The silver lining of my sick week... YARN

So I had a rough week that consisted of having a fever and a head cold from hell. My entire office took turns being out for the most part. I did get a new nefarious yarn (Hillside Stranglers) in the mail this week and that cheered me considerably. :)

I'm supposed to be packing for next weeks move and I've not been doing a very job of helping or staying on task, so I don't want to waste MORE time blogging, but I do have some mosaics of my current WIPs... and recent stashes for you viewing pleasure.

I started my clapotis. I love it so far. It's a very easy project, now that I've gotten the hang of alternating with two skeins.

Here are the WIPs:
(heavily featuring my new clapotis because I am in love with it)

Here are my pretties:

X-Posting to "Dobby is my Hero" since there's a new term starting... Go Hufflepuff!

End of March goals

So I'm forgoing two weeks right now and instead giving myself 2 1/2 weeks and until the end of March to finish/start/accomplish the following:

1. Percy shawl - I've got beads and hooks and no more excuses
2. The second Cascadia sock (or at least most of the sock completed)
   
3. Through the gusset and heel of Monarch socks
4. Through the stockinette portion of VD Awareness .... (It's a travelling woman shawl in my cosmic fibers gout of the dick... he he he he)

So we'll see if I can accomplish those. It's a bigger list than usual.

I *DID* finish the first of Ronni's socks in time. I've not photoed the sock yet though ... It is very very pretty though. ;)

My Week in Knitting, and Morning of Photos

The "2 weeks" plan has moved along swimmingly with only very minor setbacks. I'll tackle the 2 weeks plan 1 project at a time though.

For this current two weeks (which ends tomorrow night) I had "challenged" myself to two projects:

1. Finish the first of Ronni's BFF socks
2. Finish Percy

The first of the goals will be met with ease. I have no pictures of the new sock progress, because honestly it looks the same as the LAST picture except that the sock is just a bit longer in the leg. Not even kidding. LOL Ronni prefers shorter socks so I'll be binding off the first one soon and moving on.


Now for Percy (or as I call him Ozymandias), I WILL NOT finish. I have been knitting on the shawl that doesn't end, and I've even renewed my interest in the shawl! Here's how I managed to be re-inspired where Ozymandias was concerned.

Firstly, I am sort of thrilled with the idea of actually finishing and so that made me a little giddy and more inspired in my knitting of it.

Secondly, I have decided to add BEADS to the shawl instead of doing nupps. I am SUPER excited about my first beaded project. At first, I had decided that I'd use my silver beads that I already had, but it turned out that they were too small and I felt that the silver beads coupled with the silver in the yarn was too much silver. Plus, since I consider Ozymandias to be a villian (I love Watchmen.) and the yarn being inspired by Sweeney Todd, I wanted a more nefarious feel to the beads. I got this great idea that I should find black or dark blue beads that had the aurora finish so that they'd look sort of like oil or gasoline shimmering on asphalt. AND after searching I found the perfect beads and they arrived in the mail yesterday! ... The reason that I'm not finishing and that there is a itsch in this plan is that my crochet hook is apparently is too large even with the correct size of beads. :( SO I am waiting for Ronni to come home because she may have one. If she doesn't I'll have to go buy one. ... I have amended this section of the 2 week goal to be: KNIT ALL ROWS PRIOR TO THE FIRST ROW REQUIRING BEADS. I'm confident that I'll get there.

Here are some WIP pictures and some pictures with the beads. I'm not sure that the exact color and sheen of the beads is captured in the pictures, but it's as close as I could get.

Here is Ozymandias sans beads

And with beads

In Case We've Forgotten
PATTERN: Percy Shawl by Sanne Kalkman
PATTERN SOURCE: On-line, via Ravelry
YARN: Cosmic Fibers Ara Stellar in Sweeney Todd
NEEDLES: US 7 / 4.5 mm
SIZE: As written, with 1 A, 2 B, and 1 C repeat
MODS: Adding beads instead of Nupps

And for fun... Here's a shot of all of my new beads. I have some fun projects in mind for these.

In addition to work on my "2 weeks goal" projects I started work on a NEW project. This is a project I've been planning on FOREVER and finally ad a bad enough day where I decided to go ahead, cast on and bring myself joy in the form of Venture Brother villain themed yellow socks. ... That's right the MIGHTY MONARCH socks are finally on the needles, going two at a time successfully and they bring me such joy when I knit on them.

I feel as though I'll need either Fuschia or black tights to wear underneath the socks when they are done. Tight wearing probably last for the entirty of a FINSIHED SOCKS YAY! photo shoot and that's it, but you know, it'll look awesome. ;)

PATTERN: Butterfly Socks by Wendy Johnson
PATTERN SOURCE: Socks from the Toe Up
YARN: Knit it Up Silky in Sunflower
NEEDLES: US 1 / 2.25 mm
SIZE: Medium

(there's no small, hence the smaller than usual needles)

In other news I had a lot of FUN mail. Really! I got my new beads, my Sundara Napa Valley collection, yarnissma kits, and a loopy ewe order. Here are some pictures (minus the beads, since they were already shown that should make you a little green with envy. ;)

Sundara Napa Valley Collection
From Left to Right:
Grape Vine, Turning Leaves, Cabernet Grape, Aged Oak Barrel

(I'm so in love with all these colors, but given my recent GREEN loving mood, Grape Vine is my favorite)

Yarnissima Kits

I bought 4 in total; 2 for me and 2 for Ronni.
My two are Zur Lederhos'n and I ordered 1 kit with the Handu Flaming Sideburns and the Empoisonnée pattern. For Ronni I ordered Spina Di Pesce (which she's lucky I didn't open at the house, I'd have stolen it. LOVE that BLUE) and her own Zur Lederhos'n.

I love the kits! I love the presentation of them, the color coding, the little extras, the way it's packaged. SERIOUSLY I LOVE EVERYTHING about these kits. I now want ALL the kits, so I'll be working towards that.

My Loopy Ewe Package

I'm not going to say what teh pretties are. Just show them off. ;)

Also since I was being quite the shutterbug this morning I decided to photo my Sundara and Wollmeise "rainbows" since I've gotten a few new skeins today. They're very pretty.

Wollmeise

Sundara

The new "2 Weeks" Plan

Alright... Ravelympics has came and went. I did rather well, but didn't accomplish nearly as much as I wanted to because of an illness and the usual time suck which is my job. I did manage to finish Mauricio's socks though. He even wore them to work that Monday and showed them off. =D I'll post more about those later though. No need to distract myself from my topic.

Ravelympics did however make me realize that I tend to work better on a deadline. These deadlines also make me FINISH things rather than continuously cast on projets only to frog them a year later. So I am instituting my own "2 Week Goals." Every two weeks I'll have a certain amount of knitting that I want to accomplish and I'll go for it. I'm hoping this will tame the cast-on-itis and the amount of WIPs that pile up, but we'll see. ;)

For this current period of two weeks (from Monday March 1 to Sunday March 14) I plan to finish Percy (freaking finally!) and the first of Ronni's BFF socks. I hope in the future sets of my 2 week plans to accomplish more than 1 1/2 WIPs, but I have a big project in progress for work that is sucking up this weeks time and the need to FOCUS on that stupid Percy shawl and get it done.

I'll have a status update this weekend into the Percy knitting to keep myself on task.