All posts by peneloping

Destashing

I’ve been SO good. Not at blogging, obviously, but at keeping myself away from new yarns.

I made a list of things I have to finish before I’m allowed to buy new yarn.

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And no, finishing all of these things would not deplete my entire yarn stash. But it would be a substantial chunk. And most of these are nearly done or at least halfway finished. The bunny slippers for example are already knitted and one is even already felted.

I fiiinally finished Little Birds. All I need now are buttons, which I’ve been meaning to go to the store for. The problem is that the shop I go to for buttons also sells yarn. Lots of yarn. And that might just be too much temptation in one place.

I also finished Georgia, which already had buttons sewn on and now just needs to be blocked. Yee!

In the spirit of using up extra yarn, I started this lovely wrap scarf thing.

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I also had a ton of extra gray yarn leftover from the Birds so I decided to make a Paulie cardigan.

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Send good thoughts. I may attempt a yarn-less shopping trip to the yarn store later for those buttons.

2 Comments knitting - -

Abandoned and neglected

I think I’ve hit a bit of a knitting rut. I started three small projects yesterday (nothing big, just various cold weather accessories) and I’m tempted to rip out all of them just because something feels off. Bleh.

Anyway, I’m setting the needles aside for today, lest I cause any damage.

Instead, I’ll be working on this! I know, I know. I started it ages ago and then never said another word about it. I got frustrated with it so it went on a several month hiatus. The funny thing is I’m now fairly certain I know exactly how to fix it.

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And yes, I know it’s super baggy and awkward looking right now. The entire back of the skirt is unattached and hanging.

In other news, I made Boyfriend a pre-first-midterm-of-the-semester dinner the other night and decided to try my hand at panna cotta for dessert. It is officially my new favorite dessert.

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Scrummmmptious! I’m contemplating mixing in crushed oreos next time and drizzling a cherry sauce on top. Nom nom nom.

3 Comments sewing - - - -

I hate waiting

Every time I finish a knitted project and bind off the last stitch, I always get super excited to put it on and parade it around. It’s not usually until five minutes later that I remember that it still needs to be blocked and possibly have some ends woven in and maybe a few buttons sewn on. In short, I won’t be able to wear it for at least two to three days.

Anyway, the reason I’m whining is because this lovely pile of cuddliness is laid out flat in the corner of my apartment and shows no signs of being dry before the end of the weekend. And yes, I have been checking almost hourly.

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On the bright side, look at these gorgeous buttons I found! Everything they had was either too plasticky or too manufactured-looking or they only had one left, and then the guy at the store whipped out these ones and they were perfect!

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On a completely unrelated note, I was making corn chowder for the first time yesterday and for some reason decided to add chopped celery.

Absolutely terrible idea. The flavor didn’t go with the rest of the soup at all.

So I spent twenty minutes plucking out every single bit of celery from the soup.

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Yes, I’m weird. But the soup was infinitely better afterwards.

Yarnsies

I usually hate ordering yarn online because I don’t like not being able to see and touch what I’m going to be knitting with, and while I love getting things in the mail, I hate waiting for it. Especially if it’s yarn. Or pretty much any craft-related stuffs.

That said, there are a lot of ridiculous deals to be found online. I highly recommend it.

So anyway, a few days ago I was looking everywhere online for two things: Araucania Patagonia in colorway #209 and Berroco Campus in All-Nighter (I know, I’m super original in my color choices — in my defense, sometimes designers really know what they’re doing when they pick colors!). My lys had Berroco Campus but only in weird colorways or strictly black/white/greys, and they don’t carry any Araucania.

So I looked online. Yarn.com had the Berroco but they no longer carried the Patagonia in the colorway I wanted.

So I looked on eBay. I’d never bought yarn on eBay before but I’ve bought all sorts of craftish things on there so I thought I’d look. I ended up finding the exact yarn in the exact colorway for half the price on yarn.com! -squee-

And then I started looking for interim projects, expecting it to take about a week for my yarns to arrive.

Except they both showed up at my doorstep yesterday!

Isn’t this just a scrumptious collection of reds? It’s 100% cotton and ridiculously soft.

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And here’s the Campus. I can’t get over how cool this yarn is! When you look at it up close it looks like there are even amounts of purple, pale blue, and orange, and even some flecks of turquoise and pale pink! But then you knit it up and it just looks purple.

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-squee!-

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Anyway, you can imagine what I spent all of yesterday doing. In fact I meant to do this post yesterday but obviously was distracted. Hee.

4 Comments yarn - - - -

Blocking

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So remember a few months ago when I was squeeing my pants about that giant pile of Madelinetosh yarn I bought?

Well, that project is finally off the needles!

Actually technically I finished it last week back home but there was no floor space to block it and then I decided to just wait for my blocking mats to get here.

So today it had a bath and now it’s pinned to the mats waiting to be dry so I can wears it.

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Apologies for the gimpy pinning job. I’m still a noob at this. I will say, though, the knitpicks blocking mats I bought are fantastic! I love that they’re detachable and can conform to the shape of whatever you’re blocking.

And lastly, these are the buttons I bought.

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I’m still torn about whether or not they’re right for this sweater. I used the same button for a headband/ear warmer I made a few months ago and I really like the simplicity of it but I feel like they might be too small. Maybe a toggle instead? Hrmmm.

*taps foot impatiently*

5 Comments knitting - - -