So… I was gonna talk about some socks I’m almost done with today, but the view from my balcony is this:

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So instead I played in the snow. This is the first snow of the season, and as a gal from Virginia Beach (which despite the recent weather is on the water and usually DOES NOT get any snow at all), I have a sort of childlike wonder for the snow. Which is an eloquent way of saying I want it to snow four feet so I can make tunnels and forts.

I also took pictures. There was holly:

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And this cute little snow-covered tree that I wanted to cover in tinsel and ornaments:

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I’m celebrating the holidays with my boyfriend, who doesn’t celebrate Christmas, so I have no tree. Plus I won’t be in my apartment for Christmas anyway. But I’m definitely getting a little tree next year. : )

Stay warm, people.

So I’ve been accidentally radio silent for a bit. In my defense, it was finals weeks. Which is now over! Now I am officially free on winter break, which is full of TV watching and knitting and reading and generally bumming around. HELL YES. Which means I’ve had time to finish a thing that isn’t a pair of shark mittens:

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Pattern: My own, but I might write it up cause it’s bitchin’.
Yarn: Some fluffy acrylic nonsense plus white acrylic and black cotton.
Needles: US 6/4 mm

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Sorry for the crappy pictures. The view from my window today is this. It’s been raining since last night.

I made this hat on commission for a friend to give as a Christmas present to a friend of hers that really likes foxes. It’s based on this hat from Urban Outfitters. I think I did a pretty good job at copying it.

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I really like how this hat came out. The floats where I changed colors are just a liiiiittle tight, but it’s totally still wearable. The fluffy yarn worked out perfectly, and I think the hat looks just like a fox. The yarn I used is a lighter orange than the UO hat, but I think foxes are actually pretty orange, so I made a good color choice.

The earflaps are in acrylic as well (the recipient has a wool allergy), so after I knit them, they were really curly and stiff and unpleasant looking. I took a change and brought out my iron and steam blocked the whole hat. As you can tell by the pictures, it worked out SO WELL. Seriously, why didn’t anyone ever tell me how magical steam blocking acrylic is? It’s much softer, lies flat, and the stitching is much looser, like a commercial knit. WONDERFUL.

So I daresay my friend’s friend will enjoy her Christmas present. I certainly had fun knitting it. : )

In other knitting news: I am still making shark mittens. So there’s that.

Tomorrow is my 21st birthday! Fortunately, I have no finals (yay), so I’ll mostly be sleeping in late and having a nice dinner + champagne with my boyfriend. And also visiting the ABC store.

So yes. I’ll be 21! Whoo hoo! In honor of my birthday, all of my patterns will be 21% off tomorrow only! So if you were looking to buy one, tomorrow’s the day!

So, uh, sorry for the radio silence, people. It’s finals week, which means last week was hell week, during which all of the last minute homework and projects professors assign is due. So yeah. But I have been knitting. I’ve started a pair of socks for a WWFY trade:

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And I’m knitting a hat for a commission from a friend:

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And of course I’m knitting eighty six bajillion pairs of shark mittens.

At least winter break starts next week.

So remember how I went to that craft fair like… a week ago? The delay in posting is due to finals week being next week, so I am currently drowning in both schoolwork and shark mitten orders.

Anyway, I didn’t really take any pictures (I feel weird taking pictures at that sort of thing) and it was kind of small, but I had fun. There were mostly jewelry vendors as these things tend to be, but there were also some people with sewn things, a soap/stuff vendor, and someone selling yarn. I didn’t buy much, but I did buy some honeysuckle scented soap and some yarn:

Pretty pretty sock yarn from Wild Hare Fiber Studio. The colorway is called “Peacock Strut” which is just so right. Pretty. The Wild Hare booth was one of the first booths I saw, and I spotted that yarn and decided it would be mine before I left (though I bought it near the end).

In other news, I have finally started my last pair of adult shark mittens (though I recently got an order for some baby ones). I’m going to relist the mittens on Friday, but I hope there’s at least a bit of a break so I can work on some WWFY stuff.

So… I sort of fell of the NaBloPoMo bandwagon. Well, I tried anyway. And I did pretty well, I think. I posted most days, and I would have posted more often but I had trouble getting photos during the daylight, especially over Thanksgiving break.

Anyway, the third item of my OliviaGoddess WWFY trade finished drying over break and I finally mailed everything off:

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Pattern: Cloud Bolero
Yarn: Claudia Handpainted and CEY Jil Eaton Minnow Merino
Needles: Big. Whatever the pattern calls for.
Mods: None. Made the XS.

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This came out well but HOLY HELL is the pattern difficult to follow. It’s confusing and jumbled and really difficult to decipher. I’m pretty sure the only reason I could do it was because I made Liesl first (which is very similar). I considered just making a shrug out of Liesl, but OliviaGoddess said Cloud, so Cloud I made.

As for the yarn: The Claudia Handpainted (the variagated) is lovely, wonderful, dense merino. Like the best handspun and also gorgeous. LOVE. It’s hella expensive and it will never grace my fingers again, but damn is it pretty. The other stuff, the Classic Elite on the bottom, is okay. It’s a pretty basic wool single, though a bit too fuzzy for my taste.

So yeah. So much for NaBloPoMo. BUT: The future: more shark mittens (three more pairs by Friday), maybe some socks, HOPEFULLY a sweater for the boyfriend for Christmas.

Christ. It’s finals week next week and I have a ton of knitting to do. Good thing I only have two finals.

So I made some more shark mittens:

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I did tell you you were going to see a lot of them. These are made in acrylic though, as the customer has a wool sensitivity. I have another wool pair knit in pieces (mittens with fins and unblocked mouths) and I’m currently to the beginning of the thumb gusset in another pair. And then I have another pair after that. And two people who want to be alerted when I relist the pattern.

Gonna need to order some more Cascade Eco.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m grateful for yarn

and thigh-high socks

and awesome friends

and the love of my life, Joe. ❤ ❤

Hope your Thanksgiving(/Thursday) is great!

So… I made some shark mittens.

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Shark Mittens, Cascade Eco and Valley Yarns Northampton, six 6/4 mm needles. Two at a time magic loop.

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In the last week or so, I’ve gotten five orders for shark mittens (one person for two pairs!). Expect to see them a fair amount over the next week or two. Sorry. (Not really.)

Okay, so technically it’s late on Tuesday morning. Shhh.

Anyway, what I picked up at the Holiday Fair I went to on Saturday. Some yarn and some fabric and also a skirt (which I don’t have pictures of). Unplanned Peacock was there, and I splurged (really, since it was more expensive than I’ve ever spent on one skein of yarn) on some sock yarn in the delightfully phoenix-y color solar:

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I also picked up a lovely skein of sport weight alpaca for five bucks (I KNOW):

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And two silk bells weighing about 38g total, even though I’ve never spun silk before:

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And finally, at one of the tables selling fabric, there were two bins of free scraps of fabric. Some of them were really large pieces (like a yard), and I scored a couple:

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The brocade will probably be a corset (with several muslins). Not sure about the other ones though.