instead of dishcloths ...

thanks to Lois at AFY for helping me get all the beautiful colors of Lorna's Laces I want to knit socks with! I stopped by last night and put in the order, so soon I will have way too much yarn hanging around my house! I think I might make worsted-weight socks be my new car-knitting project. The dishcloths are great for practicing lace (so maybe I can finally cast on for the Lucky wrap cardigan that I bought yarn for over a year ago?), but there is a definite chill in the air and I am about to dive head first into warm sock mode. Last night during The Office and Grey's (yeah TiVo!) I finished up through the gusset on my second toe-up sock for class on Saturday. I am hoping that Karin will show us how to knit both socks at the same time after we learn the heel shaping so that from here on out, all my pairs can be completed at the same time, which will ensure that both socks in the pair get made in a timely maner :)

dishcloths and storage. the joys of non-homeownership.

I am really enjoying making the dishcloths! Well, dishcloth. So far it's just the one. But it is always nice to have a little project to work on when I have ten or twenty or sixty minutes to kill in the car. (No, I don't knit while driving, though I wish we had a train or lightrail or something I could take to work. All the Denver people who were on their way home from work while we were on our way to the Rockies game looked very relaxed and content on the lightrail reading books.)
Anyway, this linen yarn is a little crazy. As Charlie at AFY was winding it for me (by hand, after it jumped the spool!), a woman sitting at the work table commented how there is no give in the yarn and I didn't get it until I started knitting and realized there is no give in the yarn. (perceptive, aren't I?) It's also a lot rougher than I am used to and I think if I knit dishcloths for the duration of time I knit socks or sweaters in the evenings, I would rub my fingers raw, but I can handle it for an hour or less a day. I am really anxious to get this first cloth finished so I can throw it in the wash. Supposedly the yarn gets softer and softer with every washing, like the flour sack towels I embroidered for Grandma a few Christmases ago.
ALSO, Wes and I have come to the realization that we won't be out of this apartment by Christmas like we'd hoped, so I have taken on the task of making our apartment more livable and am actually decorating and organizing things a little better. My task for tonight while Wes is golfing with the boys (weird how he sees my girlfriend's boyfriends more than I see my girlfriends), is to drag out one of the bookshelves we originally stuck in the black hole of storage and use it to organize my knitting. With (over) three projects on the needles right now, I am spread out all over the living room, which Wes just loves. I ran to Target on my lunchbreak today and got some cute, cheap plastic bins that will fit perfectly on the shelves and are deep enough to hold, hopefully, a whole brown hoodie in progress. The lids snap on and have handles, so it will be easy to transport projects too, if, for example, I decide I want to take something larger than dishcloths on the road trip to San Francisco this weekend. (also at Target right now, totally amazing OFFICE products. I am now the totally proud owner of an "I *heart* Jim" mousepad and pens featuring Michael and Dwight-isms. LOVE IT.)

more new projects!!

soooooooooooooo guess who went to the yarn store today and got two skeins of fabulously cranky linen yarn (in colors 55 and 48) to make dishcloths from a new book I got at the library (yay free books! more money for yarn!). The book is appropriately titled Knitter's Stash, as I have now started my own little stash of current on-the-needles projects. They aren't even all listed in the sidebar to the left ... I think I would depress myself if I had them all listed. But most of these dishcloth patterns are about 60 stitches across and even with some fun lacy patters, I should be able to just whip out a few on lunch break knitting. All my other projects are sort of cumbersome and I don't really like dragging them out to my car every morning on the off chance that I'll have some free time to knit during the day. Then I bring everything back upstairs at the end of the day to work on while Wes watches baseball, or I am home alone knitting to avoid housework after eight hours of sitting in a cube. So, these dishcloths, which require no fancy tools (cable needles, etc), can just live in my car all the time, so I will never be without a project to work on while I'm waiting for Wes to meet me for dinner, or on a lunchbreak or I don't know what else, but it seems like I do a lot of sitting in my car.

P.S. Today the new knitty came out, just a day after I discovered all those new patterns at zepherstyle ... what are they trying to do to me??