I have been working furiously on my bag, which is now looking a bit like a sleeping bag. Luckilly, the current issue of Cast On has an article on what “weaving in ends” really means. This is something that I have been sort of winging up until now, so the timing was nice for me to use the techniques on my bag. I am busily weaving in ends and hope to throw her in the wash tonight. I will post a before and after picture later on tonight.
I ended up doing a little cheesy-love peerie around the top of the bag, inspired by knitty/mama kate, and the AS book I borrowed from the library. I thought it might add a little stability to the top of the bag, and keep it from being a gaping hole.

That darn Orange County! Meetup isn’t happening after all, since only 3 people confirmed. Oh well. Maybe next month, again.

Went to my lys to see about finding some yarns that match my Bachelor Buttons photo, and came up empty. The shop really has lots of acrylics and novelty yarns, but I didn’t think they would only have one brand of wool that was smaller than worsted. I was looking for some maybe DK or fingering to play with making a swatch, but no luck in my colors. She is planning on moving to a larger space, so hopefully that means bigger selection. The place was hopping, with everyone buying yarn for a felted bag. I feel so trendy.
I did find some Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Purple Club. Very pretty, and I met a few nice ladies while I waited for it to be wound into balls. There was quite a line due to the aforementioned felted bag yarn shoppers. They liked my little pencil case that I use for my knitting doo-dads.

Looks like it will actually happen this month in Orange County. I’m amazed, we shall see how it goes.

Here they are, maybe I will even include the fog in my design…

My connection this evening is atrocious! Has the rain washed away my happy bits and bytes? I think I am going to install Zone Alarm so I can see what’s eating my bandwidth.

So, tomorrow is St. Valentine’s day, and I am in love… with a sweater. I first saw it a few weeks ago, and have been thinking about it off and on since then, and the worst part is, it’s one of hers, so I may never see an actual pattern. Sigh.
Oh, it’s called Sanddollar. And I am not a girly-girl, so how I fell in love with a pink sweater is a mystery to me. It’s from the Pacific Coast Highway book. None of the libraries around here have it. I checked. Ah well. Here’s a link if you haven’t seen it.

I braved the crazy SoCal rain last night to go to the Anaheim Public Library. I had seen on their on-line catalog that they have both POK and She who must not be named’s fair isle book.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a pretty huge selection of knitting books, and even more amazed to find that they were all organized by both their Dewey numbers, but also alphabetically after the numbers. I am not used to this, my local library is very good at getting books near the correct shelf, but never so neatly organized. It must be the German influence in the city, that they keep things so neat.
So, since I was there, and I had just opened an account and was limited to 5 books, I had to choose carefully. I already knew I wanted those 2 books, but there were tons more that I had heard chatter about on some of the lists I am on, and wanted to check them out. There were several Kaffe Fasset books, so I picked those up, and some Cheryl Oberle, and I picked those up too.
Browsing through the Fasset books, I was wholly unimpressed. The color patterns were nice, but the actual garments were crap, I think. Since I didn’t read the books, and only looked at them, I hope the point of the books was inspiration rather than blind pattern-following. Those long sweater coats were awful! They could have been so improved by just removing the ribbing from the bottom, I think. Anyway, his books did inspire me to think about making a sweater inspired by the photo I took this summer of the Bachelor Buttons planted outside my grandparents house.
I ended up only with POK and AS Fair Isle to take home, simply because I wanted to focus on one thing. (Remember, trying to pay attention.) I spent a bit of time looking through the Fair Isle book, and I can see what the fuss is about. Again, more inspiration in this book than patterns, I think. This got me thinking I could make a fair isle using the same photo as inspiration. (I will post the photo later. ) I may head out to the LYS and pick up some skeins of DK or smaller wools and make a swatch just to see if I can. (I don’t know of any reason why not, I just haven’t tried it yet.)
I didn’t look at POK much yet, just the first few sections, but I can see why someone would want this reference. It appears to be well written and organized, and very comprehensive. Not sure it’s $600 worth of info though… but I have 3 weeks to find out!

OK, does anyone else think this is Dubya’s only plan for stimulating the economy?

I caught them just in time, they only just fit! I think if I do them again, I will do a few more stitches around. I made them with a pointy toe top, with stranded stiches across the instep, which I then snipped after fulling. I think they look kinda Grinchy. Soon enough, they will end up Oscar-y, which is ok with me!