Obligatory Welcome 2008 post

Looking through my bloglines today, the common theme was clearly welcome 2008, Happy New Year. So I figured I might as well join the club.

Happiness and Health. That’s what I want. Both are hard to come by for me, can’t imagine why. *insert sarcasm here* I’m feeling quite ornery today. Is this the after the holiday blues? Or maybe it’s just time for the darn kids to go back to school! Yeah, I’m going with that one. And while I’m at it…can I send my husband to another planet for a few weeks? Didn’t you know, even after 10 years, we still get to hate our husbands. Especially when they consistently give us reason.

I have been knitting. Or rather, I’ve been starting. Right now, I have maybe 8 or so inches of the Montego Bay scarf knitted up. On the needles, I also have a pair of fair isle fingerless gloves and a pair of fair isle mittens, both stalled at the cuffs. And then today I started a patchwork scarf with a yarn magic ball. (I’ll share more on that later.) And here I am…bored. I don’t want to knit any of these things. I want to start my Rogue pullover in Dream in Color Classy, but I won’t. See, I splurged on this project. I wanted a super soft yarn I know I would actually wear. *I am not going to tell you how many of the sweaters I have knitted that have yet to be worn, any.* I figured since I splurged, and I love the Rogue so much, I should really do it right this time, which means swatching. I don’t like swatching. I recently discovered that when knitting, my gauge is different from in the round to flat. It didn’t used to always be like that, but I also used to get gauge with the suggested needle size and now I always have to go up 2 or 3 sizes. So of course, now I have to do two swatches. And the idea of having to knit the sweater, potentially with two different size needles…well, let’s just say I’m not jumping up and down with enthusiasm right now.

I’m sort of stalled on the spinning too. I spun up 2 oz. of bfl the other day, but I can’t bring myself to spin up the other half. It’s so drab, and sad. I can’t figure out what to do with it to make it more “happy”, so it just sits there. And because I am really trying to spin one fiber at a time (yeah, that’s going to last long!), that means spinning nothing else until I figure this out.

And because I hate seeing pictureless posts, I’ll share with you a knitting FO and a spinning FO.

First up, the Amanda Hat. This is my first project with Malabrigo and I am in love with this yarn! It’s unbelievably soft for wool yarn. Take for instance Cascade 220. It’s nowhere near itchy, but when I wear it close to my skin, it does itch just a little. Not enough to not use it, but enough that Malabrigo really makes me happy. (So happy I just ordered two sweater’s worth of it, hehe.) Anyhow…where was I? This hat pattern was quick, easy, and fun to knit up. I made it while watching the movie “Superbad”, which by the way, was super bad. Really. I usually don’t knit hats because they never fit right. I have a lot of hair, it’s long and a lot thicker than it looks in the picture. So hats never cover me ears, or if they do, the hat constantly shifts up, and my ears freeze. This hat….is beyond perfect fit. See:

But even better…with my hair up:

I love this hat so much, I plan on making another one in a different color. Malabrigo of course. I also used the leftover yarn to make the same hat for my Mom. Otherwise, she would have stolen mine. I have never made anything for mom. She doesn’t even ask for my handknits. Mostly because if I’m a wee bit sensitive to wool, she is uber sensitive it it. But the Malabrigo, Mom loved it and didn’t want to take it off. (Did I mention the day I finished it, the weather was in the 60′s and I kept the hat on all day anyways because it was SO comfy?)

And here’s a small spinning fo:

This is 309 yards heavy fingering weight superwash merino from Middle Kingdom Fiber. I had so much fun spinning this up, so festive. Of course, I finished it a few days before Christmas. Finished spinning it really, it still needs to be washed and set. It will make some great Christmas socks for Christmas ’08.

I have more to say and share…but this post has gotten long and I don’t want to shock my few readers by going on.