Spring Festivities

It's spring! Hooray! We went to the Mall on Saturday, which was swarming with people wanting to see the cherry blossoms. Not that that was the only game in town though, cuz the Smithsonian also had their kite festival:There was a nice breeze going (though not strong enough to blow the blossoms away), and the kite flyers were out in force. There was even a turtle kite:
The Tidal Basin was packed with people as always (人山人海!) , though they had replaced parking spaces with shuttle service to cut down on the number of cars. Even with the congestion, it's always worth the trip, especially when the weather is fine.
I took the opportunity to have a little yarn photo shoot. That's right, people from other places, Washingtonians pose yarn on trees. Here's some merino for my ISE6 pal's scarf.

And the Pomatomus sock wanted a close up too.

I got tired of the lace pattern after the leg (knitting through the back loop all the time was annoying) and I decided on simple stocking stitch for the foot. The sock may only be half Pomatomus, but it's all tweed, all the time :D

Happy Feet

The hat-knitting itch has subsided. I'm totally into socks now, especially quick dk weight ones

with pretty hand painted colors


that look yummy enough to eat


Little 12" Addi circulars (3mm in this case) made all these socks a breeze to knit: absolutely no pausing for joins until I switched to magic loop to do the toe. Sweet!

The current sock in project is a bit more high maintenance: Pomatomus socks in Sock Superwash (colorway: Tosca). This pattern is just as addictive as Monkey, but it takes a bit more thinking, particularly at the start of the repeat and also at the middle, where you turn and start zigging instead of zagging, so to speak. I love the way the colors are working up. I was worried about how the tweedy bits would turn out. They mainly show up as little blips of a non-matchy color (orange instead of yellow, blue instead of purple, etc). Adds character, don't you think?
Five and a half weeks until Sheep and Wool! Mmm, ribbon fries here I come!

Green Thumbs

I still have green on the brain. I saw an article on a fancy pantsy edging for mittens and thought, "Hmmm, got just the yarn for that!"
These mitts are made with beautifully handdyed gift yarn, which I think is a wool mohair blend. I chucked the featured edging and knit a ribbed cuff instead of a stocking stitch one (I kinda like mitten cuffs on the clingy side).

The finished mittens resulted in some more green leftovers. I took these, along with the remnants from all the recent hat knitting, to a triloom weaving class at Springwater yesterday. We learned color changing and plaids, so it worked out nicely:
I had to double up on some of the pegs to accommodate the different yarn weights, but otherwise, it was pretty straight forward. I guess it is easy being green after all.

Knitting O' the Green

I just can't stop knitting these tasselled earflap hats. They knit up pretty quick, though there's some fiddly finishing. But in the end it's the details that make this hat: the tidy crocheted edge, the functional earflaps, and oh yes, the tassels:
Yup, tassels rock. Meanwhile, when I'm not admiring yarn tassels, I'm working on a Claude sweater. Here's the back:
The fronts are mostly plain st st too, with just a bit of cable to keep them interesting. I'm working on the button bands now. This is knit with cotton angora, as recommended. It's super duper soft, as advertised, but the yarn reviews all warn that it gets fuzzy with wear. I guess I'll wait and see when it comes time to block the pieces.