Let me see those jazz hands

Lately I have been on a bit of a finishing kick. I don't know what's come over me. I look at all my WIPs and think about how soon I am going to finish them. It's weird. Kind of unlike me when it comes to the knitting.

And so we have Shawl That Jazz.

I started knitting this in March, knit about six inches and then threw it in a bag and forgot about it.

I picked it back up a couple weeks ago and have been pretty dedicated to it. I really haven't been working on too many other things.


It's a whole lot of garter stitch, but I think that is what makes this project so great. You can pretty much take it anywhere and work on it. There are short rows, but as a sock knitter those didn't throw me at all. Just a bunch of perfectly mindless knitting!

The Specs:

The Pattern: Shawl That Jazz by Samantha Roshak
The Yarn: Briar Rose Wistful purchased at the Midwest Fiber and Fold Art Fair in 2007. I bought this yarn to be a Morning Glory Wrap. I still really want to make that wrap, just with a lighter color yarn.
The Needles: US Size 8 and US Size 10
The Mods: None. Well, I was a little confused by the make 2 in the edging part so I kind of winged it. It looks a little different than the pattern intended, but I really love it anyway.
The Time to Knit: Just shy of six months. That was with a lot of sitting in the closet, not being knit time. Probably was a month of on and off knitting total.
The Results: Love it. I thought about giving this away as a Christmas gift, but I have decided that I just can't part with it. Merry Xmas to me, I say!

Happy knitting!

From The Queue Friday - Part II

Well, it's Friday so it's time for another installment of From The Queue Friday!

This time I went through my Ravelry queue looking at all those one skein shawls I have added in recent months. I caught the one skein shawl bug with Ishbel. As you know, I have knit three of those babies!

The first pattern is a free one and one that I have seen knit up in person. It's the Traveling Woman shawl.

Picture Courtesy of Feministy. Visit her website here.

My friend, Enid has knit this shawl and it is just beautiful. Many knitters in our group have been lusting over one of our own for some time now. There is something about that lace pattern that just makes me want to drool all over my keyboard as I type this.

You can find the Traveling Woman shawl for free as a Ravelry download, or it available on the Feministy website here.

The next one is the Multnomah Shawl by Kate Flagg.

Photo courtesy of hello-knitty. Her website is here.

This is another free one that has recently become quite the rage on Ravelry. I can see why. It's so pretty and just the right amount of garter and feather and fan. I think I may have to cast this one on soon.

The Multnomah Shawl is available on Kate's website as a PDF here.

Finally, here is one that has been in my queue for quite some time. The Shetland Triangle!

Picture courtesy of GraceIvy. Her website is here.

I had seen someone with it on at a Yarn Harlot event about a year and a half ago. I mustered up the courage to ask the lady what the pattern was. You can find this pattern in Wrap Style.

So, what's been added to your Ravelry queue this week?

Ishbel, The Third

Sometimes a good knitting pattern comes along and just kicks you right in the head.

That is what Ishbel has been for me. First it was the mini one skein one for myself, then it was my sister's wedding Ishbel, and now, this lovely purple number that someone will be getting for Christmas (I will not reveal who, of course!)

It seems like I enjoy knitting this shawl so much that each time the end result is a little larger than the one before. Not a bad thing, really.

The Specs:

The Pattern: Ishbel by Ysolda
The Yarn: Cascade Venezia Worsted, about 2 and a half skeins
The Needles: US Size 7
The Time to Knit: About three weeks.
The Mods: I knit the large stockinette portion of the pattern and the small lace portion.
The Result: I think this is my best Ishbel yet. The person this is going to is going to just love it.

Happy Ishbel-ing!

Rare Gems Damson

Over the weekend I finally blocked the Damson shawl that I knit earlier this month. Another fine design by Ysolda, is you ask me.A quick knit that is one of those one skein of sock yarn will do ya'. Might be my new favorite kind of thing to knit.
I did run out of yarn on this one, I had to cut the stockinette portion short. I had to stop at row 90 (I think) and move on to the edging. When I knit the next one and were to run into the yardage issue, I would likely use the mods that this Raveler did on her Damson. I think it looks great.
I love mine nonetheless. I love the color, I love the drape of it, I love that edging.
The Specs:

The Pattern: Damson by Ysolda Teague
The Needles: US Size 5
The Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Lightweight Rare Gem (plus a few yards of coordinating sock yarn to finish the last fifty or stitches in the bind off)
The Time to Knit: Just under two weeks.
The Result: Just lovely. Can't wait to wear to knitting group and show it off.

Happy knitting!

Alpaca Extravaganza!

Today Alex and I ventured over to the Lake County Fairgrounds to check out the Northern IL Alpaca Extravaganza (seriously, that is the name of the event).

I am so happy that Alex has decided to love alpacas. Especially ever since we drove around checking out alpaca farms during Alpaca Days, alpacas are not an uncommon topic in our house! It is so fun to go to this kind of stuff with him. Anyway, we walked around checking out all the alpacas from all the different farms and then we watched a little bit of the alpaca competition:It was super interesting to watch the judges check out each alpaca, and then talk a little bit about why he or she ranked them in a certain way. It was very cool.

And, of course, I couldn't get out of there without buying at least a little yarn, right? So here is some Shady Haven's Prime Alpaca yarn:
My plan was to go in there and find some nice undyed yarn and make a hat or lacy cowl with it. But I saw this and fell in love. Will it be a fourth Ishbel? A hat and scarf? I am not sure. But I love, love, love it.

I highly recommend that everyone go check out an alpaca show. It is super fun and cheap (hello! It was free!).

Happy alpaca petting. And knitting, of course.

Stash Enhancement

A couple weeks ago I totally placed an order at Blue Moon Fiber Arts. It was an accident, I swear.I don't know what came over me. Maybe it was getting to be fall and I had seen some pretty skeins on other people's blogs. Maybe it was some of those Christmas-y colors that Blue Moon does really well that I have never had my hands on before. Maybe it was that I kept thinking about the colorway Jasper and I just couldn't have it shipped to my house all by itself.

From left to right we have Rocktober, Fall "On Tap," Grinchy, Jasper, and Hollyday. All are lightweight except for the Jasper, which is mediumweight.

I don't have anything specific in mind for these yet, although I do know I want to do a one skein shawl with the Jasper.


I have been drooling over this one for at least a year. Now it will become something pretty. A couple knitting projects to finish up this week, and then I plan to move on to knitting something out of this. Can't wait to see what I decide (gotta check that Ravelry queue!)

Happy knitting!

From The Queue Friday

I have decided to try a new thing on the ol' Knitting Like Crazy blog. I am calling it 'From The Queue Friday.' So from now on, on most Fridays, I will be trying to post one or two things from my Ravely queue, what I like about it, what yarn I would use, etc.

So, since it is the first week of this new little blog segment, why not start with the item at the top of the queue?

It's the Sidelines Top:

Picture from the Interweave Knits website.

This pattern is available in the Intereave Knits Fall 2008 issue. You can also purchase it on the Interweave website for $5.50.

I love everything about this sweater. I love the color, the little traveling cable, and I love that is being modeled by a woman who is not teeny teeny. The second I saw this pattern in that magazine it went to the top of queue. I even bought yarn for it and everything!

That is going to make one nice sweater one of these days (maybe after all that Christmas knitting I have planned but have not yet started?)!

So, what's at the top of your Ravelry queue?

It's definitely fall.

**Warning, this blog post contains pictures of my humping deer hat. Reader discretion is advised.**

Well, it's been feeling like fall around the Chicagoland area for some time. Really, this summer was not all that summer-y at all.

But, the pile of leaves in the yard tells me that fall really is here. Seriously, it's almost gross how much I enjoy raking. I am kind of glad that we have a house so I get to do these kinds of things.
I also know it's fall because I have started knitting hats for winter. Here is the first one I completed. A Fornicating Deer Hat for Alex.
He had seen a picture of the f*cking deer mittens that turtlegirl76 had made and informed me that he was going to need a hat in the same colors with deer, um, humping and everything.
How could I say no?

The Specs:

The Pattern: Hat pattern is a standard hat pattern I have in my head and the little bits of fair isle on the side I just charted up on some graph paper. The Fornicating Deer chart is available for free on Ravelry here.
The Yarn: Lion Brand Wool Ease. About a half skein of the gray and probably a third of a skein of the blue. Definitely enough left over to make another hat!
The Needles: Size 5 for the ribbing and Size 7 for the rest of the hat. I actually used a 40in US Size 7 Needle and knit the hat using the Magic Loop method. I think Magic Loop is perfect for fair isle hats!
Time to Knit: Two days.
The Result: Alex can't wait to wear it! I don't really know where he will wear it where it will be appropriate, but I am sure he will figure that out.

Other than that, I have been working on a few other things. I have picked back up my Shawl That Jazz and knit a little here and there on that. I have that beet from many months ago that is also taunting me.

Hopefully I will be blogging more regularly again soon. Both the digital cameras in the house are in the processing of dying. It took me nearly an hour to get just the four pictures for this blog post! I think in the next couple of weeks Alex and I will be shopping for a new camera!

Happy knitting!

Wedding Knits

This weekend I spent some time at White Pines State Park to celebrate the wedding of my sister and her new husband, Mike.

It was cold (it even snowed a little a couple hours before the wedding) but we had some knits to keep us warm (of course, we didn't wear them for the outdoor ceremony, but they kept us warm afterwards!).

First, is the 'Wedding Ishbel' I knit for my sister: It took just shy of one skein of KnitPicks Gloss Lace yarn in Bare.

Very pretty little knit. I have become a total Ishbel fanatic. I am about to cast off my third one. More on that later. :)

I don't think I could be more pleased with how that turned out.

Then, I finally got a couple pics of the Retro Redux Shrug from Lace Style. I knit this back in April specifically to match my bridesmaids dress for the wedding:

I love this little shrug. I highly recommend everyone knit it!

I used a yarn that was new to me for this project. It's Cascade Venezia Worsted. It's 70% merino/30% silk. Yum. Not at all itchy and the stitch definition is just incredible.

You might be seeing it again soon when I finish up that third Ishbel. It may have made an appearance there too.

Other than that, I have been a bit in finishing mode with the knitting. I am in the process of binding off all those stitche on my Damson and I have about two more rows on Ishbel the Third to knit. I have some baby items which I am a bit behind for a friend of a friend, and I have plans to finish that damn beet I started knitting months ago. Hopefully this week I will have lots of time to get all these finished. I have been fighting the urge to start a million new projects until some of the old ones are finished!

Happy knitting.

Waiting for the perfect moment.

I was so happy to finally get my hands on some Rare Gems from BMFA while at Sock Summit. For those of you who don't know, Rare Gems are the happy accidents at the Blue Moon dye studio. I think some might be 'screw ups' while others were dyed in the experimenting to find a new colorway. No matter what, Rare Gems are pretty much always gorgeous and highly sought after (because they are considered one-of-a-kind). I wasn't sure that I wanted to knit socks with the two Rare Gems that I purchased. I had been pretty sure that I wanted something a little fancier than socks. I am all for fancy socks, but I wanted something I wasn't going to wear a hole in.

Enter the new Ysolda pattern, Damson.

I think it's going to be perfect.

Free Shipping October!

So, since October is my favorite month and getting deals is one of my new favorite things, how about a little deal on my etsy site this month?

Yes? Sounds good, right?

I am offering FREE SHIPPING for the entire month of October to orders shipping within the US! Live in the UK or Canada? Shipping is marked down to $1.50 for the first item and $0.50 for each additional item. A bargain! Just think - this Trick or Treat sock yarn could be yours and shipped to you for free this month. C'mon, you know you want some. :)

http://knittinglikecrazy.etsy.com