Friday, October 23, 2009

Angee Mink

I shall now speak in prose about my love for Cookie A.
A knit designer named Cookie
had stuff that made me lookie.
her book rocked and rolled,
on it, I was sold
and I now have a gift "off the hook"ie.
how about in Haiku?
swirling, warm and soft
knits and purls dance across socks
all hail Cookie A
In all seriousness, I LOVED knitting these socks. Cookie A's patterns are the bomb-diggity.

Named: Angee Mink
Pattern: Angee from "Sock Innovation" by Cookie A
Yarn: Dye Dreams Twinkle Toes in Mink
Needles: Knit Picks classic circs, US 1
Notes: I love love love a lace pattern that has a nice long chart. It fills me with so much glee when I realize "huh, I only have to knit this chart twice before I get to the foot." It really feels like you are making soooo much progress! Also, Cookie A (did I mention that I love her patterns?) has a great way of creating patterns so that it looks hard, but when you really get into the sock, it isn't hard at all! her book is crazy informative about sock designing, pattern writing, and customization - not to mention the butt loads of awesome patterns to choose from. If you love to knit socks, and you haven't knit a cookie A pattern yet, go forth and knit! She has a few free ones on Knitty - including the ever popular "Monkey". You should try one. Go. I'll wait.

See?!

I knit these socks as a holiday present for a person I work with. I hope she likes them as much as I do. The yarn is beautiful - kind of a purply brown when you get it in the light. It has a shine to it too, which comes from the tencel blended into the yarn. It is so silky to knit with, I was almost sad to be finished! The skeins are very generous too, making it easy to get larger socks from one skein, if needed.

Overall, I'm incredibly pleased with these socks. they were a very fun, and quick, knit. Highly recommended!

Thursday, October 22, 2009

WTF Costumechick?!

Were the hell have you been?!
Well, dear readers, I've been swamped. We had some man-power cuts at work last summer, and while losing two people from your department doesn't seem like a big deal, it is when your department was only 7 people to start with. We started this season with a massive show involving magic tricks, magic costumes, and 20 separate costumes. 20 costumes isn't that much, really, but when they are all engineered for magic tricks and built from the ground up, with 5 people - one of which is an intern, with only 3 weeks to do it and zero lead time... it's a lot. Any way, we survived, the show rocks, and we have a lot of great portfolio pieces. Oh, and even with all of the craziness, I did manage to keep knitting. I actually knit quite a bit. I didn't have time to blog about it, or to update Ravelry, but I still found a moment or two to wave the sticks about!
I'm going to try to catch ya'll up over the next few days. (I feel like I'm talking to a friend I only get to see once a year....)
In the month and a half since I last blogged, I have finished the Angee Mink Socks, My Iceberg Lettuce Kal sweater, a felted neckwarmer for Evad, the Classic Open Silk Cardi sweater for my Mom, the Peter Sweater for Schaefer, and Adult size top for Schaefer (that I won't blog about, considering I didn't even take a picture of it), and the Angora Leaf Scarf from Vintage Knitwear for Modern knitters. I also cast on, and am about 1/4 of the way through, another pair of socks and another adult size sweater. I also went to Rhinebeck. In other words, there is a lot of back log in the blog and Ravelry update world.
Bear with me folks. I still have to get some pictures of the FOs before I can properly take care of the back log. But.... they are coming...