…of what hopefully (at y’all’s request) will be a surge (can I still use that word without grimacing?) in posts. In the last week there’s been so much to tell you that I could barely type for the sound of my head spinning. (I’ve gotten some requests to blog more often, and I’m going to try to oblige!) First, let me say a very belated thank you to Laura22, who left me utterly speechless when I came home to this in the mail:

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What a wonderful RAK! There were more goodies than I can even list here, and certainly more than I deserve. Hats off to this lovely Texan lady.

Now for a confession. There’s something I’ve been hiding from you. I have a million projects in the hopper, as you know, but what was I to do when this hit me by surprise? I was doing my usual drooling over Aquaknits‘ latest FOs when I ran across it and knew I had to make it on the spot. I dug in the stash for a recent closeout of Karabella Aurora 8 from YarnHut, and cast on immediately. …I can’t quite say why I didn’t tell you about it! There was something distinctly naughty, I suppose, about casting on for another sweater when so many projects languish unloved in my knitting basket. But I just had to do it. And here it is, unassembled but all knitted save a buttonband, half a sleeve, and a hood:

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It’s the Central Park Hoodie from Knitscene. It’s no feat of cable-dy bravery - it’s just a simple 6-stitch clock cable, run in different directions - but it’s a quick knit, unless (as both Aquaknits and I discovered) you get obsessed with socks in the middle:

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(Those are my completed Fleece Artist socks in garter rib, designed expressly to distract me from the hoodie!) …And since we’re down here in the UFO pile, I’ll introduce you to my Socks That Rock experience to date (alas, the truth is out, I’m not a STR virgin and couldn’t participate in January One’s shockingly popular contest):

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One lone sock, awaiting its mate, in Socks that Rock medium weight, color Lover’s Leap. The pattern is vintage and will show up here sooner or later. I love this yarn - soft and beautiful and lovely to look at and lovely to hold. …I just want to say that I’m appalled by the recent debacle in which Blue Moon Fiber Arts’ bank shut them down because they supposed that so many people couldn’t possibly be interested in sock yarn. These women should sue for damages, and I think it’s a testament to their grace under pressure that they have not released the name of the bank to people like me. Because I certainly wouldn’t have been so classy.
Patterns! Soon! I promise…

(p.s. Yes, I was a Twinkie Marauder (or at least I hope it was the same group of twinkie marauders, because it scares me to think there was more than one set!) , no, the twinkies were not still in their wrappers - they were just eerily pristine after a Chicago winter duct taped to a lamppost, Freaks is indeed freaky, and of COURSE I’ll bake you a wedding croquembouche, Kathy!)

Alimum tagged me for this meme, which requests six weird things about me. For once I’m going to respond to the electronic equivalent of a chain letter - here goes:

1. Once upon a time, I was an experimental puppeteer. As in, I actually drew down a salary to make gigantic puppets for street performances and theater gigs, and traveled around Eastern Europe on a series of grants to set up artist exchanges.
2. When I was sixteen I quit school and hitchhiked around the country for two years.
3. I have seen literally hundreds of movies from the 1930s and 40s. Hundreds. It used to be that I was interested in film noir from the 40s and in the musicals of the 30s, but it has now bled over such that I will watch ANY movie made between 1927 and 1949, no matter how bad or obscure. The shorts are especially trippy, people, trust me.
4. I’m an avid amateur baker and cook, and I make a mean croquembouche. (Should you have any pressing need for a four-foot tower of cream puffs held together with a web of spun sugar, drop me a line!)
5. On an unrelated note, I once carved a replica of the White House out of a slab of Spam, and I also once participated in a roving gang of teenagers who taped Twinkies to lamp posts. What can I say? Six months later, the twinkies that hadn’t been taken down were in perfect condition. Scary!
   
6. To borrow a phrase from Charlton Heston, I have more sock monkeys than I need, but not nearly as many as I want. I’ve got something in the high two figures… but oh there are so many more to collect. (Unsurprisingly, I go for the old ones rather than the new, overly cute ones - I just love the way they walk the line between cute and creepy.)

…I won’t tag anybody, because it’s too much PRESSURE on these poor knitters… but if you do it on your blog, leave a comment here and let me know!      I’d love to have a look-see.

I’m one of those staunchly anti-resolution people. For years I’ve watched my friends torment themselves over their stash, their waistlines, their ashtrays, trying in vain to stick to a resolution they decided to make in the sloshy haste of a New Year’s announcement at 12:01. I’d rather not give myself a reason to feel guilt and self-loathing; I have plenty of those, thank you very much. So even though everyone and their mother is joining the 2007 Knit from Your Stash-Along, I will resist. The flesh is weak, friends, and no flesh is weaker than my own when it comes to the acquisition of good tasty yarn.
…But I’m not totally immune to this New Year’s fetish for making goals for self-improvement, so I am willing to make up some rules guidelines of my own:

- I will follow the wise old edict, Thou shalt not buy random amounts of yarn just because it’s there. Yes, if I’m picking it up, EITHER I need to have a project in mind for it (and those can be dreamed up on the spot, to be sure), OR I need to get enough for a sweater project TBD at some future point. I’m tired of discovering that I have 4 or 5 skeins of some lovely yarn, when I really need 12 to get anywhere unless I want to knit my 9,068,257th scarf. …Did you hear that, people? I just resolved to buy MORE yarn, didn’t I?
- No more than three different single socks can be floating around my WIP collection at once. Just because I got some nifty rosewood needles or a new hank of STR, I can’t go starting socks willy-nilly, or the avalanche of lonely single socks will start to seriously bum me out. (I might add that I have two on the needles, and I’m just itching to cast on for a third pair… so you see I’ve given myself some built-in wiggle room in the compliance department.)
- I will make a reasonable attempt to keep my yarn room from looking as if has just been ransacked by the KGB, and furthermore as if the KGB didn’t find what it came for:

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That’s enough, I think. Hey, nobody ever called me a paragon of self-control.

Meanwhile, I continue to plug along on the socks that I started knitting to avoid the hoodie that I started knitting to avoid the Argyle of Doom …(deep breath) So far, so good! [photopress:fasock1.jpg,full,pp_image]The yarn is Fleece Artist Nova Socks, which is a dream to work with. It’s a nice springy yarn - it knits up on much smaller needles than you’d think at first glance (I’m having to use 0s as usual) because the yarn has so much loft to it. I’m knitting them in a boring old Garter Rib, which is about what it takes for me to be able to watch movies and knit. More soon (and pictures) on the rest of my knit projects…

Happy New Year to all of you!  Wishing you peace, tranquility, and everything you desire in 2007 - not to mention a bucket of Koigu to each and every one of you.   Without further ado, here are the winners of my Knitty contest!  Y’all did so well that I had to draw numbers to select a winner out of the many correct answers.

• Third prize (Lorna’s Laces sock yarn), for the scary high-rise-pants lady, dated 1963: Geogrrl of comment #39!
• Second prize (rosewood sock needles), for the Ingrid Bergman lookalike, dated 1948: Barbara of comment #58!
• First prize (Handmaiden kit), for the toughest photograph - the boy in soakers, dated 1942:  Susan of comment #122!

Thanks everyone for participating in this contest.  It was great fun for me to do and a pleasure to get acquainted with y’all!  I hope I’ll keep seeing you around at the Kitchener Bitch - and I promise to keep you flush with vintage patterns.  In fact, as soon as I can get myself together to make some Hoppin’ John today and perhaps another pot of coffee, I’ll be publishing another this evening… stay tuned.
The New Year is finally here, and to ring it in I finally managed to finish something:

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Hourglass Sweater
from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts

Materials: Cash Iroha in Color #80 (Hunter)

Needles: Size 5 (one size smaller than those called for in pattern)

Modifications: tapered sleeves instead of those blasted bell sleeves

A couple of tips… as noted by many who have made the Hourglass Sweater, it GROWS with blocking. A lot. This wasn’t a problem for me for the most part, as I was a little worried I’d picked the wrong size - but it did come out a good deal more casual and sweat-shirt-y rather than sexy catwoman-y, which probably fits my personality better anyway.  But still.  I do like it and it’s incredibly comfortable.  Here it is in action at the party last night:

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I’ll close with a picture of my lovely friend Lisa, showing off her amazing crocheted finger puppets.  All I know for sure is that the one-eyed red one is named Bad Larry.  Enjoy and have a lovely New Year’s!

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