and all I have is one FO to show you.

yarn: yarntini fingering weight in pureknits
pattern: madder ribbed socks
needles: 2.25mm dpns
date started: 5.10.06
date finished: 5.28.06

I've gushed over this yarn plenty of times so you already know how much I LOVE it! I finally took the time to finish the second sock this weekend while we drove down to savannah. my grand plan was to finish all the socks on my wip list. I'm a daydreamer you can say. or a fool. yep, definitely one of those. I didn't count on dropping two needles under the seat (reason #53 in the anti-dpn manifesto), going around everywhere with my parents, or the scorching southern heat beating down on me. I only managed to work on the sock while in the car (once I found the needles), the hotel, or at an ice cream shop while sucking down a milkshake. anyway, I pretty much followed the pattern as written except for the toe, where I knit till I was two inches away from finishing (as opposed to three) and removed half the plain knit rounds.

these socks fit perfectly and the colors make me smile. what else could I ask for? oh yeah, the stripes matching perfectly in each sock. how often does that happen?! and I still have 1.5 ounces left of this yarn! I can't wait till fall to wear these all the time. I'm so sad the cool weather we've been having just disappeared, I hate, haaaaate, the summer. I become a total shut-in, hiding from the humidity and heat and racking up our electricity bill. how else am I supposed to knit?

or spin?! I finally broke out my spindle again, getting ready for a spinning class in two weeks (I don't want them to think I totally suck) and I'm loving it. steph's hand blended batts are amazingly soft and beautiful. I've had fun just drafting the rest of the fiber after I spun some of it up. I'm pretty excited about how this yarn will look so this will be my little project for the rest of the week along with finishing up the last few rounds of a hat for a certain someone and finishing up a baby sweater that I haven't mentioned.

Posted by bitter purl at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (45)

with the gorgeous weather this weekend, the boyfriend and I became one with the land, in the suburban-apartment-dwelling sort of way. I decided to take the opportunity to finally plant the herb garden I've been wanting for a while and dragged him along. I had one during grad school and loved being able to cook with what I grew, what a better time to do it again than during project spectrum's green month. after figuring out what we could fit on our balcony we headed out to one of the gardening places in town.

I decided to grab a few herbs that I end up buying all the time anyway (like basil and parsley) or that I would like to buy but are hard to find (or expensive when you do) such as lemon grass (I'm already dreaming of all the thai recipes I can finally follow). we ended up with 10 different herbs (though hard to see in the pic) in our basket, all are organic as is the soil. we couldn't find small containers we liked for all of them, but we got lucky and found they had whiskey barrels available. one was plenty big for our little garden and I think it looks so much better than what I had originally planned. it was so easy to just pour in all the soil and then plan out where in the huge "pot" to plant them in. I liked it so much that I'm already planning for another barrel and what to grow next. I'm thinking tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce with maybe garlic in the fall.

our happy time outside though was almost thwarted when nature struck. I noticed that there was some weird cocoon hanging out in our balcony and I had no clue what it was. as I was cleaning up I saw the head of some alien-being (other wise known as a wasp) pop out and then it hid again. I did what any normal scaredy-cat would do, hurried the hell up to run back inside. I was too slow and saw it fly out of its nest.

thankfully I have a boyfriend who is even more scared of bugs than me. after some planning time, that involved hiding behind the sliding glass door, staring at the the wasps from this side of the screen door, and curling up into a ball to find his special place he came up with something!

my love likes to protect us, what can I say. he almost burned down the apartment, but that thing learned its lesson. don't be building nests around these parts! the saddest part was when the alien flew back and was all confused when it couldn't find its home. it kept looping around like it was trying to retrace its steps. don't judge me! here look at some knitting:

I'm happy to say that even though I hated knitting with this yarn at the start (it's so freaking splitty), I am loving the result. the sock fits perfectly and the yarn feels great on my foot. to be honest, I didn't expect it to be so nice but maybe I was just begrudging it since it hurts my wrist. the yarn actually reminds me of a thinner version of ggh goa with a higher cotton content and pretty multi-colors. I'm loving the way the stitch pattern knit up and how it broke up the colors. I'll probably still knit the second sock in reverse just to see what the scales look like then. I've stalled now that I'm at the heel since I'm scared about it being too tight around the ankle. I'll either do some pattern reshuffling or change needles (or most likely keep on knitting), but I better hurry since my doppelganger is at the exact same point of the socks.

Posted by bitter purl at 05:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (24)

I try to not have a store only post most of the time, that gets boring quick. but some of you had asked me about the yarntini striping yarn and I'm too lazy to go look for all your individual emails :) some of the yarn is here, with a bigger update coming next month. enjoy!

regularly scheduled bitterness to resume soon..........

Posted by bitter purl at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

sorry for the bad title, but it kinda explains how I feel about that sock yarn I showed you yesterday. you know the one that's harder to find than the holy grail or the city of atlantis. yeah. that one.

I originally started to knit the pomo socks from knitty, without swatching. that was a waste of time, the cuff was way too big on 2.75mm and I got lazy and didn't want to swatch. this yarn goes from being nice to knit with to being a pure pita. can you guess why? that pic on top shows you the FIVE plies this yarn is made up of! can we say splitty!? on top of that each ply is made up of two plies. did I mention this is cotton (96% cotton 4% elite)? I've gotten used to working with the plies, but I can still see the working yarn splitting before I knit it. sour.

I don't know what the suggested needle or gauge is since none is mentioned on the ball band. compared to str lightweight(left) and koigu (far right) it seems to be your standard sock weight, except it doesn't compress nice and tight like wool. (sour) after the first needles failed, I chose to knit with 2.5mm (addi us 1's) and ended up getting 7.25-7.5 spi. the resulting fabric is soft and a little firm, but not annoyingly so. sweet.

I tried to pick a stitch pattern that wouldn't involve too many moves since I've noticed this yarn makes my wrist hurt (sour). I randomly picked the one you see because it's interesting without too many acrobatics, just a few ssk's and m1's. I was surprised to see how even my stitches look, I always hear how unforgiving cotton is. (sweet) the stitches only get ugly when the plies spread in an increase or decrease stitch. I like what I've worked out so far, but I think I'm going to flip the pattern to change the curving. I find myself staring at the sock with the toe as the top d'oh! this is going to be a slow moving project, but something tells me that it's going to be fun.

two more random notes:
so far there's no circular pooling (sweet)
the yarn isn't machine washable (sour)

Posted by bitter purl at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

going down to the shore when it's chilly and grey is quite conducive to knitting. between hanging out, eating some great food, and walking the boards I finished the two socks I started. a mis-matched pair, but it's still a pair! both socks fit great, so much so that I'm still wearing them right now.

some sock candy in kiwi. I had a mini swap with renata, who had read me wondering of this yarn's existence. apparently her lys carries it and she was cool enough to pick up two skeins for me (along with some str heavyweight) so I can finally try it out. unfortch, the good people of blue moon fail to tell me what the gauge is. fun times swatching are up ahead for me. I'll try to give some first impressions tomorrow, so far...it's squishy.

monday give--away in the extended entry.

I have a few more things to give away this week, hope people aren't getting bored of fabrics! I'm sure I'll move on to other things pretty soon. Oh, can anyone that received the first week's give-away let me know? I've only heard back from one person so far. Last week's giveaway hasn't been mailed out yet....sorry!

the rules are here

TAKEN!! I'm not sure how this ended up in my stash, the reason escapes me. It's a blue-grey cotton fabric.

TAKEN!! I bet I was going to make a skirt with this one, so I'm sure there's a couple of yards here. The cool part about it is that within the pink there are little silver stars that actually glitter.

these are from my handbag phase. this is going to be more of a potluck of ribbons, I have a few more than shown so if you are interested in some of these leave a comment and I'll send a random ribbon or two. 3-5 yds of each kind.

TAKEN!! this must have been a test yarn I dyed, it's the only reason that it wouldn't be with its little mates. 130-140 yds of hand dyed bamboo.

Posted by bitter purl at 05:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (25)

I keep telling myself that I should be working on the jaywalkers, or the sunrise circle, or umm, I don't know, work! but I can't stop knitting these, the colors just make me so happy. I've even forgiven the tools of the devil, what some of you call "dpn's", and I'm already in the middle of the foot. I should be done tonight, yay! The guilty conscience likes that.

oh, there's been some confusion, maybe, I don't know. but I didn't dye this yarn. oh please, I don't have the patience to come up with a cool striping sequence or to deal with a warping board! both striping yarns, the pureknits and the appletini, were dyed by jess over at yarntini, she has a couple of skeins left in stock now and she's sending off some yarn for me this weekend. I think she's done a great job and I couldn't be happier with the yarn. come on, it makes everyone smile!

sooo, that knitter's guilt....it isn't helped by packing up my knitting bag. I still have that first jaywalker to finish, a postcard to make (hint, the lace silk has something to do with it), and my lovely sunrise circle jacket to work on. not to mention the scraps of sock yarn I'll be swatching. oh, and a hat I promised steph I would finish so I could tell her about the yarn. oops. what happened to my project list? wasn't I finishing stuff left and right? it feels like I haven't accomplished anything in a while. this weekend though, I will knit! I'm going to the shore tomorrow and I will become a machine. a pair of socks will be completed (not necessarily a matching pair though!), one side of the jacket (you have to start small) will be done, and some swatches will be ready for some rough housing by the time I come back Sunday night. umm maybe monday, let's shoot for monday. actually, don't even hold me accountable. like we say at 'bitter purl': keep your expectations low!

to entertain you in the meantime and in honor of amy who's left a void by getting a new job, here is my weak attempt at:

Various and Sundry Links - May 12 2006

- gorgeous handmade postcards gallery, started by nichola
-hey! remember when mr.hooper died? no? yeah, I didn't either till now. I've must've blocked that episode out.
-sure, everyone knows about Rocky and the steps of the art museum...boring! why not check out the fabric workshop and museum, it's one of my favorite places in philly.
-are you rockbottom?
-christine got 'slashdotted' this week, go see what people who don't get it have to say.
-you like nancy bush? we got your nancy bush right here!
-a minnesota one for amy....what happens when you drive the speed limit? [source]

Posted by bitter purl at 07:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (20)

this

turns me into :

happy is an understatement

the dpns....that's another story

Posted by bitter purl at 02:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (34)

I bet my mailman reads this blog and is dying to delurk. I imagine one day, while dropping off some package, he'll casually wear a scarf or hat he knit so that maybe I'll say something. I'm sure I'll ask if someone made it for him and he'll shyly say, "oh this? I just knit this one night while watching {insert one of my favorite shows here}. it really didn't take long." after that, we'll start an impromptu knit night, where we'll proceed to eat, gossip, and maybe knit. I'll start to get my mail even faster, and maybe he'll hookup with a free scale........no, I haven't gone insane. but with the amount of yarn coming into this house, my mailman might as well start knitting. look at this beauty he brought me today:

more striping yarn, this time in a pureknits colorway!! this is the test skein, but I can't imagine it getting any better. the colors are exactly what I wanted. I'll be swatching it tonight to see how the colors stripe and once I finalize it, the yarn will be online within a week or so. can you stand it?

it's no secret that I've been going sock yarn crazy and a few people have asked me what my favorite sock yarn is. I'm thinking I can compare what I have in the stash or what I've used and maybe post a little comparison on this here, old blog. would more of you be interested in this? I think I want to pick up a couple more yarns (for comparisons sake of course), anything specific you want me to look at? I may be able to write this in a week or so.

back to my mailman, he also took some packages with him today. last monday's give-away finally got shipped, and it's already monday again! the rules are here and the goods are below (I'm still deciding on shippim rules):

TAKEN!! a blue, sheer fabric with some silver thrown in. not sure how many yards, but it feels like a good amount. I must have bought this in my layered skirt phase.

TAKEN!! a tiny amount of a sweet white fabric. it has hearts people!

TAKEN!! I must have really loved flowers at some time, because here's another flowery fabric. I made my first skirt ever out of this cotton fabric. think of it as a little piece of history.

TAKEN!! another sheer fabric, in oranges and browns. the colors are a lot richer than in the image.

TAKEN!! a small amount of toile, maybe you can use it as an accent?

Posted by bitter purl at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (26)

because I've been getting a ton of packages lately that I want to share! I didn't get to go to MSW this weekend, but I don't really feel like I missed out on anything yarn wise (of course I stil want to meet all my fave bloggers). instead, we spent our saturday hanging out in center city, eating tons of food and enjoying the gorgeous day. a little knitting was done, but not much. (hence this post, natch)

first up, my sockpal socks! I'll update with a pic of me wearing them, but I can tell you that they feel super soft and fit perfectly. my pal was kim of obsessive compulsive knitter, and I think she did a great job figuring me out. I forgot that I was pretty picky with my wishes (duh) and she took it in stride. she almost made me socks with str in ruby slippers, on the same day I posted about starting the badcaul socks. guess what, she didn't love str either. she also sent me some coffee beans that I already threw in the grinder and enjoyed....yum! thanks kim!! I wanted to email you or leave you a comment to thank you, but I don't have your email and your blog doesn't allow comments. I hope you're reading this!

my buddy leah got me some of dani's sock yarn in gryffindor stripes for my birthday. I've never used dani's yarn, so it'll be fun to finally try it out. thanks leah!! actually, I can't wait to knit these up into knee highs so I can be a dork and wear them to the next movie (in umm 2007, I love no pressure knitting).

more sock yarn, this time from marie! I've been wanting to try some of her sock yarn, but it sells out so fast that I never had the chance. I finally put in a custom order in the hawaii joy colorway (notice, no pink!) and guess what. the yarn kicks as much ass as everyone claims. it's unlike any other sock yarn I've used, it's really soft and the colors are gorgeous. she may have an update this week, so I'd be on the lookout for that. I'm already planning my next order with some custom colors.

Posted by bitter purl at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)

I had a lot of knitting time on monday (unfortunately) and I had these cheery colors to keep my spirits up. blood tests, ct scans, waiting rooms? sure! take your time, I have a heel to turn! this yarn, with grumperina's pattern, was the perfect antidote (get it?! that's me being witty right there) to some stress*. the colors perk me right up and I couldn't be happier with the striping, 1-2-1-3 rather than 1-2-3. genius.

2mm needles seem to be perfect for this yarn. the fabric is nice and dense while still being super soft. I didn't originally plan to knit these toe up, but I wasn't sure about sizing so good old turkish cast on to the rescue. I got gauge and a perfect fit, go figure. I then decided to follow this jaywalker mod, but I just didn't have it in me to figure out where to start the gusset increases. short row heel it is, and a cute one at that! I'm sure I dropped some wraps (or a stitch, ooops) but my usual picky self doesn't mind right now. the yarn must have mysterious powers. so does anyone have better ways to hide the wraps in the heel? I ktbl and ptbl, but something is amiss me thinks, since one side sometimes looks a little wonky compared to the other, not to mention how annoying it is to purl three stitches through the back. I'm thinking it has something to do with how I pick up the wraps. any tips?

anyone care to wager on if the second sock will match?

*thanks for the well wishes!

Posted by bitter purl at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (30)

it's been a tough and long monday for the 'bitter purl household', with a nice, long visit to the er. everything is mostly fine now and I really wanted to post today as promised (I hate breaking promises), so don't worry about anything!

inspired by a couple of bloggers, I'm doing a monday give-away. I don't have everything that I'm going to give away ready, but here's the first batch. the rules are posted here. be sure to read them before you claim an item.

Taken! I don't think there's a yard in this one, but I really like this fabric. you're seeing the wrongside in the picture, but it really was the only way I could should you the flowers. it's a rich black and has a nice drape. maybe enough for a small project or maybe use it with other fabrics?

TAKEN! this one was hard to photograph, it's a nicer springy green in person. I like this cotton because it already has a light coating on it and a nice weight to it. I don't even remember what I bought it for (I have more of this fabric from another cut), but I think it would work nicely for a bag. at least two yards if not three.

TAKEN! it may be hard to see, but here are three different silk scarves from china. I never wear scarves like these, I always think I will, but never do. you can pick and choose from this little set or if no one else claims it someone could have all three.

can you tell I know I'm not going to sew anymore? this was the very top of my fabric pile, there's lot more where this came from. plus a ton of sewing patterns and books. next week I'll add some embroidery and maybe some knitting supplies.

Posted by bitter purl at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)