Lordy, lordy, look who's 40!!

I'm 40. 

It hasn't quite sunk in yet. 

Gifties; I was spoiled! Great knitting themed gifties from my favourite dude; a bad-ass hoodie! 

                                                            and the best mug ever!

Plus some patterns that were on my wish list, 1999 by Tincanknits, Campside Cardi by Alicia Plummer and the Estelle Pullover by Linden Down (which also included the cardigan version-cool!). I also received some lovely notions from Mah Knitta; 

There are 5 stitch markers but I started using one to mark the beginning of round on my sleeves right away. The picture doesn't do the bead justice, it's dark blue, very reflective and brings out the crazy colours in the sweater. (It really is bat shit crazy). Perfect!

There were other awesome gifties, but they aren't knitting related so I'm not going to write about them, except to say, books are on the way and I'm thrilled, I have nothing to read!

My Bat Shit Crazy sweater is was coming along really well. I had knit down the second sleeve, and was about to start the ribbing. When I went to change the needles from the 5.5 mm to 4.5 mm Addis, I realized I had knit the ENTIRE SLEEVE with the 4.5 mm needles. 

I sat there for 15 minutes, just looking at the sleeve and trying to convince myself that it was fine and no one would ever know (even though it was really obvious) before I pulled the needles out and undid the whole thing.
I almost cried...it's been such a busy week, and I had so little knitting time, and I was so close to finishing. It was a rough one.
I pulled the whole thing out, cursing cursing cursing, wound up the yarn, picked up the stitches and knit one round before putting the whole thing in a bag.

I eventually picked up the sleeve again, and finished knitting it. Without any problems the second time around, yay me. So that brings me back to the body. I have about 280 yards left. I'm feeling pretty optimistic that I'll be able to get a good length + ribbing and bind off out of the rest of the yarn. I'll definitely be finished by the end of February, if not by the end of this week.

Staying monogamous, but I don't think I'll be able to maintain the monogamy too much longer. The sweater is really getting too bulky to drag around and knit on public transportation, I might have to start bringing socks in my bag for working on when I take the metro. 

I still have the Zaria shawl that I could work on as well, but it's kind of boring. Full disclosure: I forgot the name of the shawl and had to look it up on my project page. I really want to get back to knitting shawls because shawl weather (Spring!!!) is coming and apparently, 11 shawls is not enough. 

I will focus on the Zaria after Bat Shit Crazy is finished, and then I'm going to knit the Neried shawl by Ambah O'Brien, I think. Maybe.  I also really want to knit that amazing Miss Babs Killington yarn into some kind of shawl, possibly a Boneyard by Stephen West, though it calls for a heavier yarn...

I bought some yarn, sort of. Espace Tricot had a nifty Valentine's Day promotion where you get to draw your discount at the cash-I was working and had class so there would have been no way for me to go, but mah knitta was able to head over and she drew a 20% discount! Sweeeeet! I had her pick up two skeins of Mericana DK by Artfil in the Storm colourway for me.

 I'm planning on using the Storm to make the Ingot by Lisa Mutch. 

I also had mah knitta order me some yarn when she placed an order with Loveknitting-they were having another 25% of sale, which is the best time to get a sweater's quantity. 

This gorgeousness is Malabrigo Rios in Cocoa, and may grow up to be an Estelle Pullover someday.

So I finished watching CrazyHead, finished watching the Scientology docuseries, finished watching Ash VS Evil Dead. I had no idea what to watch next so I've just been watching a bunch of old episodes of The Fifth Estate on YouTube. I'm going to give Rectify another chance, I had watched a couple of episodes, and I didn't dislike it, but I wasn't super invested, so I will watch a couple more episodes and see how it goes.

Finally got around to reading The Gunslinger by Steven King. I liked it well enough, but I don't think I'll pick up the next book of the series. I'm kind of at the point where I'm less and less interested in reading books about men, written by men, where the women characters are super one dimensional (evil religious nutter or just totally needs the D, yunno?) 

Alrighty, off I go, there's a sweater that need some knitting...

FO: Pocion Flax

That's right y'all, I finished my Flax sweater and I adoooore it. Seriously, I think it's my most favourite knitted item. I love everything about it! The size is perfect. The yarn is gorgeous and soft.
It took almost a month to knit, which is pretty fast (for me) considering I also finished a shawl in that time frame.
The only problem? It's been a huge pain in the ass trying to get a good picture of this sweater! None of the pictures I've taken have done it justice.

I really tried. On several occasions. Those four are the best I could come up with...shitty pics in the description, folks.



The day after I finished the Flax, I cast on another sweater. Knit ALL THE SWEATERS!  Soooo, Easy Raglan V Neck by Stephanie Japel. This is version 3.0 and I'm knitting it in my Miss Babs Yowza in Bat Shit Crazy (which is why I'm calling it the Bat Shit Crazy Sweater aka BSCS)

It's the only thing I've been knitting on, I'm just totally hooked on knitting it. I've even been using it as my travel knitting. . Yowza is a fantastic yarn to knit with, and the colours in this skein are insanely fabulous. It literally has every single colour in one skein.

So I'm using Yowza, which is a light worsted/DK weight on 5.5mm/size 9 needles, and I'm really liking the how the fabric looks. I didn't swatch, so I was a bit concerned, but it seems to be working out. It'll make a drapier, airier sweater, which will be really comfortable to wear, though probably not as warm as an Aran weight on 5.5mm needles.
I liked the results from how I did the bust increases on Flax, so I'm doing the same thing with the BSCS; I'm doing the bust increases only at the front of the sweater (yunno, where the breasts are) and not at the back of the sweater (no boobs!)
I know I'm not going to be able to get a whole sweater out of the 2 skeins, as generous as they are, so I ordered some SweetGeorgia DK weight in Charcoal for the ribbing. Of course, as I was writing this, I realized that I have leftover Yowza in Field Mouse that I could probably use as the contrasting colour for the ribbing on the body and sleeves.
Edit: Nope. I pulled out the leftover Field Mouse, it will NOT look good with the Bat Shit Crazy. The Field Mouse is too light, so yay on the SweetGeorgia Charcoal.
Which better get here soon, because I'm nearing the end of my first skein of yowza, and there is a small, lunatic part of me that thinks I should just try and make the whole sweater out of the 2 skeins. Like I could cake up the second skein, leave the body on waste yarn, knit the sleeves and then use whatever is leftover to finish the body...

Yeah, so I ordered stuff. That one skein of DK weight, but also a wraps per inch tool ('cause handy!), a set of three extra cords, plus connector for my Addi Olivewood needles, a llama mug, and llama-rama tote bag. And another project bag because it had sheep on it, made of little balls of yarn. It's cute, but I might return it, because while it's bigger than I expected, the handles are too short for my liking.

(stock photo, because I haven't taken it out of it's wrapping yet)
No picture of the addi cords, but it you really need to see them, google will help ya out.

I haven't been knitting anything except the v-neck. I'm at the point where I still have like 7 inches of body to go, and while I am still really enthralled with the sweater, and not particularly interested in casting anything on at the moment, I did come across a project that I fell in love with and have vowed to cast it on when I'm done the sweater. It's called Ingot and it's a pattern by Lisa Murch. It's a cowl knit with 320 yrds of DK weight on size 8mm/US11 needles and I love that it's a cowl and can also be pulled over your shoulders like a shawl.
I'm super sad that I don't have any yarn* for this project so I may just have to head on over to Espace Tricot for the perfect yarn...I love love love Artfil's Merikana DK in their Storm colourway, but I'd also like to try The Fibre Company Arcadia, which is a blend of Merino, Alpaca and Silk. I'd like to see the colours in person, especially Moraine, with it's little slubby bits of blue.


I did it, I finally gave up on Gilmore Girls. I made it to the 7th season. Watched a bit of the first episode, then watched a bit of a random ep, then I watched all of the knitting episode (Stars Hollow has a knit-athon to raise money for a bridge-many knits!) and finally turned it off and let it go. I started watching Santa Clarita Diet, which is delightful, and Espace Tricot put out a new episode of their video podcast (which can be found on youtube and is quite enjoyable!) My only issue with the Espace Tricot podcast is that they talk about cool shit that they sell in their store. Very tempting. Very enable-y. I want to get some of their Clover circular stitch holders and I want to get a mesh sweater dryer.

I haven't been reading too much lately, though I did pick up a Patricia Briggs book, Frost Burned, which is part 7 of the Mercy Thompson series but it's been slow going. I started my course at the Gold Centre, it's the Support Worker  Training Program (focusing on ASD) and I think it will be helpful in dealing with B, and also help me at work. I think it will also be beneficial, with other similar courses, if I try to get work as an integration aid at the school in a couple of years.
B really seems to enjoy Roald Dahl books, so when I was on library duty I took out James and the Giant Peach (which I've never read). The week before, I had taken out an adapted Star Wars book, that we didn't really care for. Hopefully James and the Giant Peach goes over just as well as Fantastic Mr Fox and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory did.





*Full disclosure; I have a nice amount of DK yarn stashed, but it's all stashed with specific projects in mind, therefore it's as if I don't actually have any stashed at all.

Oh, and I've made up my mind, I'm going to attempt to knit the whole sweater with just the two skeins of yowza...wish me luck!