What I've Been Up To

I inadvertently decided that I was going to take a on week break from blogging - or something to that effect, but I'm back!

I've been doing a ton of spinning lately (no surprise there) and this is what I have to show of it.

The last of the nice roving

Got spun and plied to make this

I also finally got a hang of using the fast flier and I'm having a lot of fun with it. It seems like its a lot easier for me to spin even singles on the fast flier than on the regular one - which is weird.
I also really need a spinning book. For whatever reason I neglected to buy one when I bought my wheel. My mom is sending me my winter jacket soon (because its colder in Krakow than it is here) so maybe I'll ask her to pick one up for me and send it, along with some red vines (red licorice that I've only been able to find in the western part of the US) as they are my favorite candy of all time.

~115 yards of two ply lace weight

I finished sock one of Bartholomew's Tantalizing Socks this morning. It still has a life line in the toe because I'm not positive that I'll have enough for the other sock and I want the toes to match. I'm knitting it in the Tausendschön that I bought a while ago. At first I didn't think the darker colors were saturated enough for me (you can see bits of white in the dark blues and greens) but I actually really like it. Its a really nice yarn to knit with and its not very expensive for hand dyed.

The color reminds me of Neuroknitter's holiday socks :)

Oh and Avast is sitting near my stash as I avoid seaming it because I really hate seaming. It actually got blocked on Wednesday/Thursday. I think I'm going to try to finish seaming most of it today though. Still no pictures.

Done!

Yay!

Finally, they're done, finally! They fit well, etc etc. I still don't really like the colorway at all. I mean it looks fine, and they look fine on me, but those of you who know me know that I like yarn thats a big more exciting than this.

Now that the Jaywalkers are finished I can spend more bonding time with Avast. I also can wind one of the skeins of sock yarn seen in this post and maybe, just maybe finish up the sibling to Dashing (the first of the pair can be seen here).

I also went out and got an electric tea kettle today! One should note that I've been used to having an electric tea kettle in my room for over a year prior to coming here when my mom got me this for Christmas a few years ago. It still remains the best gift I've ever received (well one of them). I used it at least once a day when I was at Sarah Lawrence and realized, when I was packing for Vienna, that it couldn't come with me. There's an electric tea kettle in the kitchen that I use sometimes, but I always feel bad because I don't actually know if its communal and I don't want to use someone else's appliance. All that being said - this is a very important purchase.

A big day for a little sock

On Wednesday morning I had three rows of the second Jaywalker done and now look what I have!

Oh how its grown :)

The "wing" stitches (as K. Bordhi would call them) are still not all worked but its getting there and they will be worked by the time I go to bed tonight. Sadly because of this Avast has been a bit neglected but not completely. I worked on it before school this morning and am in the beginning of the fourth repeat of the bottom cable band thing, which is going amazingly slowly. After the Jaywalker sock is done then I'll be able to focus the majority of my knitting attention to Avast (and start a new sock of course).

As it turns out, Vienna falls are amazingly like Portland falls. The only difference is that its a little colder (though late next week its supposed to be getting a lot colder) and the rain is lighter. We still have those glorious cloudy wet days though - today was one of them. Its also a lot more windy here which I'm not a fan of. Even though I'm not on the top floor of my dorm, I can still hear the rain fall because of some sort of landing that is right next to my window. I love it.

I also was well enough to force myself to go to school this morning for my one class, German. Of course once class started I realized that actually, I still am sick and with in 10 minutes I had a headache (I only get them if I'm sick or really dehydrated) and was hoarse. Thankfully my teacher realized this and only "made" me talk once (though when we would go over things and say them as a group aloud I would talk - which is how my voice got so hoarse so quickly). Other than that and my general tiredness I am feeling much better physically though still an anxious mess (hence why I had to force myself to go to school). As one of my friends jokingly said - Freud would have loved me.

I can knit again!

I can knit again! I'm definitely not up to full speed but my hands don't hurt any more. As proof, this is what I did today.

All of that with the exception of the first three rows was knit today.

I'm also getting amazingly tired of the Regia that I'm using for these socks. Maybe its the whole no discernible color pattern thing, but it makes it more monotonous. Note that I also won't let myself start any new socks until I finish this one as a way of trying to cure myself of Second Sock Syndrome - if that is even possible. It was a great motivator when I was finishing my monkeys but apparently not so much with this one. I will finish it before I even begin to wind any of the new sock yarn into balls though!

I also did get out of the house today which is good. I didn't go to class or knitting as I wanted to get better (I am going to class tomorrow though) but I did have to go in to get my lesson reimbursement. IES (my school) makes all of the music students pay for their lessons up front and then they give us up to 400 euro in reimbursement per semester (which may just barely cover mine - barely). Each month there is a day that we all have to show up with our sheets that say how many lessons we have and thus how much money IES owes us - today was that day - so that was a rather strong motivator to get out of the house.

I also decided that since I was out, and there are two yarn shops with in 10 minutes of my school, I would go out in search of the five million (four) needles for Avast. Apparently the designer of Avast wants the knitter to have 1 US 7 circ 29" or longer, 1 US 5 circ 29" or longer, and two other circs both US 7 or smaller one of which needs to be at least 29". So on my little quest I stopped by the LYS closest to my school (two blocks away) and got one of the needles. They didn't have the others I needed so I decided that it would be better to go to what is now, my regular LYS in Vienna, Zwei Glatt Zwei Verkehrt. They had what I needed and they had this:

Stash? What stash?

Its 100% Shetland wool that looks like it may be hand dyed for/by the owner of the store. Both are 100g skeins and are about 450 meters. I think I may knit mittens out of them but we'll see. I'm also going to try to swatch for Avast tonight but again, we'll see.

Half way through

Jaywalker number one is finished! All and all I think I'm happy with this pattern and am amused at my major modification to it.

This is what my darling little heel looks like. See that little point, that's the center of the heel (that actually lines up directly with one of the lines going down the back)

The entire time I was knitting after I had completed the heel I was thinking about just how elf like this sock looked like. That being said, its totally functional and fits really well (actually its a bit tight, but thats on purpose because I never take in account that socks ease and then end up with socks that are slightly too large). I also had enough yarn that I didn't have to substitute anything for the toe which was a relief.
My original goal with these was to get the pair of them finished before Monday when I should be getting my three skeins of Tausendschön (for everyone who doesn't speak German, click on "online-shop" and she has the majority of it translated into English). Thats not going to happen. Also, I need to ask for a pair of sock blockers for Christmas because taking pictures of completed socks - not fun.

Per request I'm going to talk about food, because well I love food and Neuroknitter asked me to. I suppose a little back ground is needed - when I was little among the things I wanted to be when I grew up was a chef because I loved (and still love) cooking. I later, after giving up that dream, realized just how much pressure professional chefs are put under and am glad that I didn't choose to go to culinary school. I also grew up cooking a lot of stuff by myself (I learned at a very young age not to touch hot burners) so in middle school my after school routine consisted of, walk/take the bus home, make some sort of snack (normally an omelette or just warmed up left overs) then watch Great Chefs of the World, Epicurious (which they still show early in the morning on HGTV I think), and lastly The Christopher Lowell Show (funny because I hate watching anything related to interior design now, unless it involves kitchens).
All of this is to say - I love cooking, talking about cooking, reading about cooking, etc - Oh and eating. Sadly here in Vienna I haven't actually been doing much cooking. I live in a dorm, and though there are kitchens on each floor (that are amazingly clean), we have tiny little locked cubbies in the refrigerator and slightly bigger locked cabinets. I also just don't have the time or energy to cook as much as I do at home or at Sarah Lawrence (not that I had time to cook at Sarah Lawrence either...). So here my diet has consisted of a lot of apples, a lot of pasta (with a wide variety of sauces though none home made - I also don't have a whole lot of cookware here), chicken, and a lot of kabab sandwiches. Its pathetic, I do treat myself to lunch at Cafe Wolfbauer at least once a week though and stop in nearly every morning for a pastry. They also have really good soup - next time I'm there I'll try to remember to take a picture.

[I just cut out a very long rant about grocery shopping. Comment if you want me to post it because I do have it saved to my hard drive - It kind of reminds me of the rants David Sedaris writes about France but is probably not written nearly as well]

Sock day!

So because I also had today off I knitted the Jaywalker socks....all day.

This was at 11:10am

And it turned into this by 10:40ish pm!

I was a bit skeptical of this pattern at first because of all of the complaints I heard about it not fitting right (it being too small/people not being able to fit it over their heels) and I'm not a fan of Regia (which I think I've mentioned before) but, I think I'm a fan of this pattern. It also has the ability to show of some of the Regia colorways really well (not this one, but I just about died when I saw a picture of one on Ravlery). I like it because its totally mindless knitting but with more excitement than a plain stockinette stitch sock. Anything with a pattern that I can memorize in with in four rounds and requires almost no counting on my part makes perfect conversation knitting when I'm knitting and chatting with my non knitting friends.

You also might be able to notice in the second picture that I did a different heel than what the pattern calls for (the cuff is also p1, K1tbl but that isn't nearly as interesting to talk about). So I really don't like heel flaps because I find the heel flap portion amazingly boring (I love the actual turning of the heel bit though) and I hate picking up and knitting gusset stitches. They always look to messy to me and then my inner perfectionist comes out and frustration results. Sooo, instead of going the heel flap route I decided that I'd do the short row heel thing that is in Cat Bhordi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters book. Of course - I haven't knit any of the cuff down socks in there which made this adventure a little more parlous. What I ended up doing was putting the arch expansion in the back of the leg, turning the heel the way that the Jaywalker pattern advised me to (I didn't have the energy to do the exact one in the Bordhi book but I really wanted to - next time...), and then worked the "wing stitches" (which translates into the stitches that were used to expand for the instep) the same way that Bordhi writes how to in her book. It made for a much, much cleaner heel in my opinion, though a bit too triangular for my taste (which you can't really tell in the picture). The only other problem I'm running into is that I may run out of yarn for this project....Its not a big deal because I don't think the dye lot is too important with this yarn (I see no discernible pattern color wise) but we'll see, I have about three inches left until the toe which I will put a life line into. And, if need be, I'll just buy another skein (well its not actually a skein its a center-pull ball) of the Regia as the only other sock yarn I have here that I'd be willing to substitute for the toe is blue...they don't go together.

In non sock news - I know i've said it before, but this is the last time I'll say it (hopefully) I am Lizard Ridge is done! I know its not totally done the border is non-existent and its final blocking won't happen until this summer when I'm back in Portland, but It is still amazing and does a good job at helping to keep me warm at night. I'm going to bring it to Wednesday knitting and to school on Wednesday as I'll actually have room in my bag (two of my classes are canceled all of next week - its exciting) and I know some of the people at knitting want to see it and at at least 10 people at school want to see it.

So ya know how I said I was going to see Pique Dame yesterday - that didn't happen. Melinda and I got to the Staatsoper for standing room tickets three and a half hours before it started and there were already 30-40 people there, and the amazing part (not that the huge line wasn't astonishing enough) was that almost all of them were residence of Vienna! Normally when I go to the opera to get standing room tickets I see a bunch of tourists who are dressed in plain clothes etc, etc. not this time. It was crazy. Then Melinda noticed that one of the standing room areas was closed so we were were just like "fuck it - we can see it later" as its being preformed at least three more times this month I think and yesterday was the second night.

Lastly, so from the looks of this I'm going to be posting everyday this month, and while I'd love to post about knitting every single day - I don't know if thats possible (well it is, but it wouldn't be enjoyable) so what do you guys want to read about?

(P.S. Neuroknitter - you rock!)

Done! (well kinda)

Look! Its almost done! I'm actually struggling with whether or not to say that it is already done but all it needs is a border and then it shall be totally finished! I hopefully the yarn stores will be open tomorrow (today is a All Saints Day and I'm pretty sure most places are closed, tomorrow all of the universities are closed) so I can get the yarn for the border. I think I'm going to use Lopi (it cheap and while somewhat scratchy, look at the rest of the blanket - it has softed with blocking/wear) but we'll see. It's also making me actually make my bed in the morning (yes, I'm one of those horrible people who hate making his bed) because then I get the treat of seeing Lizard Ridge in all her glory.

The Jaywalker socks are going well thus far. I only have about two and a half inches of it worked but - I'm going to see Pique Dame with my friend Melinda today. For whatever reason it starts at 4 (as opposed to 6:30 or 7) which means that we have to be in line for standing room at 1:30 (its the second "night"), this equates to at least two hours of knitting time.

Lastly - I'm doing national blog posting month this year so hopefully I will actually update this every day....hopefully.

Done! - well almost

The last square of Lizard Ridge is knit and blocked! I finished it Saturday after my German mid-term (yes - I had a mid-term on a Saturday, because my school hates us). I don't remember what the colorway is but it is the same color way as the block that I knit for Twisted. Actually, I like the block I knit for them more than this one...

A close up of it unblocked

These are the last four blocks two of which are seamed already

Now all I have left is two seam two more blocks to the strip and then seam the strip of blocks to the blanket, then after that the border which I don't even want to think about. That being said I'm very glad that I've been seaming as I go because the extra warmth of the blanket on top of the one that I sleep under has been nice for the cold nights here. Now of course, because I hate doing all of the aforementioned things - other than sleeping - (though apparently I have wonderful seams despite the fact that I would pay someone t do it for me), I cast on a Jaywalkers and the Dove Socks from the new Kat Bordhi book. I'm knitting both of them out of Regia which makes things even harder because sock yarn snob tendencies.

That being said, I ordered three skeins of sock yarn from Tausendschön in der Specht (woodpecker), indische Gewuerze (Indian spices) and Seestern (starfish). So pretty, so very pretty. We emailed back and forth (because she was confused as to why I used paypal because she didn't realize that I didn't have an Austrian bank account) and she sending them out today so I should get them, hopefully, by the end of the week. Which should be around the time that my package of Cascade 220 for Avast gets here. I'm also supposed to be getting a package from a friend of mine full of goodies that she bought at Rheinbeck at some point (when she makes her way to the post office, in between writing papers/procrastinating - Liz, I love you, you're great) which means I need to pick up chocolate and yarn to send her as to make it a somewhat fair trade.

In non knitting news, its mid-term week. I had a aforementioned German mid-term on Saturday (which was better than I thought it'd be), my Mahler and theory mid-terms yesterday (the Mahler one went really well, the theory one...well I suck at theory but I did my best), and my music survey mid-term tomorrow afternoon which will probably be hellish. We had the listening test (which consisted of knowing the name, composer, and genre of 11 out of....at least 40 pieces, it was over 2 hours of music that we had to be accountable for) last Wednesday and I did amazingly badly on that. I also have a flute lesson tomorrow morning (which means I probably have to miss Wednesday knitting group - sorry guys!) which should go well. I bought the Reinecke flute sonata between Mahler and theory and am thinking about getting the his flute concerto and also the Widor flute sonata (despite the fact that another flute player in my program is playing it - I don't care, I love the piece).

Oh also, in more exciting news, I'm getting a wheel in late November (around Thanksgiving)! I'll be in England visiting a friend at Oxford so I'm going to try out the Ashford Joy (which I don't really want but I should try it), the Lendrum folding wheel, and the Louet Victoria (see an amazing review here). I'm leaning towards the Lendrum because of its sheer versatility, but the damn Louet is so tiny and portable (which is really important to me as I travel for school a lot and intend to take the wheel with me) - its 11 lb when in its case with all of the bobbins and such! (and 6lb by itself). I also keep telling myself that if I get the Louet I can always get another wheel later (though if I can get my hands on the fast flyer that they make for the Victoria, which apparently is is out there, I may be sold). We'll see I have a bit of time and testing to do.

Socks and Yarn

So basically, my mom rocks. I got a package from her yesterday with the rest of the Kuryon to finish Lizard Ridge. It was amusing because all of my mail gets sent to IES (the study abroad organization that I am studying through) and I pick them up in the reception. One of the people who works there was like "Oooh is there yarn in there?!" so I opened it up so she could see and she might have been more excited that I was.




I also finished my Spiraling Coriolis Socks! They fit amazingly well - clearly Cat Bordhi is a genius.