seasonally inappropriate!

I’ve been a little preoccupied, lately, in my knitting. I’ve got a couple of July birthdays coming up, and so a lot of my time has been spent on gift knitting that I can’t really share. This is awesome for me, because I love giving handknits to people who appreciate them, but kind of lame for the blog.

In the meantime, this is what I’ve been working on that I can share.

This past month, I’ve been living in a smaller city about an hour away from home, doing an internship-ish thing for school. In planning for this, I quickly realized that my cat – I’m sure you all remember, she’s the fuzzy one – wasn’t going to be able to come with me.

Fortunately, my good friend F now lives in the same city as I do. She loves cats, and she said she wouldn’t mind letting mine stay with her and her boyfriend for a little while. In exchange for doing me that amazing, awesome favour, she asked for mittens.

I asked her what kind of mittens, and she said that she wanted whatever kind I wanted to make. Then I asked her what colours she liked, and she told me that she liked. . .well, she gave me a list, but it was pretty well all possible colours. Finally – after a few hours of Ravelry browsing and some ambitious mitten plans swirling in my head, I asked her if she preferred birds, or squirrels.

She was very clear on that: she preferred squirrels.

there are so many boxes, the cat doesn’t know which one to hide in first.

I’m moving this week – while school is still in session. This seemed like a really good idea when I planned it (in March), but in fact it was a terrible idea and I’m very sorry and I’ll never, ever do it again. I do have new knitting, but the odds of me getting it photographed to show you guys are pretty slim (which is a shame, because my new pink socks are looking awesome).

I do have some photos that I realize I’ve yet to blog, though, so I thought I’d share that with you all.

Socks!

I knit these with leftovers from Dad’s Christmas socks, and my glitter socks, both in Dream in Color sock yarns. The put-up for these yarns is truly excellent, and amount of each skein that I had left over after knitting a pair of socks was truly impressive – so impressive that I managed to knit myself a whole pair of socks from them. (Even if they are a little shorter than I like my socks)

See you all from my new apartment, kids.

white cat, black sweater

Okay, so the cat isn’t entirely white, but she sure sheds white.

This, of course, is the nearly-done body of my Goose Rocks hoodie, which (of course) I won’t be able to wear until at least October, considering the way the weather’s been going lately. But it’s still going to be a good hoodie to have in the fall, and knitting it is a pretty good time. The construction is a little odd compared to other low-seam (not seamless – the arms are knit separately and sewn on) sweaters I’ve made in the past, and the more I work with the cotton-based yarn, the more I find I don’t mind it. Plus, I get to do many, many cables: my one true knitting love.

Some sewing-related stuff also came in the mail today, which was very exciting for me. I ordered some fabric online shortly after finishing my sexy cowgirl pillow – trying something a little bigger is one of my goals for the summer. Ideally I’d like to make a quilt, but I’m scared of actually quilting (it looks hard/ what if I make a mistake/I’m not worthy, etc), so we’ll see.

I also couldn’t resist a half-yard of this fabric – anyone who knows me well has, at some point, heard about my ridiculous love of Alice in Wonderland, and this was too good to pass up. I’d love to turn it into a skirt, but being a classy lady older than about nine, I’m not 100% sure if I can pull it off. There’s a fine line between “hipsterishly cute” and “childlike in a sad, empty sort of way.”

Maybe if I used a skirt pattern that involved panels of different fabrics? I’d like to think if I toned it down with really sensible black and a grown-up A-line pattern, it might be more okay, but it’s possible that I’m just thinking wishfully.

Also, out of curiosity – if I had a pattern to write up, perhaps one that was related to last week’s blog post, would any of you be interested in test-knitting? The only things I can offer as compensation are a copy of the pattern, and eternal glory.