vogue knitting live 2016

Hi friends!  I hope you're having a wonderful, relaxing weekend full of all of your favorite things.  I certainly am!  This morning, I woke up early and cleaned my apartment, did some yoga, and headed out to Brooklyn to meet up with my brother.  We had a delicious brunch at The Bounty, which is a completely charming restaurant.  We actually tried to check out a few other places first-- one was closed, one was closed down completely, and one had a very confusing ordering system and there wasn't much seating.  It worked out for the best, though-- both the food and the ambiance of The Bounty were perfect for a relaxed Saturday morning.  Zach ordered the mackerel and scrambled eggs on toast, and I had biscuits with sausage gravy.  Both dishes were yummy, but we both agreed that the biscuits and gravy were hard to beat.  Definitely a good choice if you're looking for a cozy, reasonably-priced-for-New-York option in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

The other reason I was in Greenpoint was to meet up with some knitting friends at Gauge and Tension!  I spent an absolutely wonderful afternoon knitting with Jennie and Devon from the Tiny Paper Foxes podcast, Jaclyn from the Brooklyn Knitfolk podcast, Denise from the Yarn Geek podcast, Michael from the Penuin Coffee Klatchd podcast, and Allison, who works at Gauge and Tension.  Jennie, along with Eric from the Sticks + Twine podcast, hosted a meetup after Vogue Knitting Live a few weeks ago, so I'd already met a few of these lovely people, and it was great to have some more time with them, as well as meeting a few new friends!

Speaking of Vogue Knitting Live, today I'd like to share my VKL purchases!  I went to the VKL marketplace with my friend Kristina, who is incredibly fun to shop with.  Our tastes in color are almost complete opposites, so we're never competing for the same skein, and we are both expert enablers.  As Jennie would say, it was a Festival of Woolpiggery.

First is this beautiful skein from Narwhal Needlework.  Look at those colors!  The blush, the raspberry, the deep brown-- the speckles!  For crying out loud, the speckles!  I fell in love with this skein from a few booths away and zoomed right over to purchase it.  This is a superwash merino and nylon blend, fingering weight, and the colorway is called Coffee Date.  Too cute!

Next up is this beautiful tweedy skein, also from Narwhal Needlework.  Every once in a while, I run across a dyer who just speaks to me with their color sense.  Narwhal Needlework is definitely one of those dyers.  There was nothing in their booth that I wouldn't love to knit.  This is another fingering weight, in the colorway Marooned.

These two beautiful skeins are by Hedgehog Fibres, purchased at the StevenBe booth.  Both are in the colorway Opalite, but I couldn't choose which weight of yarn to get, so I decided to get both!  The sock yarn is a superwash merino/ nylon blend, and the merino singles are, obviously, merino, in a worsted weight.

I think I picked up and put down this yarn about five times before finally committing to purchasing it.  There is a lot of tonal blush yarn in my yarn stash, and I wasn't sure I needed another skein-- but I kept picking up this one and squeezing it and rubbing it against my cheek and even sniffing it (it's so sheepy!), and I finally decided to buy it.  After all, the reason I have so much tonal blush yarn in my stash is because I love tonal blush yarn.  This is Mohonk from Jill Draper Makes Stuff, a gorgeous sport-weight Cormo wool, in the Tiny Dancer colorway.

Last but not least are these two gorgeous skeins of sparkly fingering weight from Holiday Yarns, in the colorway Silver Screen.  I purchased these as an option for my Crazed Scandinavian Cowl, but ended up choosing the darker gray from my last post.  I'm so glad I bought these though, because they will look lovely in a colorwork project with some lavender or pale blue-- ooh, or yellow!  Wouldn't these be lovely paired with a mustard color?

Well, lovelies, I hope you have a fantastic Saturday night!  I'll be spending the rest of the evening knitting, snuggling Bucky and Cocoa, sipping tea, and reading the latest issue of Artful Blogging magazine.  Maybe I'll do a little journaling, too.  Getting wild and crazy over here!

♥

gray and blush

 

This weekend has been incredibly cozy.  I came home Friday after work, got into my pajamas (begin as you mean to go on, right?), and settled in for a snowy weekend inside.  Friday night was spent cleaning and organizing, because I can't relax if my apartment isn't tidy, and I guess the organizing bug was still in my system on Saturday morning, because I decided to take on a pretty mammoth task: organizing my yarn stash.  That entailed taking every single skein and braid out of my yarn cabinet-- have I mentioned that I have a lot of yarn and spinning fiber?  I'm hoping to do a little stash tour soon, too.  The up close and personal view of my many, many yards of yarn and ounces of fiber was a little intimidating, to be honest, but it was also exciting.  It also gave me a chance to see trends in my yarn purchasing, and while I have a lot of lavender and a lot of pale blue, the majority of my stash is gray and blush.  

 

Since I have so much of it, and because gray and blush go with pretty much everything in my wardrobe, I decided to cast on a few projects.  The two soft, lovely yarns above are O-Wool Legacy Bulky in Desert Blush and Cascade 128 Bulky in Silver.  The Cascade 128 Bulky was a gift from my lovely friend and coworker Kristina-- she knit a gorgeous fisherman's rib scarf out of it and when I said that I loved it, she passed along her four extra skeins to me!  Kristina, that was so generous of you, thank you so much. These are going to become the Color Dipped Scarf from Purl Soho.  This will be my first try at brioche knitting and I'm pretty excited about it!  

I spent most of this weekend knitting on the Crazed Scandinavian Cowl by Wendy Johnson.  I'm still relatively new at colorwork, as this is only my fourth colorwork project, so I find myself un-knitting quite often and my tension is occasionally a little wonky (which will hopefully even out in blocking).  I'm enjoying it nonetheless, and these yarns make it such a pleasant project to knit on.  The blush yarn is Kraemer Sterling Sock in the Pink Pearl colorway, purchased at Vogue Knitting Live in January of 2015 at the Woolbearers booth.  The gray is from Holiday Yarns, in the Silver Sock base, in the Badger Black colorway--and that color name makes my little Hufflepuff heart very happy.  I purchased this yarn at Vogue Knitting Live 2016, just over a week ago. (I'll be sharing the rest of my purchases with you in my next post, and guess what?  Gray and blush.  All of it.)   These are definitely dyed up on the same base from Kraemer, consisting of merino, silk, and nylon, so the two yarns work perfectly together.  This is an at-home-only project for me, so I've also cast on some socks for my mom so that I'll have something to knit on the train and while watching podcasts, since I need to follow a chart closely for this cowl.  Now that I'm finally finished with my Christmas knitting, I want to cast on all the things!

I hope your week is off to a great start!  

♥

knitting catch-up: purple socks

Hi friends!  So, life got a little crazy and I took an unintentional blogging break.  I'm hoping to get on a more regular schedule soon, but in the meantime, I've been knitting up a storm.  I'm going to break up my projects into a few knitting catch-up post to keep it from becoming overwhelming.  Today, let's talk socks, specifically, purple socks.


First up, these are the Blueberry Waffle Socks  in Paton's Kroy sock yarn, in the Cameo Colors colorway.  I fell in love with this pattern/yarn combination after seeing Dani knit these on the Little Bobbins podcast, and I shamelessly copied.  I've since knit several pairs of Blueberry Waffle Socks, they've become my go-to sock pattern.  The ribbed nature of the pattern makes them fit really well, and it's just interesting enough to be both enjoyable and mindless knitting, perfect for my commute knitting or knitting on while watching podcasts.  I did contrasting afterthought heels on these socks in some charcoal gray Paton's Kroy.


I also knit a pair of plain stockinette socks out of some gorgeous yarn from Black Bunny Fibers.  I purchased this yarn at Vogue Knitting Live in January of 2015.  It's the Belmont base, which is a blend of 55% superwash merino, 25% nylon, and 20% kid mohair, and the colorway is Cracked Pepper.  I wasn't sure how I would feel about the mohair content in this yarn, but I barely noticed it while I was knitting.  If anything, the socks feel a little more sturdy and hard-wearing than usual. Toes, afterthought heels, and cuffs are in charcoal Paton's Kroy.

When I knit these socks, I was using a US size 1 needle, and 72 stitches.  I'm a tight knitter, so I've since changed to using a US size 2 needle and 64 stitches.  The fit is the same, but the socks feel softer because they're not quite so dense.  Honestly, when I first started knitting, I wasn't sure I was ever going to be a Sock Knitter (capital S and K).  I was not even close to correct.  I love knitting socks and I almost always have a pair on the needles.  And that's a good thing, because my stash of sock yarn.... well, let's say it's healthy.  Very healthy.  Robustly healthy.

Oh, and #blizzard2016?  Yup, that happened-- we got about 26" of snow in Bayonne between Friday night and this morning.  Thankfully, I have a vacation day on Monday, so I don't have to venture out of the apartment for a few more days.  I'm all stocked up on the essentials: Lush bath bombs, tea, and Choco Leibniz biscuits.  Oh, and yarn.  So much yarn.

How did all of you weather the storm?  What are your hunkering-down essentials?  

Stay cozy!

♥