Color Wonder

I'm feeling lazy today, but I need to share my latest project. It's making me so happy because it involves color - something that the Chicagoland area has been lacking lately. Blues Brothers? More like Grey Brothers, amiright?!

My life, all day every day

So, the pattern I'm working on is called Chevron Stripe Infinity Scarf by Jill Zielinski. Allyson of Sweatshop of Love and Holla Knits was making one at Knit Night in February and it looked *so* fun. Once again, I swiped her awesome taste in patterns and decided to make one for myself.

I always struggle when it comes to putting colors together. It's just not a talent I have. Luckily, Pinterest exists and I don't have to look far for help in that department. My friend Lily directed me to Design Seeds and my work was done. I liked the color combo from this image in particular:

I would never have thought to put these together and I think this would work well with my dark green coat. Done and done. Knit Picks Palette is great for this project and comes in all known colors ever. The FedEx guy dropped these on my stoop on Friday:

A tower of yarn. Welcome to my dreams

And getting started has been a breeze.

Just trust me, this is going to be great. Even if it isn't - I'm loving the process. And that's what it's all about, right?

Inspiration

An awesome thing that I found:

Montezuma Sweater

DearGolden is a wonderful vintage shop on Etsy and I love reading their blog posts each day for a little style inspiration.This guy is from the 1970s, kint in acrylic and is only $34. Not too shabby. I love the wave motif at the yolk. Makes me want to throw on some strappy leather sandals and paint in the desert somewhere.

I'm back in a colorwork kind of mood. I hit a snag with my Norwegian boot socks and had to put them aside for a while. The foot of the sock doesn't call for any decreases and therefore turned out kinda... stumpy.

It looks fine from the side:

 But then, Stumpsville:

See what I mean? Just a little too much fabric at the foot to shove into a shoe. I found this frustrating and put the project aside for a while. I've got a new super colorful project in mind, but the yarn is taking foreeeever to get here and I need something to do while I'm waiting. Ripping back and restarting the feet of these socks seemed like a great 'waiting around' project. It's good practice for the new colorwork project I'll be undertaking soon, and I might actually have functional boot socks before winter is over! Who'd have thought?

Hexipuff Madness: The Chicago Skies Quilt

My knitting life has really gotten heavy duty lately. I'm working on multiple projects (more on those later) and watching the mail for Knit Picks packages. But sometimes, you get infected with a crafting brain worm of sorts. An idea occurs to you and you just can't let it go. For me, it came in the form of The Beekeepers Quilt and the components of that project, known colloquially as "Hexipuffs". For whatever reason, I couldn't stop thinking about this project.

Hexipuff Vase

What drew me to the quilt at first was the idea of using scrap yarn. It turns out, however, that most of my scraps are worsted weight and not sock yarn. Additionally, I didn't necessarily love the color story that you get when you use all your scrap yarn. My taste changes with the wind, so it would look pretty disjointed. Still, I used some sock yarn I received in a Sampler Kit to get things started. I may or may not have woken up at 3 a.m. on Saturday to download the pattern and feverishly put needle to fiber


I started with self-striping sock yarn which led to larger blocks of color per puff. Then I switched over to the color "Atmosphere Multi" which had gentle, smaller stripes which looks lovely in puff form.

Left: Atmosphere Multi (Knit Picks Stroll, Right: Moonlight (Knit Picks Felici)

I really loved the colors in the Stroll Atmosphere skein and it reminded me of a project I'd seen on Pinterest: The April Sky Scarf. The author of the post tracked the color of the sky each day in a year and knitted a stripe of a scarf to correspond with the weather that day. The colors in stripey Stroll Atmosphere are a perfect stepping off point to an insane idea: a puff for every day's sky here in Chicago. I'm tracking the sky color using a spreadsheet and will slowly acquire the appropriate yarn colors to begin. I grabbed some sparkly white Vanna's Choice from Lion Brand at Michael's yesterday to get started on the 'snow days' we've had so far in January. You can see the result in the top left-hand of the photo.

Please note that this is in no way scientific. I'm an office drone and really only see the sky during my commute or if I run in the mornings. The color listings are based off of archives from weather.com or my overall impression of the sky that day. I'm still loving this project... but that's seven puffs out of 365+. I think the Felici Moonlight colors are charming and might sprinkle them throughout to break up some of the grey months I know we've got coming.

Stay tuned!

Windy City Weather Color Chart:

Just Look at This

I try hard to pretend otherwise, but I'm a giant sap. I don't know that kids are really something that's in the cards for me personally, but that doesn't mean that kids in general don't make me swoon sometimes.

So, I came across this little number today during lunch and almost started sobbing at my desk:

The Daddy Scarf

What's that? A scarf with little pockets knitted in for Micromachines and then cabled 'roads' for kids to drive the cars along! they can make their own hills on a park bench or some stairs.  Is this not THE GREATEST?

Seriously, the greatest

This is a great idea. Unfortunately, I'm not a great knitter and there's no real 'pattern' just some notes jotted down. I'm going to mull this over and see if I can tackle it (sometime after Christmas). Because seriously, if the following doesn't melt your heart, I'm not sure we should hang out:

Grandfather of the year!

Via MizToolLady on Ravelry