It has been a couple of weeks.. a little has happened.

Still working on those socks - not finished with #1 yet. I still really like the pattern, but it is hard on my hands, being a tight gauge on smaller needles than I usually use for socks.

I finished the body of the sweater I"m making last night. I'm basing it off the one shown here, the Sienna Cardigan in IK's Fall '06 issue. Since I naturally don't have access to the exact yarn and needles, I'm using size 8s and KnitPick's Merino Style, rather than #9s and the Blue Sky Alpaca whatever the pattern calls for. Someday I'd like to make it again in the exact yarn, but that'll be a while, since my yarn budget is slender and KnitPicks is vastly closer to my reach than Blue Sky Alpaca is. Adapting the pattern for a different gauge is.. interesting, but a valuable lesson, and I'm glad I'm doing it. I think the biggest change I'm making, other than yarn and gauge (and making the body in one piece, because why sew more seams than you have to?), is that I'm doing the sleeves differently - I can't stand not to be able to push my sleeves up, and I wouldn't be able to do that with the original design. So rather than a neat hem-thing, I'm going to do ribbing to echo the ribbing on the body.

The single biggest thing in my life in the last couple weeks is that I cut my hair! I went from waist-length hair to an earlobe-length bob; I think I'll try and stay this length for a while, or maybe play around a little with styles around this length, for a number of reasons. Among those, in no particular order: it's easier to care for, Josh likes short hair, and I gather short hair is easier around babies (and we're more or less trying to get pregnant). I plan to donate the tail to Locks of Love; I'm just waiting for payday to afford the shipping!

I fell for them. But in a good way!

Back at Christmas, Mom got me skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock Yarn for a pair of socks for both me and Josh. I had never worked with this yarn before, and it took a little figuring out as to what it did best. Josh's socks I immediately cast on, and did a variation on a lace pattern I've been making socks in for about 3 years now - the variation looks great, I'll post pics when I can, but I dont ever want to do it again!

Meanwhile, I've been casting about looking for a new pattern to do with the yarn for my socks. The trouble with my yarn is that it's not two skeins of the same colorway, it's two skeins of different but related color/colorway. One is a lucious purple, with slight color variations, but fairly solid. I love it! The other is a purple/green colorway that I find I don't quite like as much knitted up as I did in the skein - don't you just hate it when that happens? Anyway, I've been trying to work out how to incoporate these two yarns in a pair of socks.. and I eventually decided to make them parti-colored - greenurple socks with purple cuff, heel, and toe, and purple socks with greenurple cuff, heel and toe. Next problem was the pattern!

I eventually decided to try one of the patterns from Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks, and it worked ok... until I saw Annypurl's version of Grumperina's variation on Hello Yarn's Cable Twist Socks. *whew* Anyway, just got them started, looking forward to finishing them!

Well, I haven't posted in a long, long time, but it has been brought to my attention that maybe I should start posting again.

Sewing has been at a standstill for months. I haven't touched the Elizabethan project since last spring. Some of that is because getting married is very distracting. Some of that is because I have lost interest in the project, at least for now. I have a Gothic Fitted Dress (a la Robin Netherton) in pieces around the living room, but again, I haven't touched it in a couple of months - it might be closer to completion if I'd been sewing the basic seams by machine, but by hand makes for easy discouragement.

What's really distracting me from my sewing is the amount of knitting I've been doing, at least theoretically. Socks as fast as I can get yarn, hobo mittens for Dear Darling Husband, toddler things for my friend's daughter; I even have a couple of sweaters on the needles - one is Annie Modesitt's Short Row Sweater from Stitch 'n Bitch, made this time in baby alpaca lace weight, and again not using the published sleeve patterns, and the other is the Shapely Tank from White Lies Designs. I'm also playing with the Sienna Cardigan from the Fall 06 KI, trying desperately to make my yarn and gauge fit the pattern.. I think I'm close, but I didn't buy quite enough yarn and I think it will be a bit of a struggle. But I'm finishing the Short Row alpaca first.

One hindrance to my blogging is that my digital camera died last September (I think the gay wedding we were at at the time blew its awesome circuits), and we haven't been able to afford a replacement. So I can't show pretty pictures of what I'm doing right now very easily. But I've been reading a fair number of knitting blogs this last month or so, and it's been quite an inspiration, not only to pick up my needles, but also to try blogging again myself.