Summer knitting.. or not.

It has been a tremendous amount of time since my last post so here goes the update: I took a majority of early summer off from my knitting and am beginning to pick up speed again, right where I left off. Because of my new job I have plenty of time to scour the internet and fall in love with new things I am dying to try--Quince & Co yarn for one!... (But I won't mention how said job means my knitting budget has been cut some because who needs the first note to be a sour one?) so it seems like a daily task to keep myself from hitting "order" buttons all over the web.

I haven't accumulated much yarn in the last few months other than a few skeins of Malabrigo which I picked up before our summer excursion last month. Unfortunately, I can't say this summer's road trip/knitting has gone any better than last year: At a lovely shop called Edla's Yarns I picked up some Classic Elite yarn that I don't remember much about. On our long car ride home (something like 10 hours) I decided to begin a lace hat, which at the time was pretty intricate for my skills (Ahem, I have come a long way...). Anyway, I fussed and screamed and had a few mental breakdowns before the pattern became clear. My poor yarn was rustled after being frogged a thousand times and by the time I actually got the pattern, I realized I didn't have enough yarn to actually finish. The dead remains of the hat sat in my bag for a really long time before I decided to throw the entire thing in the trash (blasphemy, I know!) without even bothering to frog or salvage it.

On this trip, I couldn't even get past the first few rows. I would cast on, only to determine I couldn't count, or twisted my stitches. At the time I was furious, thinking I had lost my "mojo" but somewhere along the way I had forgotten that I was losing to the k1, d2 (knit 1, drink 2) curse. I guess I decided somewhere between our two cabins to just let it be. Let the yarn gather dust and just d2 instead --which ended up being quite fun minus the yarn infused mental breakdown... I recommend it highly.

As for my knitting endeavors now that I am home and back on my turf: I have recently decided to work on some patterns to sell on Ravelry. I imagine it will take a few weeks to get some test knits done and work on building the patterns in Photoshop but I should be up and running soon. I am also getting ready to order some Jacquard dyes to custom dye yarn, if only I can cut the picture in my head of my white kitchen being splattered with permanent dyes thanks to my devilish cats. And as always, I am building a serious knitting queue of favorites which should be somewhere in progress in the next few months.

My recent to die-die-die for list:

Spectra- ugh. Steven West kills me.

Cecily's Shawl- I have a serious crush on this woman. Her patterns are so whimsical; it is hard not to love her.

Milanese Lace Topper

Dejeuner Bag

Creature Comforts Cardi