I'm nearly 1/2 the way through the yarn diet! I haven't bought any yarn since October 11.

This month's goals (January 13th-February 12)

• No yarn purchases. Try to avoid buying needles or books unless truly necessary. Trading stash yarn has been deemed acceptable.

• Complete the Horseshoe Pattern #2 section of the Shetland Tea Shawl.

• Connect 10 squares Kureyon Log Cabin Blanket.

• Get to the armhole shaping of the Mossbank Pullover.

• Finish January socks, start and make solid progress on February socks

I love connecting the squares of my Log Cabin Blanket. It is very satisfying to see the blanket take shape.

I finished my January Socks, amazing! It's a very easy pattern to memorize, but I still managed to screw up the pattern as I was working the gusset. At least both socks match!

It's hard to work on the other projects, especially during the week when I only have a small amount of at-home knitting time, but I try to make some progress during the weekends.

Ravelympics

I am not a competitive person. In fact, in the face of competition I tend to run & hide. Nor am I usually much of a joiner.

Welcome to twenty-ten. It's strange to be here already. I'm close to three months without buying yarn! It does get easier.

Looking back at my November Goals:

• No yarn purchases. Try to avoid buying needles or books unless truly necessary. - Accomplished
• Finish Entrelac Scarf - Completed
• Complete the Horseshoe Pattern #2 section of the Shetland Tea Shawl (Into the Shetland Fern pattern #1) - Completed Shetland Fern Pattern
• Knit 5 squares of the Kureyon Log Cabin Blanket for a total of 15 complete squares - Completed 11/17/09, now done with all 20 squares and started joining.
• Get to the armhole shaping of the Mossbank Pullover - Didn't get close in November

December just slipped away, but I didn't buy any new yarn. I got some progress on the projects, but I also started new things and worked on those projects instead of the old ones.

For the next month (January 13 - February 12):

• No yarn purchases. Try to avoid buying needles or books unless truly necessary.
• Complete the Horseshoe Pattern #2 section of the Shetland Tea Shawl.
• Connect 10 squares of the Kureyon Log Cabin Blanket.
• Get to the armhole shaping of the Mossbank Pullover.
• Finish January socks, start and make solid progress on February socks

In the interim, I finally finished the Entrelac Scarf in Noro Kureyon.

November is half way over, but I'm doing okay so far with my yarn diet. I would like to focus on my long term projects more to make some significant progress on them.

November Goals:

• No yarn purchases. Try to avoid buying needles or books unless truly necessary. (Bought one set of needles and some buttons in November, and a crochet book in October. But no yarn!)
• Finish Entrelac Scarf (On the last ball, working on it every evening. I can probably finish this week.)
• Complete the Horseshoe Pattern #2 section of the Shetland Tea Shawl (this is probably the most difficult goal) (Into the Shetland Fern pattern #1)
• Knit 5 squares of the Kureyon Log Cabin Blanket for a total of 15 complete squares (DONE)
• Get to the armhole shaping of the Mossbank Pullover (Have not knit on this at all)

Some Kureyon Log Cabin Squares

I am very interested in knitting accessories right now. Hats, cowls, gloves, and even scarves. This is a good opportunity to get some quick, small projects out of the way and stock up on winter accessories. I have a cowl on the needles, and that is my commute project now that I got the last 2 Kureyon Squares knocked out.

I wanted to mention that I have started a “yarn diet.” I am not the dieting type in general, but a confluence of personal circumstances has made we want to slow down and smell the roses (or fondle the merino—to each her own).

So, I am not buying yarn right now. More power to people who are, this certainly isn’t a contest to see who can be the least materialistic or whatever. I sort of miss it, but a lot of it simply was retail therapy. But I kept finding new things I wanted to make, and all the old things that were waiting their turns kept being shoved down the line.

I have a few larger projects that I’d like to get done, and after that (optimism), I’ll have a bit more freedom to work on what I feel like--from stash yarn. Some people blog about new yarn purchases, but that didn’t seem like an interesting writing topic to me. Which is probably too bad, since if I wrote about every yarn purchase, I’d blog a lot more.

The stash is pretty healthy. That is to say, robust. It is mostly good stuff for which I have plans, but there are some “problem areas”, I guess. I have a lot of sock yarn, and a lot of lace weight yarn. It’s so easy to buy a skein or two, some tempting colorway steals your heart, and you know you could make something lovely with it. Repeat until you run out of storage….

The sock yarn gets some use, but is probably the area I have felt the least restraint when it comes to buying yarn, so what I bought greatly outpaced my sock production. Lord knows there’s no shortage of sock yarn available, and I have a good selection from which to work.

Lace yarn is tricky. It looks so sweet, so innocent. I have some skeins that are over 1500 yards. One false move, bang, your stash has exploded. I only bought 5 skeins of yarn at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival, but that was 4360 yards of lace-weight and 606 yards of fingering weight. I don’t regret it, but nearly 5000 yards is a whole lot of knitting. To that end, I plan to also knit 2 shawls during this “diet.” I've even started one, from Gathering of Lace.

Shetland Tea Shawl

Pattern by Dale Long

Yarn: Fine Fibers Silk-Camel Lace

Needles: Size 3 double points and circular

I am really enjoying the circular construction now that I am past the point which was worked on double pointed needles. You start with only 8 or so stitches and do a number of increases to expand the circle. There are 3 stitch patterns within the shawl besides the plain knitting sections, and I'm only on the first one. The rows are still relatively short in this section, so I hope to get through them quickly.

All the diet details after the break...

I took such a long break from blogging that I have a backlog of projects I wanted to add here. This is a big entry!

Socks:

Since the Sock Summit, I have finished the French Socks and Mona Socks.
I got to meet designers Nancy Bush and Cookie A. at Sock Summit when they were doing the book signing. I got a ride from my boss (!) down to the Convention Center, and she came to pick me up when I was done. That was great. I just wish I had more time to meet Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (although I saw her everywhere during Sock Summit) and Barbara Walker.

The French Socks are really a great pattern. I love the color, especially the name, “Butter Peeps”—I’m a Peeps freak. I also am enamored of the yarn—count on more Smooshy socks in the future!

*Pattern: Child’s French Sock from Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush

*Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy “Butter Peeps purchased at Twisted! in Portland, OR

*Needles: KnitPicks 32” circular needle size 1.5 (2.5 mm), Magic Loop

The Mona Socks are a direct result of joining Ravelry. I fell in love with the pattern and the yarn browsing around there. I had been waiting for a while, however, to actually bring them together. The variation of the color hides the pattern somewhat, but I still like the overall effect.

*Pattern: Mona Socks by Cookie A.

*Yarn: Ruby Sapphire Yarns Sapphire Sock “Yahto”

*Needles: KnitPicks 32” circular needle size 1.5 (2.5 mm), Magic Loop

I also made a mini sock for a Moo card holder, which was a hit. A lot of people I met also had cards, so I tried not to be too shy about offering my card.

But Wait! there's lots more after the break...

I have joined forces with my friend Natalie to start a knitting and crochet podcast.
It's called Cloudy with a Chance of Fiber!

We are still figuring it all out, but it was fun to give it a try. You can listen to it through the "Listen Directly" link or download it and listen to the podcast on an iPod or mp3 player.

It wasn't that long ago that I thought I would never knit a blanket. Blankets are big, and that means an awkward, time-consuming and probably expensive project. After knitting lots of socks, though, I found that I had a lot of leftover sock yarn, and I decided I needed to make something with it. On Ravelry, I found a pattern for a mitered square blanket knit from sock yarn and like-minded Ravelers willing to trade yarn. I decided my own way to make and attach the squares, however. The pattern attaches the squares in a zig-zag formation as each new square is knit, but I wanted to emphasize the square shapes and also have more control over which squares are adjacent. I knit each 40 stitch square on size 2 needles, using 2 mirrored decreases rather than a double decrease, which makes a raised line diagonally across the square. Getting to pick from all the colors keeps my distracted brain engaged, starting something "new" all the time.

My squares are 2 3/4 inches wide. So far I have knit about 260, so I am 1/4 of the way through the 768 squares I will need. I laid my squares out, and Isabel "helped".

So far I haven't sewn too many of the little squares into bigger squares. I put together some larger squares.

Sock Summit is going on in Portland right now. I have to work, but I'll be there on Sunday, for sure!

I work on socks all the time. It is the rare moment I don't have a sock project in my purse. It seems to take a long time to finish any socks, regardless of the complexity of the pattern. I used to have a short commute with a transfer right in the middle. Start, stop, start, stop again. Now I have longer commute with a transfer near one end. I can go and go and go! Here are the socks I've made knitting in transit:

Pattern: Diagonal Rib Socks from Knitting Daily by Ann Budd Yarn: Lotus Fibers? Toes in the Grass? Color: Irrigation Size 2.5mm circular needle, magic loop method I got the yarn from my sock pal in Sockapalooza 2007. It's shiny and soft. Very nice. It can be hard to find patterns that work with varigated yarns, but I think simple motifs like this work best. I hadn't made myself any blue socks until now, which is surprising since I have more blue sock yarn than anything else.

These socks were more fiddly, but I really like the effect. Working on double-pointed needless might have added to the fiddly feeling. One of many, many patterns I found thanks to Ravelry.

Pattern: Lemony Snicket Socks (Ravelry Link) Yarn: Louet Gems Fingering in Red Size 2.75 mm double pointed needles more after the break...

Isabel is our miniature poodle. She is an older dog, probably about 9 years old. She lived with her previous owner all her life, but around the end of April, she was brought to the Humane Society. We feel really lucky to have found her.

She loves playing fetch and being with us, taking walks in the nearby park or just hanging out. She is very affectionate, gives us lots of kisses and is excited when we get home from work. She has adjusted to her new home and we are glad to have her.

More pictures:

What could disrupt one's schedule so much that a pathetic blog fails to get any attention for months? Buying a house! Every weekend--just about-- for several months, we looked at houses and neighborhoods. We closed in March, and now we spend more of our free time doing projects around the home. We painted the living room/dining room, and we still need to get actual furniture for it. I started a garden this spring, and we've already been eating some of the veggies. I planted lettuce, broccoli, cucumbers, peppers, an eggplant, tomatoes, a pumpkin, and beans as well as an herb garden. The lettuce was prodigious, but is over now. The broccoli is pretty spent, too. The tomatoes are just starting to come in, and the peppers and eggplant are getting started. We've had 2 cucumbers so far, and there are a few more that are nearly ready. I love checking on the garden and seeing the new veggies coming in, or seeing how much bigger the pumpkins are getting. Next up, making some pesto from our basil!

Our house in March