Love it!

Knit Picks Gloss in Bordeaux

Look at what arrived in my mail today!!!  Sooo excited (but okay, when am I not excited to get yarn in the mail??) for this yarn to arrive!  The yarn is Knit Picks Gloss in color Bordeaux and it is beautiful.  Love the color and love the yarn.  To tell the truth, I've even been putting projects on hold so that once I got this yarn I could focus on knitting with it.  What am I going to knit with this? Why of course I'm going to knit my En Fuego shawl!  Speaking of putting projects on hold, I'm almost done knitting my Bertrand Louis and I will definitely be writing a blog about that project in the near future.  Otherwise I've been busy packing, loading up my car, driving over to the new house, unloading the car, putting stuff away, and repeat.  It has been pretty tiring, so tiring in fact that last night I took a nap at 7 pm for almost 90 minutes.  After my nap I was worried I would have trouble falling asleep for bed, but no problems there!  Okay, now off to find my swift to get this yarn wound up....except my swift might already be over at the new house.  Looks like I'm making another trip over there!

It's official!

We are officially home owners!  We had our closing at 8 AM this morning and then after a frustrating sequence of events we finally got the keys around 4 PM.  Ugh.  Once we had the keys in hand the excitement sunk in again and we took over our first car trip of items to the house.  Mr. SpiderKate changed out the air conditioner filters and I went to work setting up the bathrooms and other misc. items.  The next week is going to hectic around the SpiderKate household since now we have to finish up packing, move over what we are going to move ourselves and be ready for the movers to come next Thursday.  Knitting will probably be slow over the next week, but I think that if I stick with a easy project (re: no lace)  then I will still be making some knitting progress.  I'm sad that this means I'm going to have to put a lace project on temporary hold, but I'm just at the border and I still have to figure that part out.  Some quality time with charts and I think I'll have the border worked out by next week - just in time to pick back up the lace knitting!  The other big event of the day (okay it wasn't much a big event) was that I had my first ever Starbucks pumpkin spiced latte this morning and it was AWESOME!!!

Pumpkin spiced latte with knitting!

Dropped Stitch Scarf

Last night I finished up the Easy Drop Stitch Scarf Pattern by Christine Vogel.  Above I have the scarf pictured with some lilies Mr. SpiderKate surprised me with the other day.  I can count on one hand the number of times Mr. SpiderKate has gotten me flowers and since he does it rarely, it makes it all that more special when he does.  This week marked the 6 year anniversary of when we met/started dating and thus the flowers.  On to the scarf details!  I started this scarf at the end of June while visiting my parents in MD.  My mom presented me with this variegated yarn and I went to work almost immediately to find the perfect pattern.  I came across the Easy Drop Stitch Scarf pattern and I was sold! 

The yarn is Claudia Hand Painted Yarns Worsted 55 (55% silk 45% merino wool) in colorway Sharks.  I ended up naming my project Swimming Sharks! on ravelry due to the name of the colorway and that the pattern reminded me of the ocean.  Later on I stumbled across this stitch pattern in one of my stitch pattern books and it was called "seafoam" so my instinct of it reminding me of the ocean was spot on!  This pattern was fun and easy - another reason why I picked it.  It even inspired a knitter friend to knit one herself!  Since I'm often inspired by other knitters to knit certain projects, it's really neat that I too can inspire others to knit what I'm knitting.  The unblocked measurements are 59.5" long by 5.75" wide.  I ended up using 156 grams of yarn which comes out to ~262 yards.  Really loving the look of the scarf and I'm pretty sure I'll get good use of it (well if the temperature every goes below 90!).

Chart, swatch, rip & repeat

Arthur helping out

I swear that my cat, Arthur, must have been a knitter or designer in a past life. He loves cuddling up with me when I'm looking at stitch pattern books or working on charting out patterns.  Note that there is no yarn involved at this stage unless of course I am testing out the chart.   Our other cat could care less about my knitting designing.  In fact, Merlin (other cat) often tries to prevent me from working.  He will come over and meow (or scream as I like to call it) until I give him my undivided attention or feed him or clear my lap of everything for him only to have him walk away.  Good thing I have Arthur to encourage me to keep  working. 

Yarn for new shawl design

Speaking of designing - I've had this design stuck in my head from when I finished Chincoteague shawl and I think I've figured it out.  I became obsessed with the leaves down the spine of Chincoteague shawl and tried working them into an all over lace pattern.  However, I couldn't get it work out and decided I needed a break from that design and went on to something else.   Well, I've now finished up that second shawl design (En Fuego Shawl), but those leaves from Chincoteague were still in my mind.  I've also been thinking about a shawl with a stockinette section and suddenly it dawned on me to make the leaves into a panel with stockinette on the sides!  So, that is what I've been working on.  The good news is that I figured out the panel part fairly quickly, but I've been hemming and hawing over what stitch pattern to use for the border.  This has involved putting time in with stitch pattern books which leads to cycle of charting, swatching, & ripping.  I am very excited to knit this shawl; I even wound the yarn yesterday as motivation to get the border pattern finalized.  The yarn winding motivation worked because I'm very close to finalizing the border and hope to start knitting it this weekend.  Oh!  I must mention that more people are knitting Chincoteague shawl and it's really exciting to see other people knit it.  I mean, I can't even say how cool it is to see other people knitting it.  Okay, that is all for now.

En Fuego Shawl photo shoot

Last week I got Mr. SpiderKate to do a photo shoot for my new pattern En Fuego Shawl.  I've already posted the good pictures on ravelry, but I thought I'd post some of the out takes here.  The pattern isn't for sale yet, but will be soon.  The test knitters are finishing up and the written pattern is 99% done.  I've also submitted it to Knit Picks Independent Designer Program, so I'm really excited to see what comes of that.  Even if nothing comes of it I'm still proud of myself for submitting it!  Anyhow, on to the photo shoot!  At the beginning of the photo shoot Mr. SpiderKate kept saying "Do something with your eyes" and this first  photo was the result. 

Mr. SpiderKate: Do something with your eyes

 

 

 

 

Really liked this one except my hands are in the photo

Thought this would show off the pattern better than it did

We took a lot of this type