knitting in public

Right! Tonight was my knitting group stitch and bitch in good ole JC. That's Jersey City to you. Anyway, as you can see, the place was PACKED!

Yeah, we really pack them in. I'm seriously the only one who goes. Our meetings are every two weeks, and I go and sit there because the cafe is close enough to my apartment that i can just walk over in 5 minutes. And sometimes one person will come, or two. Oddly never the same ones. A big group would be like, five or so. We have THIRTY SEVEN people on the Yahoo email list, but no one comes. And it's NOT because it's summer. It's this empty in the winter too. I saw this other group knitting in a different cafe last Sunday night, and I almost ended up pressing my face to the glass to try to get a better look at what they were working on. So yeah. I guess I miss the kind of community I see other people having online.

Instead, I sat there and listened to a podcast and knit by myself.

This is what I was working on--my Cargo pants. I'm having a lot of problems, as I mentioned before. The circular needle just DID NOT work, so I put it back on the DPNs. Now it's starting to come together, but I'm really just about over them. I stress about them all the time, and I just want to be done. I will write a more Cargo-specific entry when they are an FO. Tonight, they made for some easy SnB knitting.

In other news, I sewed the Sushi onto the wallet:

Kinda looks like a nipple, right?

Oh YEAH, BABY!!!
Ha ha. God, I'm so pathetic. Here's a shot of the lining I picked up at Purl Patchwork.

Surprisingly, the girls were very nice there, and I actually ran into one of our delinquent JC knitters there who was *gasp* taking a quilting class tonight! She said she'd be back to the SnB at our next meeting, but I won't believe it until I see it. They all lie... That's the moral of the story tonight, kids.

pretty successful weekend

I finally felted the sushi wallet. I had tried to do it by hand, but it wasn't very successful. So tonight, I finally threw it in the washer.

It worked so well! I still need to put the zipper in and maybe line it with something, and sew the sushi piece on the corner, but at least the felting is done!

I also put my tote bag through again. I put the sushi wallet in a lingerie bag, but for the tote, I put it in a regular pillow case and I folded over the top and safety pinned it together. And it worked! It's smaller! And none of the fibers got into the washer, thank god. Here's the picture from tonight.
You can't really tell the difference, except that now the button isn't centered anymore. I'll have to cut it off and resew it on later. I'm really happy with it now though. it's more the size I wanted it to be, and the straps seem sturdier.
I've decided that I really don't like felting things. It's too chancy. I'd much rather just make things I can control a bit more. The things I've attempted never end up looking like I think they should...

Anyway, this past week, I've also finished the two legs from Cargo. The one thing I'm worried about so far, is that the pattern says to finish one leg, and put the stitches on waste yarn, and then when you finish the other leg, keep those stitches on the needles. But it didn't say anything about cutting the yarn for the first leg. I didn't see any other way of doing the second leg without first cutting the yarn for the first, so that's what I did, but I don't know if I'm right or not. I guess we'll see. At this point, I have to find a 16" size 7 needle to start the connecting part.
I'm hoping to finish the pants this week, and the wallet, so I can gift them. My friend Ilene is due in September, and I've been wanting to give the wallet to Salwa for her graduation (in June, yikes!) for a while.

Next up will be Anouk, which everyone on the blogs has knit at one point or another, and Miss Dashwood, but I think I may need more yarn for this... I think I mentioned this whole yarn issue in my last post, about the Toddle scarf. After all this baby knitting, I'm going to do a project for myself (and finish Amy's other sock!), but I'm not sure what yet. I think my desire to knit is bigger than the time I have allotted for it. More's the pity.

I definitely think a trip to Purlis in the cards this week, to get a bit of fabric for the wallet. I should also check Repro Depot, I guess. We'll see. Have a good week, everyone!

the highs and the lows

SIGH.
It's been a long week. Let's recap, shall we?

1. Last week I had to go to London for work. I work for a British company, and my boss is in the UK, so twice a year, I have to go reconnect with her. I flew Virgin Atlantic, which I love, from Newark, which is close to home (not like icky old JFK, which is a million miles away), but I didn't get a whole lot of knitting done on the plane out there because it was an overnight flight, and mostly I just watched movies and slept. I didn't have a lot of energy for concentrating on my knitting project.

2. What project was that, you're asking yourself. Well, my boss told me that she wanted to invite me over for dinner (she specifically said OVER for dinner, not OUT to dinner), so I wanted to make something for her toddler (20 months!) as a housewarming present. What I ended up making was this:

Project: baby hat from Last Minute Knitted Gifts
Yarn: KnitPicks Shine worsted in Iris
Needles--oh, i forget--I think size 7 DPNs
Notes: For pete's sake, it's too freaking small to fit a toddler. A baby perhaps, but a toddler? I asked around at work from the people who had kids, and just received sympathetic smiles and bemused stares. Anyway, good thing I've got like six pregnancies and just borns to knit for. Someone's eventually going to wear this fricking hat! It's so cute.

3. Anyway, I'd finished the hat before I left, and since it was obviously not going to fit, I decided to start this instead. NOTICE that the pattern says ONE BALL of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. ONE BALL! So I bought one ball, not thinking. I'm so irritated with myself for this. It's a hard lesson to learn. I got all the way through the ONE BALL, and was only 2/3 of the way done! So what did I do? Well, first of all, I couldn't give it to my boss, which didn't end up mattering anyway, as she forgot that she'd invited me OVER, and instead we just went OUT. Which was fine, since I had nothing to give her. If I ever finish this thing, I'll give it to her for Christmas. So anyway, I went back to the LYS near my office to get another ball, and OF COURSE they didn't have anymore! They didn't even have any coordinating colors except white, and that looked too weird. Like peppermint or something. Plus, babies + white = dirty, so I bought a ball of a golden yellow Debbie Bliss, but when I got home, Spanky said it looked like the Florida State Seminoles colors, and I messed it up anyway, changing the colors, so I just ripped the whole thing out, and I'm going to do it again in another color later. I forgot to take a picture before I ripped, because I was so mad.

4. So my London trip:

I manage to do about one touristy thing each time I go. Most of the rest of the time I'm working, so it's not exactly a vacation. This time, my hotel was by the British Museum, so that's where I went.

This is a really crappy picture, but I was trying to be sly with the photos,since I wasn't sure whether they were allowed or not. Anyway, it's the entire facade from a Greek Temple.
Also, this was my favorite room:

This is the Enlightenment Room. It was one of the few cool rooms. Probably because it wasn't mobbed. Who wants to look at books? ME! Anyway, King George III apparently donated his library to the Museum when he died, and some of the collections of other famous Brits from the 1700s are there as well. I wish I'd had more time there.

Here are a couple more pictures from my walks around London:


That last photo is of a glockenschpiel outside a Switzerland store. I don't really know what they sell, but the bells make music on the hour a few times a day. The music was so pretty and since I was lost, it helped me get back on track to the hotel.

5. Anyway, this past week was just catch up from my trip and I've been SO TIRED when I got home from work. However, I did make time on Thursday to see a play that we got cheap tickets for from work. It was fun! I haven't been to a play in a long time, and for $25, I was happy to go.

6. This weekend, I've been busy with more fun things:
Strawberry Shortcake

Lemon Poppyseed Scones

Swatching!


7. I decided to approach this baby knitting thing practically--by who's due first! So I'm knitting Cargo from Knitty for my friend Ilene who is due in September and is having a girl. I already bought her a little onesie with Frida Kahlo on it, so I thought these would be good to go with that. We'll see. More on that later.

Here's hoping it doesn't take me another week to update again. I'm sorry this was so long, but the days are so packed...

Argh.

I'm not dead! I was, however, on a business trip to London. Yep. And I came back on Friday, the day after the terror arrests. My flight was SIX HOURS delayed, so consequently, I got home at 3am last Saturday morning, and have spent the intervening time catching up with work/sleep/cleaning/etc.

I'll post more about my adventure tonight or tomorrow (since I have knitting "group" tonight). I'm actually at work now, but was feeling so guilty about falling off the bloggy bandwagon that I wanted to at least note that I'm ok, and even better, have almost half a baby scarf to show for my efforts. Sadly, I wasn't allowed to bring my knitting onto the plane, so I didn't get it finished, but under the circumstances, I'm ok with that, I guess.