Who needs a stupid capelet anyway?

Months ago, I started working on the Casual Glamour Capelet by Stitch Diva. I had to set it aside to do the Asagio Shawl I promised a friend.



Do you like my pose? I had to crop my hair out because it was ridiculous -- I was in the process of getting ready.



Oh, but I made a big mistake. I decided to measure to see if I was nearly done, and I read the diagram wrong. I wasn't supposed to count the collar in the measurement, but I did.



I realized after I bound off that I was at least three inches short. But I didn't want to fix it. The whole thing actually seemed too small around.



After blocking, it improved greatly. It's still too short, but maybe I can wear it a few times if I get out of my head what it was supposed to be like.



The yarn is really soft and pretty, and only $3.99 a ball at Knit Picks. It's the City Tweed in Lemon Curd.

Adagio shawl

A friend of mine at work asked me to make a shawl for his mom for Christmas. He's paying for supplies, I offered to give my time. Only I didn't realize it would be two hours of work a day to finish it in time. Phew! It's fun to make, though. Just, nobody else ask me to knit something for them. Ever.



It's from a vintage pattern called the Adiago Shawl, and I'm using City Tweed DK yarn from Knit Picks in Orca. It's wonderful to work with.

So close, yet so far

I have finished my Bittersweet Teak Gauntlets from "Boutique Knits." They would be perfect IF I JUST HAD TWO LEFT HANDS.

That's right. I am truly a complete dumbass. I spent all this time knitting them, and forgot to consider that the instructions for the right hand would be reversed. How this never crossed my mind until I was attaching the second band is beyond me. It was one of those moments where go into a complete panic and want to cry, but can't because you're so far beyond that that crying is impossible.

Usually, I am so upset over a big mistake that it takes a day or two to feel like I can come back to it and do something about it. This time, I sucked it up very quickly and decided that the only option is to order more yarn and make two right hands. Then I will give one pair away as a gift to someone. I am not looking forward to starting all over, but otherwise this entire pair is worthless.

And I suppose that if I were born with two left hands, I couldn't write very well and people would look at me funny.

Well, here is one of the finished ones, and I love how it came out:



And with its all-too-identical mate:




*****UPDATE*****

I realized that my solution above was also quite stupid. Someone pointed out that perhaps I could just rip my second mitt and redo it. I then realized that I would only have to go down to the start of the colorwork, because that's where the instructions change. I did that and am on my way to finishing them.

Finished! October socks, just in time for their namesake month

I've been working on these a while, but kept setting them aside. I hand-painted the yarn myself. The pattern is Campfire Socks, and it's available free HERE.

Look at my fancy new stuff

We got new bedroom furniture. We were replacing this old stuff that belonged to Mark's parents when they got married:




It now looks like this:



(I'm trying to figure out what to do about the ugly part showing through at the end of the bed.)

The disappointing part: This set includes the two largest nightstands ever created by mankind, and they do not fit in our room. They are really cool nightstands:

They feature a drawer with built in charger plugs for your phone and such:



They come with a bed tray that props up or lays flat, and folds and fits neatly in a drawer:



They have a pull out tray:



They have other drawers, too. And then they have these little brass decorations that when touched turn on a nightlight underneath the nightstand.



We had to use one nightstand as the TV stand, shown above. The other one has to find a home. As for what we use as nightstands, I'm trying to figure out something smaller, yet nice looking.

On to other things:

My "Tilted Duster" sweater is coming along, though it doesn't look like much right now:





And my October socks are moving a bit slowly, but I'm almost to the heels:



We've painted most of the kitchen. We have a couple of walls in the den to do, and then we will have to let a pro finish the rest of the house with the high ceilings. I can nearly see the end of the painting for me! I'll post kitchen pictures when it's complete.

Tomorrow, I am going to go see a Toby Keith concert. I know, COUNTRY. But Toby Keith is A-OK, in my book.

That's about it for me right now.

What does she think?

I finished the pom-pom on my "hat for some kid," and I can't tell if Roady approves.

Things I've been working on

Aside from painting like a madwoman, I have been doing some knitting projects. I have bought a few yarns, but also wanted to use up some of my stash.

This yarn I bought at Oodles in Santa Fe. I wish you could see in the photo, but it's an ivory yarn with painted on shimmery beige and shimmery ice blue. It's a thick/thin yarn that adds lots of texture. This hat is for me, in an attempt to not hate the winter so much and maybe be a little warmer. I think it will look nice with my wool winter white coat.




I finally finished my A-Line Jacket from "Runway Knits." Unfortunately, when I finally got around to having Mark take a photo, it was the middle of the night and we forgot the flash. I will get a better picture later. It came out pretty nice. It's definitely wearable, but there are some places where I think it looks sloppy.



I've been working on these socks with yarn that I dyed. They are actually almost done. This is an old photo. I have done the entire foot of each and am working on the leg. They were going to be footies, but I had so much yarn left, and since they are toe-up socks, I just decided to keep going.



I made this hat for one of my nieces or nephews, whomever it fits best. It's a thick/thin yarn I dyed myself. I plan to add a pom-pom to the top with the remaining yarn.



Finally, I'm also working on these socks made in a soft bamboo/merino yarn. I'm making stripes and it's my first time using multiple yarns (many sock yarns are dyed to stripe on their own so you don't have to actually switch yarns).




I was having trouble changing yarns. At first I was cutting the yarn and joining new yarn each time, but I quickly saw that I'd have about 200 ends to sew up after the sock was done. I was advised to "carry" the yarn up as I go, meaning to bring the yarns I am not using along the inside until I need them, kind of looping as I go. Once I started doing this, I found I had a really obvious string of yarn up the beginning of the rounds:



It looks pretty bad. So then I started really making sure I was carrying it along the inside of the sock and not the outside. I also started crossing it with my working yarn on the second stitch of the round, and not the first. This helps because sometimes the first stitch as you switch needles is looser anyway, and also because it packs it in behind several knit stitches in a row, which seems to hide it better: