uh oh... so today i was pondering my knit-for-christmas list...

...and i realized i can not put the needles down until december 25th.

and even then, i only *might* make it. eep.  ¶ 8:27 PM 4 Comments

  sunday SIP and knitterly embarassment. let me apologize for the crappiness of the photos in this post.

a few minutes ago, my only cool neighbor turned the corner behind our apartment building (on her way to the laundry room) and was greeted by the wonderful view that is me, with an arm load of knitting, squatting on our small strip of community grass, clicking pictures of my half done knitting. of course, i'm totally make-up free and broken out, with wild hair and no belt, which means she probably got a glimpse of my ass, too. dazzling sight.

now, in my wildest knitterly dreams, she would exclaim, "you're a knitter, too?!" and tell me where she gets good lighting to take shots of her blogworthy knits. but, in real life, i just give her my most confident-i'm-pretending-i'm-not-a-homely-eccentric-loon-who-takes-pictures-of-her-knits "Hi!" and she smiles politely and says hello. like one does to a crazy person.

i sheepishly snapped a couple more shots and then ran back to my apartment to hang out with my pointy sticks and knitting magazines. i am so cool.
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back to your regularly scheduled blog post
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I know i missed my sunday SIP last week. my dearest (only) knitting friends was visiting, and i spent more time teaching her how to purl than thinking about blogging. i was going to post it monday, but on monday i didn't have a SIP. it was finished.

i cast on sock #2 the same night (good knitter, violet!) here it is posing with what little vegetation i don't share with the neighbors:
then there's kellen's sweater:
3" down, 12" to go until i reach any shaping.

and the branching out. i'm about half way done on this one. unfortunately, stuffing lace knitting into your backpack isn't a good idea, so i only really make progress on this on weekends. (worst picture ever, it looks good i swear!)

in other knitterly news, one of my lys's had a 20% off sale last weekend. swoon. i got some noro kureyon, a few back issues of interweave (for $3!!), and finally another ball of SWTC's Karaoke, to finish my anthropologie inspired caplet, which i started pre-blog. i just have 5 more rounds of sleeve ribbing, and you'll get to see it.

and i changed my mind again on the what-to-knit-grandma-dilema. Vogue knitting has a lovely cabled belted sweater, like starsky, but with buttons...and i was going to add buttons to starsky, so...this was perfect. i reconsidered my decision to make grandma a Ene's scarf. . .but then i thought about all the pro-lace shawl arguments, and i reconsidered again.

then i decided upon the swallowtail shawl. it's similar to ene's, but smaller. the name really got me too, because grandma and i used to look for swallowtail butterflies in her flower beds. and the description, "...a deep lily-of-the-valley border..." more flower references. very grandma. the yarn and needles are currently sitting in my KnitPicks shopping cart, along with yarn to make the baby pea pod set for my mother's coworkers' unborn baby. they weren't able to determine the sex from the first ultrasound, but i wanted to get knitting now before the holidays kill me too much (ha! as if i'm not already spiraling into IT. there are 3 months, one week, one day until Christmas!) so i started thinking gender neutral tones...--even though as a women's studies major i think the gendering of colors is stupid and ridiculous--, i don't want the parents to be embarassed to have their kid in what i knit. i generally don't like the standard yellow-and-green theme that the parents of unknown-sex babies receive. maybe that's just because my mom intentionally didn't want to know the sex of my little brother until he was born and i got sick of the lemon and mint baby items that slowly filled our home.

but then i thought of the baby pea pod set. green makes sense for it! it won't look like the dreadful "UNKNOWN SEX" presents that i remember from my mom's pregnancy. plus it's adorable and i've been looking for an excuse to knit it.

that's all my knitterly news for now. i've got to go click "check out" on my yarn purchases!  ¶ 12:40 PM 1 Comments

  Sunday SIP, and others... You know how some bloggers do the saturday sky, where they show you what the sky looks like in their neck of the woods? well, i would do that, except for now that autumn is almost upon us, the sky here is gray, and will probably look that way until next june. so, instead, over here at casa de violet's knits, i give you Sunday SIP. that is, my Sock In Progress:
I'm currently working on what i believe will be a christmas gift sock, that is, if i don't get greedy and keep it for myself. it's socka yarn in color #3005, i believe. but, since the label isn't in english, i'm only guessing that number is the color. it may be the dye lot. anyway, it's a really lovely colorway. you should know by now how much i love brights, but this has some nice, deep, rich colors that are very yummy too. as of now, i've just picked up the gusset stitches about two rows back. look for an update next week!

i didn't get all that much knitting done this week because i went back to work, which has been mildly chaotic, and then thursday night i was struck with a horrible migraine which haunted me until saturday. friday morning was the worst though. it's hard to keep track of row counts when your left eye feels like it's full of lava and you're throwing up. ugh. however, branching out is now at a whopping 19"!

i didn't get a "full body" shot of the scarf because basically it looks the same as the last post, only longer. when it's finished and blocked, you can expect gratuitous FO pictures. oh, and Erica, i'm using size US 5 needles. i think i could have gone down to 4s to get a tighter looking leaf, but i didn't want the scarf to get too skinny. plus, the 5's i'm using are a gorgeous blue, and they matched the yarn perfectly. a nerdy reason, i know!

and kellen's sweater? i cast on 99 sts, and...1" down, 15" to go until we get to any shaping. i knit out of love. it's not ruffled, like it sort of looks, but it's a 6x1 rib, crammed onto the longer size 8s i own. (and yes, they're mismatched. one gold, one blue. it works.)

i also finished the one skein cabled footies for my One Skein Secret Pal last week: pattern:cabled footies from Leigh Radford's One Skein. Yarn: Cascade 220 in #9453. Needles: US 7 dpns. i really enjoyed knitting these (and should have gotten them out by the begining of last month. i suck. luckily, my OSSP has been understanding.) and i'll definitely knit more for Christmas presents.

speaking of which:
3 months, 3 weeks, 1 day until Christmas!
are you ready??

Leah and Carrie have helped me solve my What-To-Knit-Grandma dilemma. i'm going with Ene's Scarf this year, but definitely keeping Starsky on the list. i love both the patterns, but i definately feel like if anyone is worthy of my first large scale lace venture, it's grandma. i'll keep you posted!  ¶ 3:09 PM 1 Comments