And when the feeling’s right

It’s that time of the year again.

The sun shines brightly in the clear blue sky, I spend my time having extensive breakfast in cafés and lounging in the sun down by the canal instead of doing homework, Leipzig is overrun by black masses of the Goth persuasion, and I feel an acute case of startitis coming my way.

Last night I cast on Rock Island last night, I started swatching for my sweater project ‘Phony King of England’ this morning around 7.30, and after an entirely perfect afternoon at Annelie’s, which we spent eating, knitting, talking and cooing over the baby, I’m caving to peer pressure.

After struggling (for some unfathomable reason) with the technically easy lace for Rock Island and being bored to death by an entirely unexciting sock that I don’t want to finish lest I have to cast on its twin, and after a day of watching my friends zoom happily through the stockinette portion of Gingko… I give up. You hear that, the two of you?  Besides, you’ll need my ~expertise  once our KAL gets to the lace part. Possibly.

From the mountain to the air

To say my clothing style is a bit hodge-podge may well be the exaggeration of the year.

In other news: I have sore feet. After a good three hours of constant treadling the spinning wheel, I’d expected sore thighs or sore calves or, hell, sore fingers from having a notoriously overplied thread running through them. But no, it’s the tops of my ankles that are kind of sore. What a random place.

Apart from spinning, we also washed yarn, which I guess is a thing you can only do with wool people… Annelie had a bunch of beautifully structured by wonky-smelling skeins of polyester yearn, and we washed a couple of them in the hope that the smell would go. Me agitating the soapy water until my rolled-up sleeves were full of splashes, Annelie rinsing the soapy skeins and hanging them up to dry… it’s moments like this when I feel so connected to history, to long-dead people all over the world, sitting together to wash and card and spin wool, talking and being useful at the same time. Everywhere, all over the world, for hundreds and thousands of years, connected by the red thread of… yarn.

It’s a good thing I don’t have my own spinning wheel (yet), or I’d just sit in front of it today, moodily wishing I could go on but realizing that the fun would last about 10 minutes until I’d crawl back to wherever I started from, tail tucked.

So instead I wound the gorgeous yarn Annelie gave me into a ball, and started on Cookie A.’s Kai-Mei socks. Annelie, if you’re reading this, thank you again. One day soonish I’ll make you a pair of socks in a color you actually like.

Tingle in your fingers, tingle in your feet

I’ve been having a bit of a restless phase lately. An acute case of Startitis also plays into that, which leaves me unable to work on one project for more than twenty minutes before switching to something different, something new. It’s not enough that I’m doing another Baktus, and have the ‘Holy shit John Barrowman touched my socks’ dalek socks back, and started a potholder to go along with the TARDIS one, I also cast on an entrelac scarf and am seriously considering doing another hat. Like, today.

I have a feeling part of that is being back in the city, some lingering impression of being cooped up. I spent last weekend at my parents’, eating steak and helping a friend move and running a couple of errands and being dragged to a party that kinda blew and deciding I needed to wear rings more often.

Anyway, point being, I also spent hours driving through the fields and villages, enjoying the peace of mind that’s brought on by a brilliant autumn day, cold air streaming in through the windows, the sheer exhilaration of speed, and classic rock blasting so loud you can barely hear yourself singing along at the top of your voice. Seriously. 130 km/h on the highway, with ‘Eye of the Tiger’ blowing your eardrums out? Is terribly cliché, but also beyond awesome.

Part of that driving was just cruising for the hell of it, part of it was, however, going to Wickede and thus Atelier Zitron for pre-Christmas yarn fix.

Crazy colored Trekking XXL that tickled my fancy; scarlet and charcoal Gobi (40/30/30 Merino/Camel/Alpaca) I’m planning on using for Opus Spicatum as a chance to practice fair isle before embarking on the Sweater Project.

Saskia hinted at maybe wanting another pair of socks, so I picked up some pink-orange-yellow for her; passing by the bargain table, I couldn’t resist grabbing the 150g of blue-grey extrafine merino for €4.50.

Four balls of Nimbus – two green-blue for the Amelia Earhart Aviator Cap, pink and rose for an entrelac scarf for my grandma. Christmas is approaching fast.

Six balls of Lifestyle – one each of charcoal and purple for another, shorter, Doctor Who Scarf for Sassi (I still have tons of leftovers of all other colors; also, this one’s way back on my to-do-before-Christmas list, since I can always give it to her when she comes back the end of January), and six balls of scarlet for an Waves of Grain scarf my mother requested for Christmas.

Aaaaand long (1 m) 3.5mm circs for my sweater. Oh the sweater. I have the yarn, I have an idea of what I want it to look like, I have a currently AWOL swatch that I did before attempting (and subsequently frogging) Thermal, and I have a rough sketch –

– but I haven’t gotten much farther. Farther being, in that case, figuring out the exact gauge, how many stitches I’d have to cast on, how deep I need to make the neckline to be able to fit the design next to it, because hell if I’m doing intarsia on something like that, so it needs to be while I’m doing it flat… plus I need to chart the design, and test it, because fudging and frogging it would be too much of a pain.

Yes, yes, it’s the Starbucks logo. I know. Normally I’m slightly opposed to the big bad corporate evil, but thing is… dude, Starbucks. For one, and this is the deciding reason, I really do like the logo a lot.

Aand secondly, I’m so much of a regular at my local Starbucks that I know the names of the usual baristas, and they know mine and what exactly I drink. Which is a grande Chai Tea Latte with a shot of espresso and three pumps of vanilla syrup. And half the time they don’t even charge me for the syrup, and when I had my reward card full and asked if I could upgrade the tall size beverage to a grande, they said ‘sorry, we can’t do that’ while reaching for the grande cups.

So, yeah, Corporate Evil or not, it’s just people with a pretty cool logo on their uniforms, and, yay.

Good thing I vowed to slap my fingers to stifle the urge of just casting on.

Spring fever

The good news is: I managed to squeeze all my yarn into my suitcase. This means I have to find a spot for shower gel and shampoo in my backpack, which is weird, but at least I won’t have to leave any yarn behind.

The not-so-good news is: it seems like I’ve developed a case of startitis. I was helpless in the face of all the new yarn in the house, so I pulled out a green ball of Trekking XXL and new 2.5ers and cast on a pretty, lacy green spring sock I tentatively titled ‘Grasshopper’. Because, you know, it’s all springy.

No, really though. It’s several shades of green, a shade of teal and some white (or is it very very light green?) mixed in.

It doesn’t really show the brightness and vividness of the colors, but it was a rainy day yesterday, and I already packed my camera. Not that today is any better cloudwise, but at least it stopped raining.

But, you know. Until I get a photo, just picture that yarn with 20 rows of 1×1 ribbing, and  [k2tog, k1, yo, k1, yo, k1, ssk] every other row thirteen times, a heel flap in plain stockinette, and the first seven rows of the heel gusset split between a patterned top and a stockinette bottom.

And only after Dead Poets Society and a teeny tiny little bit of Sky High, too. Oh, and some listening to Diana Gabaldon’s ‘Outlander’ audiobook. Ok, I’m not as awesome as I thought.

However, this means right now I have on the needles: three pairs of socks (Time Warp, Grasshopper, elf socks for my mother that only need some smallish triangles added at the top), a lace shawl, a cardigan, and a random pair of almost finished mitts on my broken Harmonies that I can’t finish because, well, my Harmonies are broken.

Oh, and there’s a pair of randomly striped stashbuster socks, them kneesocks, a pair of gloves… and I think that might be it. But we’ll just ignore those last few for now.