Trick mittens (warning: STR club spoiler below)

Even though it has been a long time since my last post, I have been knitting. Really. I've also been busy working and haven't had much time for blogging. As a freelancer it seems it's either feast of famine workwise. The last two weeks have been feast. So yay! for being able to keep my dogs living the lifestyle in which they've become accustomed. Unfortunately the fun stuff gets cast aside for a bit until I catch my breath.

While I was buried in work, the knitting world carried on without me - big time (New Knitty! New Interweave editor!). I love the new Knitty. I see Clessidra in my future.

After three months of no posting, Eunny Jang posts this. It makes me feel better that she's been knitting since she was four. Oh, Eunny Jang, how do you do it? Just as I was wiping the drool off my keyboard, here she goes again with this announcement about becoming the new editor of Interweave Knits. I'm so many years behind Eunny. But when I look at her designs I'm not discouraged. I'm inspired by her and can see what I have to look forward to with my knitting.

To top it off, last Monday I got my first installment of the Socks That Rock club (photo below). Beautiful! A lot of people have mentioned this and I agree: it's not a colorway I would normally buy for myself. But now that I have it I love it. I think the club is going to help me explore colors and patterns I wouldn't have experimented with on my own.

I knit these a couple weeks ago: my first pair of mittens. Flip-top, baby! From Handknit Holidays. Yarn is Manos del Uruguay in Coffee and Wildflowers.


Oooh.


Aaah.

I learned a few things during this little project.

1. I enjoy knitting mittens. I didn't think I'd like it (who knows why), but I did. However...


2. ...I get crabby when there's more than one place in my knitting held together with waste yarn. I had waste yarn on the thumb and on the flippy part. Maybe because the two places were so close together, I don't know, but I don't like it when waste yarn gets in the way of the working yarn.


3. Sometimes it becomes necessary for one to make Manos one's bee-yotch. I switched to a new skein of Wildflowers at the flap of my second mitten. New skein = totally different pattern/pooling than the first skein. To make the last part look like the other 75% of the mittens, at 4 places I randomly cut about 6 inches of yarn then spit-spliced it back together. That broke up the pooling enough to match the rest of the mittens.

Okay... drumroll please... here is the first skein of the 2007 Rockin' Sock club. After practically stalking my mail carrier for two weeks, then doing a little happy dance in front of her when she delivered the box, I am pretty certain she thinks I'm a nutter-butter. But I don't care, I was just so happy to finally get this:



The grey has a lot of blue in it and the brown has green in it. The skein changes colors depending on the light. I don't mean to imply it's a magic skein, I mean that it's made up of colors that have a habit of looking different in different situations. I can't wait to try the first club pattern with this!