up to twenty rounds.

The other project that took up most of my weekend was inventorying all the 1st Virginia Regiment's Quartermaster goods, taking pictures of each item, and starting to add them to the QM's website. Very detailed work with lots of counting tiny little items.

Knitting Socks Ribbing

I have started the ribbing on my Noro socks. I am using some wool that was dyed in a previous cochineal dye bath. I believe it looks good with the other colors of the yarn. But with size 0 needles, the ribbing goes slowly (doing K1R1 ribbing gets boring after just a few rows especially when I really want to be working on my sweater).

We finally downloaded Gwen's Ocean City picture (out front of Ripley's Believe it or Not). Too funny!

Mini-Vacation Ocean City Maryland

We could not have picked a worse weekend to have a min-vacation in Ocean City, Maryland. The weather was not so nice (rain Saturday, cold and very windy on Sunday).

We stayed at the Safari Motel right there on the boardwalk (13th Street). We were the only ones in the entire motel. And the hotels around were all closed up so it turned out to be a very quiet weekend. Our room was very simple and affordable this time of year ($59 per night versus hundreds of dollars). We were surprised to find most of the city boarded up for the season. Hardly anything was open. It would be depressing to live there year round - extremely busy in the summer and a ghost town all other times.

We drove around Assateague Island(Maryland side only) and saw some deer and ponies.

We saw about a dozen very brave souls kitesurfing on the coast.

On Sunday morning we rented some bikes (bikes in a very loose sense compared to the ones we own and commute on) and rode up and down the boardwalk.

I worked some more on my new sweater in the car, Baby Cables and Big Ones Too. Lots and lots of stitch markers to keep track of the different cables and the raglan increases. I am using KnitPicks Elegance Yarn in Raisin. It is an alpaca and silk mix (70/30).

And I started the ribbing around my Noro socks (sorry no picture yet). Since I ran out of yarn, I am using some left-over wool from my last cochineal dye.

Noro Socks

I almost have finished a pair of socks using the Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn that I bought at Stitches on Sunday. I have only the ribbing to do at the top of each sock.

The reason I didn't do it at the time they were on the machine, is because I ran out of yarn. I am going to have to knit the ribbing in another color. I have some cochineal dyed wool that will look great on the top of these socks.

Stitches East 2008

This is a picture of the USS Constellation harbored in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. We had lunch overlooking this ship right after we finished shopping at Stitches East. The weather was wonderful but not nice enough to keep us from spending 4 hours shopping.

I was overwhelmed with the amount of beautiful yarn filled the Baltimore Convention Center. Unfortunately, not a lot of undyed yarn for reenactment stockings. I did buy some yarn for myself though. My favorite is a Kureyon Noro sock yarn in Color 182 from The Mannings booth. The colors are just so beautiful. Can't wait to see what a pair of socks will look like with it. This picture doesn't do the colors justice - they are so much brighter.



I bought Vogue Knitting's The Ultimate Sock Book and Richard Rutt's A History of Hand Knitting because they had additional history of socks. I found a copy of Stepahnie Pearl-McPhee's new book Free Range Knitter. My last book is Shadow Knitting by Vivian HØxbro. And I actually won a book too! Babies and Toddlers A Knitter's Dozen.



Besides the Noro, I also bought 3 skeins of one ply wool from Cottage Craft that I will make into stockings. I believe the non-uniformity of the wool, will give the stockings an even greater look of the 18th century.

Another yarn to add to my stash are 10 skeins of Laines Du Nord silk in a bright red from Webs.

The very last yarn I indulged myself in are 2 skeins of Frog Tree 100% Brushed Suri in natural from Yarn Barn. Read about this lovely yarn at The Yarnery Blog.

Knit a Gogo Glam Knits at The Morrison House

This weekend I attended a design workshop with Stefanie Japel at the Morrison House in Alexandria, Virginia put on by Knit-A-GoGo. What a great weekend. Thanks Danielle for putting the whole weekend together.

Stefanie walked us through the steps to design our own top-down raglan sweater. Very informative. She made the math look really easy. And we cool gifts including Stefanie's latest book - Glam Knits.

I started one today. I took a picture of it but the picture doesn't really show you anything. So, sorry, no picture until later.

I did kinnear Stephanie right after we took a group photo.

Got the back of her head too.

I also got a private shot with her but my blackberry didn't take a really good photo.


To change the subject - I finally downloaded some of my pictures from the Gloucester trip two weeks ago. Here is my dye display table I set up on Saturday. The wind was so bad on Sunday that I wasn't able to set it out.