Hazel Knits Sock Club

There’s this yarnista I know that kicks ass and takes names. Her yarns are fantastic, squishy, resilient. Her colors are bright, colorfast, and exciting. I’m obviously talking about Miss Wendee, dyer of Hazel Knits yarns.

 

Swallowtail Shawl, knit with Hazel Knits Artisan Sock in the "Euphorbia" colorway. Requires ~470 yards or 1.1 skeins.

 

She has opened registration for her 2009 sock club, and it sounds like it’s going to be a lot of fun. For what breaks down to $30 a month, members will receive two skeins of yarn in exclusive colors AND goodies. Her sock yarns are generous in yardage, and come in at more than 365 yps. I have knit most of my socks out of her yarn, and a shawl as well (pictured above). 

I knit my first pair of socks with Wendees yarn. A pair of Monkey socks in the Sailors Delight colorway. My second pair of socks were knit in her Sanguine Peach colorway, to the tune of Cookie A.’s Hedera (pictured below.) I have washed these socks dozens of times, always inside out, and haven’t experienced any fade in the color or felting in the heel/toe areas. I’m not gentle with my handknits, and I often go shoeless. 

I highly recommend Hazel Knits yarn, and I suggest you at least go and check out what she has to offer. For $30 a month members will get bi-monthly shipments of two exclusive skeins of yarn, goodies, and hours of entertainment. If you don’t at least click on the link and LOOK at what she has to offer, I will hunt you down and stealthily send you e-poop. 

EDIT 1/14/09: For those of you whom have been led here via Lime N Violet, I wanted to let you know that this is not the Hazel Knits website. All of the information listed here is also available on the Hazel Knits website, and Wendee’s wonderful yarns are available for purchase through her Etsy site.

Haduken!

Maryanne, whose awesomeness knows no bounds, sent me an unexpected present last week: A pattern and yarn for a little sock keychain. I knit it up yesterday in an hour or so, and immediately came up with creative uses for it (not pictured, the uses mentioned are probably illegal or something) including thumb-warming, quarter-holding and cat-amusing. It’s now hanging out with my Chewbacca keychain and the mail key. Last night I think they partied so hard that the cats were scared into behaving. 

***

Christmas was sweet. I hung out at my parents all day, eating their food, touching their stuff, hogging their remotes. Presents were exchanged, pranks were had, wine was drunk (me!) and snot was in tissues. I was sick! I tried really hard to direct all sneezes and coughs at my sister, but we’ll see if she actually gets sick. It’s surprisingly hard to get someone sick without sharing drinks with them, and since the Great Mono Incident Of 2007 I am no longer allowed to dupe my sister into sharing drinks with me. >:)

I gifted my grandmother a Swallowtail Shawl knit with Handmaiden Seasilk in the Peridot colorway. This was knit and finished back in August, and all of my pictures are deep inside the realm of sweltering ass so I have nothing to show you. My sister received a pair of arm warmers knit up with Hazel Knits Artisan Sock in Plum Glace and Euphorbia. I’ve got the pattern finished, but haven’t published it yet. I’ll let ya’ll know when that finally happens. My mom was given the Bucket Hat I posted about here previously, I’m too lazy to link it so just scroll down. 

My brother was wise and gave me two balls (haha) of Noro Silk Garden in the mysteriously named color #245. Right after unwrapping them I cast on for the Mitered Mittens by Elizabeth Zimmermann. I don’t have the book the pattern is in, so I had to figure out my gauge and go from there. These mittens have been dubbed the Adam Samberg mittens, because the day I spent knitting them I had a certain song stuck in my head. These mittens will prevent my fingerprints from transferring onto items I may later use to beat one of the cats if he doesn’t stop slamming cabinet doors and beating on his sister. 

 

“Oh hay” or “A friend sends a gift and I have a camera”

I have this longstanding inability to look appropriate in pictures. I’m either smiling too hard, picking my nose, saying something, drunk, highrecreationatally expressing myself, or just looking stupid for no apparent reason. I have snuck into and ruined near-perfect graduation pictures:

 

grandma, brother, and meeee.

Been unaware that pictures were even being taken, and singlehandedly lowered the bar on family reuinion shots:

Been so blissfully in tune with my recreational desires and deep & complex conversations to realize there were cameras afoot:

Inebriated and consumed with Communist regalia:

Or too happy and excited about receiving an unexpected gift to pause and ‘behave’ long enough to take a picture”

 

Thank you Kath! I love the ornament, it is going on the tree front & center. Getting to know you this year has been a pleasure, and I can’t wait until we get to hang out when Stitches West rolls around. You’ve made my weekend, and I’m lucky to know you.

Behold!

I apologize for the crappy picture, and for the little dust that seems to have made it into the picture by my toes, but I’m not self conscious enough to ~sweep the floor~ for something that’s just going on a blog. Seriously.

These have been on the needles for almost two months. I’ve been taking them everywhere when I go out, and I’m glad to finally free up the bag-space/have room for a new project once holiday knitting is finished.

The yarn is Colinette Jiggerbug in Morello Mash, and I used *almost* all of one skein. I have small feet (size 7, skinny) and only needed to do 5 repeats on the foot before decreasing to the toe. If you have longer feet, you’ll need more yardage.

There’s no hole in my bucket

Whenever I hum this song, it’s only a matter of seconds before it deteriorates into “There once was a man from Nantucket” rhymes.

If you are reading this post and are somehow related to me by blood, you may want to skip this. Unless you want to ruin Christmas – for everyone. Everyone, which includes people in shelters and cute baby puppies and new parents. You’ve been warned.

Pattern: A better bucket hat, by Amy Swenson. (rav link)

Yarn: Malabrigo worsted, in Burgundy.

Purchased from Imagiknit in SF, during the LSG meetup.

Needles: 4.25mm ChaioGoo 32″ circs, magic loop method. 

Duration: December 3rd-5th. Wet blocked to shape/size, drying took ~3 days.

Extras: One 2.5″ abalone shell button, also purchased from Imagiknit (map).

This has been finished for days and days now, and I’ve been too lazy to blog it (even though it only takes like 10 minutes, haaah.) The pattern is written very clearly, and the yarn is fantastic (as always). I don’t know how this keeps happening, but I bought the yarn in the colorway that the pattern was written with. Maybe there’s some subconscious preference that sneaks in when I’m thinking of making something, or maybe I just keep getting lucky. Whatevz.

This is for my mom, and now that I’ve finished it I don’t want to give it away. It’s great, warm, pretty, and useful. She spends hours upon hours gardening, and while I know she’d be too careful to ever wear handwarmers, or use knit dishcloths, this is something that I can definitely see her using. After the holiday projects are all done and over with, I’m going to make myself one of these hats.

In non knitting news: I passed statistics! Not by much, but I’ll take what I can get. This means that I am now officially enrolled at Hipstercentraluniversity, and will be taking classes beginning January 26th. When I checked my grades this afternoon I almost peed I was so happy, then I danced around and sent emails to my parents (haha) and informed friends that I am a smartypants who managed to somehow get a C in sadistics. I’m not kidding when I say it FEELS like an A. I studied my ass off for this class. Had I known that I would have been jobless for the majority of the quarter, I would have just taken the class on campus and dealt with the cut in hours, but life doesn’t work that way and I’m happy with what I’ve got. Is anyone interested in my T84+ Silver calculator? I’ll trade it for yarn.

My fingers fell off.

Now that NaBloPoMo is over, even thinking about posting makes me feel twitchy and ill. It’s been 5 days or something since I’ve even thought about typing, but it’s nice to know that even when there’s no activity here for days people will still find my blog by searching for some really stupid/interesting/creative shit:

• 3 people, on two different days, reached the blog by searching for “humans killed by lemmings”
• 5 people arrived after an ill-fated search for “mittens made with fleas”.
• 11 people ended up here by typing “your mom likes it” into their little search window.

The last one, by far, is my favorite.

The Noro Disease

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden, #267 and #292. Two skeins each.

Needles: 3.5mm Inox straights.

Timeline: November 26-29th, not counting blocking (3 days to dry.)

I loved knitting this scarf. It was a great excuse to get away from the CPH and MC++’s scarf that doesn’t end. I slipped the first and last stitch of every other row, to give the scarf tidy edges and keep control of the tension. It’s possible that I could have paid more attention to how tight the slipped stitches were at the beginning of the scarf, but I was busy watching Arrested Development through most of this beast and couldn’t be bothered to go back and rip it out. Carbon gracefully modeled the scarf, and agrees that it is indeed very soft after blocking. 

This is the beginning of a passionate affair with Noro and myself, the Kept Woman of Rose Lane. I want to make some mittens and socks with this stripy yarn. I purchased the yarn from Article Pract in Oakland, but it’s also available at many other local stores.

Tonight I have my third and final midterm for my Sadistics class. I’ve studied enough, I think, to land a C. I can’t get any more information in my head and honestly I don’t care. One week from today I’ll be taking my final and praying to Flying Spaghetti Monster that I pass this goddamned class. I should be good, I’ve done the math and as long as I get above a 62.5% on this test and the final, I’m guaranteed a 71% which is 5% above the cutoff line for a C.