One Down

If they gave out prizes for the bloggers who completely ignored NaBloPoMo (a No Blog Posting Month, or NoBloPoMo, if you will), I just might win that one. I'm sorry for my unannounced absence that lasted longer than a month (I can hardly believe it!). Things were just piling up, one on top of another, and I could hardly find the time to think much less knit and write about it.

Student teaching is finished now, which is a huge accomplishment for me. The last day of school was a bittersweet one. I'll definitely miss the kids and it's weird not to be in school right now (though I am enjoying getting up a bit later!). Now I'm working my way through the holiday season: if you need a book recommendation, I'm your girl! Anyway, between finishing teaching, finishing all my homework about teaching, Thanksgiving, and starting work, knitting time has been a bit scarce. I'm hoping to do some more in the coming weeks though, especially now that it's getting really cold.

I did manage to finish the first of my Mitten Swap mittens:


This is the mitten (soon to be mittens, of course) from Lapland from Folk Mittens, and I absolutely love it. I sure hope my partner does too.



I've already cast on for the second one (not giving myself a chance to forget about it), and hopefully it'll go quickly. The pattern actually moves very fast because all the color changes make you want to keep knitting until the next one.

I'm also working on a super secret project for Christmas. I wonder if I can keep Guy from reading the blog so I can show you what it is. If not, I'll be able to show you the FO, which, I've just noticed, hasn't happened for awhile around here. It's so good to be back with you all, so I'll try my hardest to actually finish something!

DROPs and Mittens

The days are just flying by lately. This fall has been one of the busiest I can remember, so forgive me if posting is a little unpredictable. I'm down to the final few weeks of student teaching, so hopefully I can stay strong and get everything done and then things will calm down a bit.

This fall has also been a strange one weather wise - two weekends so far in October with 80 degree temperatures?! It sure isn't helping me keep on track with the beautiful Drops Jacket. So far I've finished the back and one front and I'm about half way with the second front piece.



This was supposed to be my quick, easy knit to keep me warm. Now, since the air is keeping me warm all by itself, I've gotten a bit lazy.


I will finish this beauty, but it might take a blast of cold air to get me back on track...


In other news, I got my partner for the Mitten Exchange! I'm super excited about this swap and my partner's color preferences and the prospect for a very nice package in the near future. So excited, that I cast on pretty much immediately and quite a bit to show for it.




This is mitten number one (of course), using the Mittens from Lapland pattern from Folk Mittens by Marcia Lewandowski (a beautiful book if you're looking for interesting mittens). I'm using Cascade 220 and size 2 DPNs, but it's turning out to be quick, pretty easy, and so interesting because the color patterns change so frequently. The only thing that is slowing me down a bit are the rounds where all three colors are used. I haven't figured out an efficient way to hold all three yarns yet. Any suggestions?

And to my Mitten Pal - I'm so glad you're as excited about this project as I am and that I could oblige with the color choices! That's so cool that we have things in common - I hope a lot of us in the swap will make some friends! Anyway, I would have to say my favorite artist is Cezanne because of all the advances he made for modern art, but I'm also a pretty big fan of Andy Warhol, Edward Hopper, Neil Jenney, and Dana Schutz. Feel free to email me if you have anymore questions!

A Day Off

Today's Columbus Day for those in the U.S., so I celebrated by having a day off of school, sleeping in, watching some trashy court shows on TV, knitting, eating a warm lunch for once, reading, knitting, and cleaning (not much progress with the cleaning, so I'll spare you the photos from it).



The Easy Flame Lace Scarf is coming along, though to you it doesn't look much different than before. I promise it's longer. I'm loving the pattern and the yarn (Laceweight Malabrigo) since the pattern is ridiculously easy and yarn feels like butter, but the Susan Bates metal needles I'm using are holding me back. After awhile of knitting it all just feels tight and metallic - yuck. I'm not sure why this happens after knitting for some time (maybe I just don't notice it at first?), but I'm taking some breaks and trying to get through it.



And I love this stuff so much that I bought another couple of skeins. I'm not sure yet if I'll make more Easy Flames or not, but they sure are pretty to look at, no?

Too Hot to Knit

While it seems like fall has come to the rest of the country, the Midwest is still definitely in summer. I suppose that gives me some time to finish up the jacket, but the piles of wool are just too much right now.

I found this instead:











Have a great rest of the weekend!

Easy Peasy

Tuesday and Wednesday were busy and hard. A bad day followed by a busy day of picking up the pieces. Nothing too dramatic or interesting, but they didn't leave any room for blogging or even knitting (and I think I'm pretty good at finding the spare moment to knit!).

But today was better. School is going well and I'm really excited about what is happening and what will happen.

The Easy Flame Scarf is exciting as well:



I'm loving the pattern and just how easy it really is, and the laceweight Malabrigo is amazing, but these tiny needles and yarn sure are making this thing last awhile. I can't wait for it to be done because I know it'll be beautiful, but the Drops jacket is carrying me away with it's quickness.

The days are getting shorter all the time, but this weekend promises to almost set a record for high temperatures, so I'll try to stick with the scarf for now. A nice little scarf is much better quasi summer knitting than a huge pile of chunky yarn anyway. Even if I could finish that sucker in a couple of hours if I tried. I'll try not to think about it as I toil away.

Knit Faster, Fall is Coming

Today was just one of those days. It rained all night, was still dark and cloudy when I left for work, and was cold enough that I felt unprepared in my little fine gauge store bought cardigan (that secretly, or not so secretly is a little too small for me now). Just one of those days.

What's the remedy? The jacket that's sweeping blogland, finally reaching home sweet home right here. That's right, the Drops jacket!


I finished the whole back today, which is awesome and definitely a bit of a boost. Who says knitting has to take forever?



I'm sorry about the horrible pictures. The shorter days and generally rainy-ness along with a camera shy sweater make for frustrating photo shoots. I ordered the "true navy" colorway of Laines du Nord Soft Light, but this is the blackest navy I have ever seen. Definitely much darker than the picture online. Not a huge deal as I think I look okay in black (maybe even better than yellow, wink wink), just not what I was expecting.

The sweater might be done by the end of the week, which would rock my socks and keep me prepared for the next cold front, so hopefully I'll have some better photos soon. Cross your fingers!

Deep Breaths

The past two weeks have just flown by. School is very very busy and taking up a lot of my time. I'm having fun with it, but it's not good for blogging! Thankfully, since I'm teaching art, at least part of my day is making something and helping the kids make things (even if it's not of the yarn variety).

This week was unusually tough because of a bad cold I picked up somewhere, plus it was Homecoming week at school, meaning lots of activities were planned to keep me busy. Anyway, I spent most of this weekend resting, catching up on grading, and knitting a little something:



This is my Easy Flame Lace Scarf from Wendy Bernard, and it looks suspiciously just like hers, but I was gifted the Malabrigo Lace for my birthday and I didn't intend to copy her shamelessly. The pattern is great and easy to memorize, making this a great on the go project. I might be about half way right now and I'm hoping to finish it before it gets much colder. I might save this for a Christmas present too.

I hope you all had a good weekend, it's almost Monday! I'm going to try to post every day this week to get myself out of this posting slump I've found myself in. Some days I look around and wonder, why would anyone care about this? But I've learned that when I look for beauty and interesting things in my life, I usually find them. I'll put that to the test in the next few days. Wish me luck!