New Knits and Old Books

This week the yarn arrived from Morehouse Farm for the dragon scarf. I started it off on Wednesday and have been going like mad on it since. I knitted the dragon scarf at the podiatrists - it helped that a 2:30 appointment kept me there until 4:15 - a lot of waiting between actual interactions with medical personnel. I knitted the dragon scarf at K's sword-fighting class - if you can't knit a dragon scarf in the bleachers at the sword-fighting class, where can you knit it?

As for the books, a friend at work brought in this treasure trove, the 1976 "Woman's Day Book of Knitted Sweaters."

Tube tops for the ladies,

Double-breasted knits for the gentlemen, And a sweater reading "MOMMY" across the front, with "MOM" and "DAD" stockings for the child you wish to have beaten up every day at school.

Also, this smaller book of patterns with no date, but I would guess from the mid-60s?

Thanks Daniel!

Here there be Pancakes! And Waffles!

This weekend, K & I travelled down to Williamsburg, VA for archaeology meetings. Mapquest estimated 7.5 hours drive time, but Mapquest lives in a happy, happy world without DC/Alexandria traffic snarls. Ah, idealism.
In honor of my dear friend Stephen, Mama Steve's House of Pancakes. We've seen at least 6 Pancake and/or Waffle places in the Williamsburg vicinity. Most hawk both pancakes and waffles, but some only one. Are these holdouts to the days before pancake/waffle alliance?
And now, belated thank you's for Christmas presents.
DVP kindly sent me this lovely skein of yarn from her lys (which we visited last Feb). It has a funny little frizzy spot after I left it on the couch overnight. I think one of the cats took it as her (or his, but probably her, the girl cat has a thing for natural fibers, esp. alpaca) new best friend.
K's sis gave me 4 skeins of alpaca yarn (2 skeins in each of these 2 colors), so now I'm thinking about what to make with it (the above try did not work out). An alpaca hat sounds lovely, but 4 skeins will make more than one hat. Hat & gloves? Still thinking.
One hat pattern I've been looking at is Elinor's awesome Winter Sunrise . In addition to loving her choice of colors, I also really like with the way she worked the decreases out with the pattern to make that great X at the top. Another great 2-color hat pattern is Hello Yarn's "We Call Them Pirates" hat. But I think I can see myself wearing winter sunrise more.
Also found this week: Morehouse Farm's Dragon Scarf. They could use some more color choices for the kit, not that we're limited to the kits.

Knitting? Oh right - that!

Happy New Year! K & I, along with LC, ICP, & VLo, went to beautiful downtown Binghamton last night for First Night. Thrilling? Not quite. There were fireworks at the end, though. Yay fireworks!
So, what have I been up to?
There were Koigu scarves for K's mom & sis, which turned out quite well. But did I remember to take a photo of them? No, I did not. DC made a beautiful scarf in the same pattern that she did record.

There were felted bowls. I made the first one (darker blue on right) for a present, then decided I liked it & would rather keep it. It's the key-holder by the door now. Then, I wanted to make a couple more, so I did pink & light blue for K's neices, to wrap up with the small jewelry presents I already had for them. So gratifying to impress the 11& 13 yo's - "You made this?! Wow!" I'm happier with the shapes of the two blues; I think I cast on too loosely on the pink one. Following splindarella's suggestions from November 2006 One Skein Knit-Along, I used Paton's SWS (soy & wool) doubled, and did 3 ridges of garter at the beginning to keep the top from rolling. The SWS has a nice sheen to it.

Harking back to pre-Christmas days, a thanks to AZK for the knitted purse book! The examples in the book make a bit more use of eyelash yarn than seems healthful, but of course the eyelash is not obligatory.

My lovely orchid is blooming & making the whole living room smell kind of like a spicy, flowery vanilla. A payoff for my practice of buying orchids at Lowe's after they've lost their flowers & been marked down to $1.

Next post: Williamsburg in January?