What goes around comes around.

I love to knit. No, I REALLY love to knit. And apparently I like to knit the same damn thing--or at least variations on a theme. Or two degrees of separation from each other.

I just finished the Henley perfected in this lavender color with this lace pattern.

Of course, in 2006, I knit a lace shawl in the same dang color. (and dare I say the with the same lace pattern in part of it?)

And now, I'm in the middle of knitting a different lace shawl with the same damn lace stitch in most of the shawl.

Now notice the color of lapis blue of that shawl.

Does that color bear any resemblance to this yarn that I am going to cast on for the Ravelympics (Go Team SitnknitNYC!) for this sweater?

If the February Lady sweater turns out to have the same damn lace stitch in the pattern, I may just take up cross-stitching!

We interrupt our regularily scheduled knitting...

To bring to you the most random geeky thing I could ever knit!

Last Saturday was butt-cold. Our over-heated apartment was uncharacteristically cold, and when I got into bed, I was FREEZING. During a summer trip to Vermont, I had bought a hot water bottle. I filled it with hot water, wrapped it in a linen towel, and left it under the covers of the bed while I went to brush my teeth. I came back, got under the covers, and OMIGOD!

The delicious warmth was profoundly life-changing. Now, it's true, I have Poem-Man's love to keep me warm, but let's be realistic. Sometimes it just not enough. You need not just a hot water bottle, you want a Love Supplement to keep you warm!

But this naked Love Supplement was remarkably unromantic. A little rubbery-smelling, tactically-challenge, and its heat too harsh against my skin. Love Supplement needed a sweater cozy!

So I interrupted my sweater and sock-knitting pattern-driven knitting and started knitting a Love Supplement Cozy. I made up the pattern as I went along and went top-down and in the round so that I could try it on the Love Supplement for size. I cast on for the turtleneck top, began the cable pattern from one of my Harmony guides, and increased past the neck did short-rows to make the 'shoulders" Then I knit straight down to the bottom, cast off all the stitches for the back of the sweater, and continued in ribbing down the front. Once I could kind of fold past the bottom, I picked up a stitch along the side and knit it together with the end stitches of the flap so that I wouldn't have to sew the flap to the side laster. The flap closure works perfectly--it stays closed when I want it to and opens easily when I need to slip a hot-watered bottle into its encasing. It was complete serendipity that the two entire repeats of the cable pattern was the perfect length for the cozy. Oh, the Love!

Pattern: Love Supplement Cozy that I made up myself!
Yarn: Uhuhm, um, I have no idea. I know it's worsted-weight wool. I found it in a bag of random balls of yarn. It's at least 8 years old.
Yarn Enabler: Ruhama's, one of my LYSses when I lived in Milwaukee.
Knitted on: Size 8 Knitpicks circular Magic Looped
Time spent knitting when I shouldabeen writing and correcting exams: 1 week

Return of the Blast from the Past

I have this gig singing in a church choir, and this year the only two women of child-bearing age in my section both had babies within a month of each other. All hormones, all the time! They are both wonderful women who have lovely baby girls that they are enjoying.

I did not join the baby-making frenzy of the altos of the choir, but instead chose to be in the knitted-item-for-baby frenzy!

Pattern: Five-hour baby sweater (I believe based on some Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern)
Yarn: Knit from one skein (only 215 yds!) of Malabrigo Worsted in Color #98 "Tuareg"
Yarn enabler: Stitch Therapy
Time I spent knitting them when I could have..: Who are we kidding? It's like three television shows worth of knitting if you're quick!

I loved this item above for both its construction (It's like 60 rows and voila: a sweater!) AND the yarn. It was quick to knit which was great because I started about 2 weeks before the delivery date, but was sad because I loved touching the yarn so much. Now some have said that it's not worth it to make an adult sweater out Malabrigo because it will pill like kah-ray-zee!, but I figured for a baby, what the heck. I love LOVE LOVE the hand of this yarn. Really I do. I do dream of knitting a bigger version --much MUCH bigger--for myself. It might not be stylish for an adult, but I won't care!

Blast from the (blogless) past!

Just a mere eight days ago, I was blissfully "blogless Penelope," knitting like crazy, speaking only to myself in amusing, pithy complete sentences, and even photographing my work as a record of the knitting I've done. I didn't keep a journal or notebook or anything, I (or Poem-man) just WORE the dang things I knit, or I let the little works of love go off into giftland.

I even joked with Allena about starting a blog and then posting a new finished object every day like I was some sort of Barry Bondsed knitter, but that seemed like a heartless, devious way to present myself to the knitting folk, so instead I opt for:

BLASTS from the PAST!
(insert your own appropriate song here--Today, I heard Separate Ways by Journey and flashed back to an earlier, limier green, Esprit-wearing time...but I digress in not a good way.)

I'll start with my most recent blogless effort and work kinda backwards until I run out of stuff.

Recipient/wearer: Poem-man

Pattern: Beaded Rib from Sensational Knitted Socks

Yarn: The pair was knit from one skein (only 293 yds!) of Colinette Jitterbug in #55 "Toscana" Yarn enabler: Stitch Therapy
Time I spent knitting them when I could should have been working out: About 10 days

These were a pretty straight-forward knit as they were designed to be knit toe-up (my FAVorite way), but the pattern is only a two-row repeat and almost mind-numbingly boring. My poem-man has only size 9-1/2 size feet, but I kept calling them clown feet because they seemed to take forEVer to knit. Poem-man loves them very much, and I would say that the yarn is lovely to handle.