Yarn and Projects

It's been another lovely morning of puttering about :-) I woke up late, about nine, and wandered about letting puppies out and filling food and water bowls. I had some cereal for breakfast - so exciting, no? ;-) After a little digging I found a lovely recipe for cranberry muffins that I decided to indulge in. I had bought the cranberries and an orange a couple of days ago, but the recipe that I had in one of the few cookbooks I have here (most of them are still at my apartment on the shelves in the kitchen) just wasn't that appealing. It wasn't what I was looking for, which was just a basic muffin with cranberry and orange zest. The link above is just that - it says lemon, but subbing the orange extract and adding some zest is not a big stretch, and now that I have a naked orange sitting on the counter I guess I know what I'll be having for my afternoon snack, hm?

Yes, that is a Starbucks stainless steel travel mug, and if you like to keep your coffee/tea/whatever hot while you take your time drinking it, I highly recommend these mugs. They are awesome, so much so that I have purchased five of them, and four of those were for myself. The other one was a gift for my uncle last Christmas when he expressed interest in the one that I'd had with me. I preheat the mug by pouring boiling water in it and putting the lid on, allowing it to sit for about five minutes. I then pour the water out and brew my coffee right into the cup using a small cone filter. I've had my coffee hot for hours using this method, and it doesn't go funky which is good because I take my coffee double double.

Today's soundtrack was provided by the wonderful composers James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer from this awesome movie :-D

Another one of the many that I've seen enough times not to get distracted by what's going on onscreen, it's just in there for the music, which I absolutely adore. Now it's time for the sexiness of James Bond in Casino Royale. This one is because the movie is fun, not for the music - I find it too heavy on the brass section, though I do like Chris Cornell's theme song.

I have some new treasures to show you :-) I am trying to be good and knit from my stash but there are certain things that I just can't resist and one of them is a sale. Twisted Fiber Art had their version of a Black Friday sale and I picked up a couple of skeins of wonderful yarn from them in colourways that aren't currently being dyed. The first one is the colourway Ember on their Shiny base which is 50% merino/50% tencel, and yes, it is shiny - and soft, and squishable...

The next is Sweet Tooth on their MCN base (that's merino/cashmere/nylon for the non-yarnies in the audience) and I just love anything with cashmere in it. Oh. My. God. Soft is not the word.

These are both self striping yarns, much like the pic I put up in the last post of the Warlock colourway. I have a pic of that skein too, for your vicarious pleasure. I'm having a hell of a time deciding which one to start as my next project - they will be socks, definitely. There's also a new player in town, but we'll get to that in a minute.

Mmm, purplz...

So, about that new player... I don't know how I've managed to miss it for so long, but there's a shop by the name of GothSocks by Rainy Days & Wooly Dogs who creates some beautiful self striping yarns. I've managed to pick up a couple of skeins on destash on Ravelry and one of them has arrived here already so I can show it off to you. It's the Ricin base, which is merino/bamboo/nylon, and it feels wonderful.

I also have some pictures of current projects :-) I made a pair of fingerless mitts the other night, I finished one on Monday night and the second on Tuesday night. The nice thing about working with worsted weight yarn is how quickly it knits up. I adore my sock yarns, but sometimes it's nice to do a quick project. These were really warm, too, and they hug the hands because of the ribbed construction.

There's also a hat under construction from the same yarn which I'm hoping to finish today or tomorrow.

It's the Palindrome Hat by Kristin Bellehumeur which has reversible cables so the brim can be rolled up or left down, looking lovely either way it's worn.

I have a pair of socks that I've been working on for a little while, just a plain pair where the first one is done and I just finished the heel turn of the second one last night so they're once again available for on-the-go knitting. They may well be the ones I take to the meeting I'm going to on Sunday as they're the closest to being finished and I'd like to have another f.o. notch on my Ravelry page :-D

One last picture of the latest in self striping socks - these are using the Halloween colourway from Tri'Coterie Yarns that I posted about a few blogs ago. My guy is looking forward to his stripey socks :-)

As you can see it's the usual ribbed pattern that I use for his socks, the only changes I've made are to add 4 stitches to the usual number I use for his socks because the yarn is very fine and I'm knitting on US 0/2mm needles. I'll be doing an afterthought heel for these, of course, to maintain the stripe. Hopefully they'll fit him nicely, though I'm a little worried about it because I usually do a gusset and flap heel for him which gives more room over the instep. I guess we'll see, no? :-)

That's all for now,

Later.