So yeah, I may have been off the blog bandwagon for a while. I used to be soooo into reading knitblogs, and at a certain point I just stopped caring about the words and just wanted pictures, and maybe a few words here and there. So predictably, flickr has taken over pretty much all of my internet time. But on a serious note, it’s been a rough year, and there have been a lot of changes. I’m tired of explaining the bad changes to people, so let’s talk about some of the good ones, shall we?



These little guys came into our lives a few weeks ago. We started out with a feral mother cat and her 5 sick kittens who had lived outside for 5 weeks or so before getting caught, and ended up with three of the kittens sort of choosing us. I never thought we would be Those People with three cats, but here we are. And I love them. From left to right there we have Igby (who is a real punk, as you can see), Mal (the pretty one), and Bokeh (who is a little on the slow side).

In other positive news, back in September I also bought a fancypants new camera!



February lady sweater, in action!

You know, I don’t have a ton of pictures OF the camera because, frankly, it’s pretty much constantly glued to my face. If anyone is curious it’s the new Canon Digital Rebel XSi, and yes, I am completely in love. There are no words that can adequately express my love for this camera. It’s like magic. With a minimal amount of effort, everything looks so great. Especially food. Be expecting infinite amounts of food photography in the near future. And it’s all gonna look DELICIOUS.

And finally, in knitting news? Not a lot I can talk about right now. I’m knitting what feels like tens of thousands of Christmas presents and can’t post any info about them here, or on Ravelry for that matter. (Hi Mom!) Come Christmas there will probably be a few rapid fire FO posts. Here’s what I’m working on for me in the meantime, though:



This is the Tapestry Cowl, pattern by my flickrbud Minty. It’s taking me a while to knit because it’s double knit, so basically every stitch you see is two stitches.



But the results so far are completely worth it, and as you can see, I cannot freaking WAIT to wear this thing. As anyone familiar with double knitting probably realizes, the back side of the cowl is the same pattern but with the colors reversed. OH the choices! I’ve posted the details on ravelry, but here they are in brief: koigu, 1 skein each of the two colors, purchased at Loopy Yarns, on US5s.

So, if there’s anyone still out there, thanks for sticking with me, and hope to see folks around sooner rather than later.

It’s so nice to post and say that I have a big ole sweater to share with you all, and not a big ole failure like the last time I blogged. This is the February Lady Sweater by Pamela Wynne. I started it right when the pattern came out and the ladysweater CRAZE hit ravelry. I like to call mine my grown-ass woman sweater. I can’t wait for a freezing cold Chicago winter so I can wear this thing! Taking these pictures on a hot summer afternoon = not fun. But basking in the glow of my new orange sweater? Super fun.



Here’s the specs:
The yarn is Alia Lend Inca Wool, which I got on the cheap from a destash a while back. It’s a DKish weight 100% wool yarn, and I can’t tell you a whole lot about it because the ball band is in Russian. Anyway, it’s wooly and warm and I like it. Actually, I used some green Inca Wool on a Rusted Root that I finished a little over a year ago (but it didn’t make it to the blog for a while). The Rusted Root has held up well, with only some minor wear in the sweaty-pit region, so I have high hopes for the grown-ass woman sweater. So I held the yarn double-stranded for the grown-ass woman sweater on US 8s, which resulted in a nice smooshy fabric.



Buttons from our local humungoid JoAnn’s on Elston Ave.

What else is there to say about this? A super fun, fast knit that I can’t wait to wear over and over again.