Sara Sharpe Knits

Christmas presents for 2014 are in progress. These took me five weeks, not working on them exclusively (as evidenced by the many photos of Aranami). I probably need to be a little more faithful to Christmas present knitting.

The pattern is Simplicity from Toe-Up 2-at-a-Time Socks by Melissa Morgan-Oakes. It was very simple, a two-row slip-stitch rib pattern. The trickiest part was keeping track of where each row started. Had I added a locking stitch marker like I kept meaning to, I probably wouldn’t have had so much trouble!

I found out last Friday that the company I work for has begun proceedings to be sold. I have subsequently been drinking quite a lot of scotch and knitting, although I think my tension might be slightly affected…

Aranami continues on beautifully… I think just 1.5 tiers (ignoring, shall we, that each tier increases by one motif). Four more of these dark blue motifs before I get to the darkest blue!

I ordered some of KnitPicks’ new Hawthorne yarn. I have to say, I was… surprised by the colors. I bought them because they appeared camouflage-colored (hello Texas), but one has a GIANT pop of lime green and the other has a more subtle teal, neither of which I was expecting. I shall be interested to see how they work up…

Finally, I had a damn good idea since I’m getting a jump on knitting presents for holidays this year:

Want your own labels? Download Gift Labels at that link. I didn’t add cut lines because I’m too OCD (and really we’ll all miss them), but if you fold the paper lengthwise in half, then repeat that, you should can make your own cut lines!

It was my birthday on Thursday! Above is the little slice of cake I knitted myself (based on the crochet cake slice from genuinemudpie.ca).

Here was my real cake – black forest, my favorite!! And scratchmade to boot.

This was my desk when I got in on Thursday. I laughed for five minutes straight.

My mom sent me these LOVELY flowers. I love the colors!

On the knitting front, I finally finished the Tiny Ribbons baby dress:

By which I mean I added buttons. The pattern calls for a crochet picot edging but I’m off crochet for the time being, after the cake attempt, so I shall leave it as is. It doesn’t look too bad…

Finally, I went to the DFW Fiber Fest yesterday as my birthday celebration. I only found out about it at the beginning of the month, so I was too late to sign up for any classes, but I did drop some dough in the marketplace!

Here’s my haul:

Clockwise from top left: GrittyKnits Mighty (superwash corriedale, light fingering, color: Vapor), the Alpaca Yarn Company Glimmer (95% baby alpaca, 5% polyester, fingering, color: 1810 [purple!]), Western Sky Knits Magnolia Luxe (75% superwash merino, 15% cashmere, 10% silk, fingering, color: North Sea), Gynx Yarns Merino Lace (100% superwash merino, laceweight, color: Ocean), Skaska Designs 100% Mongolian cashmere (Mongolian cashmere, laceweight, color: Royal), Fiberlady.com Chiku (100% bamboo, laceweight, color: not named [mottled teal]), Bijou Basin Bijou Spun Shangri-La (50% yak down, 50% mulberry silk, laceweight, color: not named [ivory/white]), KnittingNotions.com Classic Merino Lace (100% merino wool, laceweight, color: Earthshine [discontinued]), Skeindalous Ursula Half-Skein (70% merino, 30% silk, laceweight, color: “The Great Intelligence”).

All in all, not a bad way to have a birthday.

Find me here!

For selfies:

And progress shots:

Hellooooo! I swear I have been knitting and this blog has been itching in the back of my mind, but after my laptop crashed last November, I didn’t have much motivation to re-up everything that needed to be redone.

Knitting group at work is still going well, although our numbers are dwindling. Fortunately there are just enough of us hardcore enough to go every week that it hasn’t died out yet! And we’ve added at least one entirely new knitter to our ranks.

I recently updated my projects page on Ravelry. Check it out!

Christmas knitting was mostly limited to washcloths, and I didn’t really take pictures of them, although it was fun to knock out three projects in one day 😉 Here’s a hat I knit for my friend Nicole for Christmas:

My knitting Olympics basically consisted of trying to finish as much stuff as possible. I finished the wedding present during the games (only um 2.5 months after the wedding):

Yep, it was a blanket!

I made some socks:

^Those are done, I just apparently didn’t take a picture of the finished ones.

See this little guy in his baby present, about 2.5 years ago?

He got a little brother just two days ago, and little brother gets the matching shirt:

And right now, I’m working on what I’ve named the Ratfish Hat:

My iPhone autocorrected earflap to ratfish, ergo, ratfish. It will eventually be a beanie with earflaps–I took this picture to ask a knitting friend if it was long enough. I think so, how about you?

After the ratfish hat is done (I need the needles!) I will be casting on Aranami, the yarn for which I had custom-ordered as my birthday present to myself:

The yarn is Citadel from Bronotta Yarns and was custom-dyed specifically for making Aranami. I purchased it through The Knitting Nest, an LYS in Austin. It’s very squishy and has a nice bounce to it. I’ve started Aranami on both the recommended 2.75 mm and when that looked too small went up to 3.25 mm and I think I’m going to have to go up one more time (at least!) to 3.5 mm to get gauge. It’s weird, I’m usually freaky good about getting gauge with the recommended needles, but I guess the designer must knit pretty loosely.

Also on the needles for bus/walking knitting (yes, I can knit while I walk!) are some Christmas 2014 presents (getting a very early start). This picture is from a couple Fridays ago after a very stressful day:

These are Simplicity from Melissa Morgan-Oakes’s Toe-Up 2-at-a-Time Socks.

Lots and lots of progress! A little more than 3.5 sections of the 5 sections, then some finishing. It’ll be done in plenty of time for the wedding.

I’m taking a little break to design a poinsettia pattern for Christmas. As a native Texan, the poinsettia is a classic part of Christmas for me, so I’ll be releasing that pattern in a few of weeks.

My piglet-cat seems a little offended that she can barely get on the couch with the yarn!

Ah, I think she’s rearranged things to her liking.

Some of my extended family was out of town this weekend so I was at their house dogsitting and watching the Texas-OU game on their enormous television – while knitting of course! I’ve finished 3 of the 5 sections for the secretpresent, even though I didn’t get any knitting done Monday (out with friends) or much done Tuesday. According to the schedule I have (yes, I’m ridiculous), I’m about a day ahead:
October 1–7
1: rows 51–58
2: rows 59–66
3: rows 67–74
4: rows 75–82
5: rows 83–90
6: rows 91–98
7: rows 99–106
October 8–14
8: rows 107–114
9: rows 115–122
10: rows 123–130
11: rows 131–138
12: rows 139–146
13: rows 147–154
14: rows 155–162
October 15–21
15: rows 163–170
16: rows 171–178 [where I should be]
17: rows 179–186 [where I am]
18: rows 187–194
19: rows 195–202
20: rows 203–210
21: rows 211–218
October 22–28
22: rows 219–226
23: rows 227–234
24: rows 235–242
25: rows 243–250
26: rows 251–258
27: rows 259–266
28: rows 267–274
October 29–31
29: rows 275–282
30: rows 283–290
31: rows 291–292

I’m making great progress!

We have knitting circle at lunch time on Thursdays at work and I forgot my knitting! At least I remembered my lunch! I still went and helped some of the newer knitters and chatted. I’m ahead enough on the secretweddingpresent that it wasn’t a huge deal to lose out on the hour of knitting. It was a really nice time. I always enjoy hanging out during knitting circle.

I’m making progress on the secretproject! Here’s another preview pic:

I’ve more than made up the ripped back part and am on schedule (yes, I made a schedule).

Before I decided to start the supersecretweddingpresent, I was working on Christmas presents. Everyone (just about) is getting variations on the same thing.

I was also working on these two-at-a-time toe-up socks:

The pattern is Seagrass from Melissa Morgan-Oakes’ Toe-Up 2-at-a-Time Socks.

Well hey there! I’m starting this blog to help me keep track of my knitting projects. Sure there’s that wonderful community over at Ravelry, but my account’s been active for 5 years and I have about 10 projects listed, when in reality I think I’ve made over 40! Additionally, my queue on Ravelry is where cute projects I want to do go to die. I’ll keep a personal queue listed as a page on this site, and the blog will serve to keep me organized!

What am I working on right now? It’s a secret, since it’s a wedding present for a friend, but here’s a sneak peek:

Yup, it’s not much, and my stitches look like crap (still working out tension issues and I’ve been doing this for five years!), but it should block out all right. I was SUPER annoyed because I realized I’d dropped four edge stitches over three inches of knittedobject. I tried to keep going but eventually decided to just rip back to where the first dropped stitch had happened… an entire ball of yarn ago :-/

Onward!