Sara Sharpe Knits

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.