WWKIP Day and Summer Planning

     It seems the Irish weather decided to celebrate Worldwide Knit in Public Day, too, by giving us a proper summer's day.  For us, that means it was nearly 20*C (almost 70*F) with the sunshine and the humidity, so it was a little difficult to wear the handknits.  Nevertheless, we had fun, though we were mostly in the shade.  This is Knit! had the celebratory spirit with cakes, a few offers, and a fun photobooth.  You can check out the fun on their Twitter feed @ThisisKnit.  I may have completely blown my stashdown goals and bought a skein of laceweight.  Behold a skein of teal Fyberspates Scrumptious Lace.

 It's a 45/55 silk/merino blend.  It's also a kilometer of yarn.  Yep, there went my hopes for a 10k net stash loss for this year.  I had made a little money proofreading this week and decided to splash out.  Originally I thought I would pick up spinning fiber for my first ever Tour de Fleece this summer since I joined Team Ireland, but was enabled into this beautiful skein.  I think it will become a Snow Angel by Boo Knits, though I haven't decided on what size.  I may go big and make the extra large.  Either way, it looks great with silver-lined gold beads, no?

      Otherwise, it's been a crazy month.  Between restructuring my thesis and writing my first conference paper plus preparing to move house (again!), it's been stressful.  I've been working away on three largish projects to maintain my sanity.  Two are gift knits and can't be shown here, but one is for me because I just couldn't take all the gift knitting anymore.  It's a Leftie by Martina Behm using the leftovers from my NaKniSweMo cardigan in Drops Delight and Drops 4-ply Alpaca:

The Drops Delight that I'm using is the Mauve-Vert colorway, but I cut out the green bits because they disappear into the charcoal grey alpaca.  This means that I get a purple tonal scarf, which I am quite happy with if it weren't for the wintry colours.  This is my travel project because it is so small and easy to carry.  I'll be taking with me to the conference next weekend since I'll be packing light. If I bend time to my will, I will get a large chunk of it done there, but I have my doubts about my abilities.

      Lately there has been a lot of planning going on behind the scenes.  I'm going home exactly one week from today and then onto Peru after a few days at home.  We'll be in Peru a little over a week before I come home.  Then I will be home for a few days before the long trek back to Ireland.  There will be a lot of travel time between planes and buses, so I'm planning how much I can get done and what projects to take so I don't run out.  I can't show any of them here because they are all gift knits. (I wasn't joking when I said a lot of gift knitting was going on this summer.)  Rest assured that I have planned well for all this travelling. On the home front, I'm not sure if we are moving at the end of this month or the next, but I'd rather not break into boxes unless I have to, so I have had yarn wound to make sure I am covered until the end of August.  I generally take August off and knit just for me, and this year I have planned to do a Boo Knits Shawl-a-long.  Here are the planned yarns and beads in the order I intend to knit them:

This skein of Malabrigo Sock in the colorway Indiecita will become a Love in a Mist.

This skein of Hedgehog Fibres Sock in Hunter will become a Mustardseed.

This skein of Artesano Alpaca Silk Lace in Russian Purple will be a Rainshine.

This Pearl Malabrigo Silkpaca will become a Cobweb with two different colours of beads.

Finally, this Malabrigo Superwash lace in Arequita will become an Almost Autumn.

I know this is way too ambitious, but I get that way after too much gift knitting.  I may have to take off a week in July to get all this done.  Oh well!

Oh, and there are also plans for next year.  At the moment, they look like this:

There are evil plans afoot, I tell you, evil plans.  Stay tuned!

It's time for a fort

I really should not invoke the unholy power of evil bacteria and foul Irish weather.  It's been pretty cold here this week, with showers on and off, and I am still sick.  The doctor at Student Health Services has told me that if I am not better by Tuesday, she will refer me to the Ear, Eye, and Throat Hospital for examination.  Since that sounds expensive, I've been trying to stay home, keep warm, and take my meds, or at least as much as it is possible in the first week of classes.  And I wonder why I am still sick. 

This has been good for my knitting, though.  The socks are finished.

These are the Chrysanthemum Frutescens socks by Hunter Hammersen, from her book Knitter's Curiosity Cabinet.  Considering I accidentally knit these at a tighter gauge than called for, they came out really well.  I love the bright color (Foilage, Knitpicks Stroll Tonal), although now it is discontinued.  I found the picot edge a little fiddly, as it's the kind where you have to knit the current live stitches to the stitches held in the provisional cast-on.  Nevertheless, it's a very nice picot edge that lies flat against the leg, so the effort is worth it. 

As the weather is being particularly unhelpful, I've cast on a sweater.  Currently it looks like this:

     It's the Falling stars sweater that Knitpicks originally put out two years ago as a kit.  At the time, they only offered blue and grey versions, and since I love color, I choose the blue.  Now they have a purple and a green/natural version, which you can get as kits here.  The sweater uses elements from the Bohus style of colorwork, which uses fine gauge and purl bumps.  I love it.  The colors change every couple of rows, which keeps things interesting, but the motifs aren't that complicated so you can do it at 5AM while trying to get back to sleep because you are tired and sick.  Not that I would know anything about that. *cough, cough* 
     This sweater will be for the Knitabulls Sweater KAL for January and February.  I love the Knitabulls podcast and try to watch it every week.  I want to adopt the host Diane for my aunt; she is always so happy in her shows and enthusiastic about her various crafts.  She's always a beam of sunshine in my week.
     As I'm housebound for the rest of the weekend,  I'm starting to assemble a fort of yarn and books.  The sweater should be enough to hold me out on the yarn end, and I have plenty of books to read.  In addition to my reading for my normal classes, I've started doing the background reading for my thesis.  My book fort looks something like this:

I'm excited.  This is going to be fun.