Knitter Monkey

1. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with? What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?
My biggest yarn obsessions are Malabrigo, Koigu KPM (the mostly-solids), and Handmaiden/Fleece Artist. Other favorites: Blue Sky Alpaca and Cotton, Lorna's Laces, Rowan CashSoft - basically, I like really soft yarns. This means I use natural fibers almost exclusively, but I have found that brands like Bernat or Caron Simply Soft carry some really soft acrylic blends, so I do use those from time to time.

I absolutely do *not* like anything scratchy or rough - Noro's popularity is one of my biggest knitting mysteries.

2. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in?

I have a KnitPicks Options set, so that is where my circulars and DPNs go and I have a pretty roll-up case for my straights.

3. How long have you been knitting & how did you learn? Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced?

I've been knitting for two and a half years - I learned by watching videos on KnittingHelp.com because I wanted to recreate some Christmas stockings that have been family traditions for my whole life for my husband and other new additions to the family. I'd say my skill level is intermediate - at this point I have tried most techniques and tackled some crazy projects but I'm not necessarily great at all of them yet. I haven't tried steeking yet, but I'm knitting the Venezia sweater from the Winter06 Interweave right now, so I'll get there.

4. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?
I do - it is under my e-mail address

5. What's your favorite scent?
I love anything citrus-y or floral. I don't like baking scents.

6. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy?

Do I ever. I can't even pick a favorite candy, I am so obsessed with candy. I like Kissables, and grapefruit-flavored candy, and Lindt truffles, and Milky Way, and those white chocolate Reese's peanut butter cups and the chocolate ones too - basically I just like candy. Dark chocolate is probably my least favorite, but I never met a candy I wouldn't eat.

7. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do? Do you spin?
I sew and do stained glass a little, but mostly I knit now. There's only so much time in the day after a full-time job... I haven't tried spinning yet, though I find it intriguing. I just recently made my first attempt at dyeing!

8. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)

Country, punk rock, and the genre of folk that I would put the Indigo Girls into. I mix it up a little outside of that, especially at work (I prefer things like Norah Jones and Postal Service for working music), but if you were going to classify it. My computer lays MP3s but my car doesn't anymore.

9. What's your favorite color(s)? Any colors you just can't stand?

I really love most colors, purple is probably my favorite. When it comes to yarn, I tend to stay away from wildly varied colorways (like hot pink and electric blue or a colorway with more than three colors in it - brown, white and pink is nice; brown, blue, white, pink, red, orange, and yellow is busy) but other than that I love them all.

10. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets?

I just got married last year; we live in our house that we own with a black lab and two cats.

11. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos?

Everything but ponchos. My dog wears ponchos, though. It's fantastic.

12. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit?

I seem to like sweaters best - it takes forever but it's something I will wear and love. I have gotten more into socks lately, but I have a real problem with second sock syndrome (and an even bigger problem with ladders when I try doing two at a time with Magic Loop).

13. What are you knitting right now?

The Venezia sweater from Interweave Knits Winter 06, a pair of Father & Son socks from Interweave Fall 06 for my husband, and I have an assortment of old UFOs I might go back to if I feel moved.

14. Do you like to receive handmade gifts?

Of course.

15. Do you prefer straight or circular needles? Bamboo, aluminum, plastic?

I like circulars for most projects because I knit so many sweaters. For small stuff, I LOVE short straights. I love bamboo needles, and aluminum for certain projects.

16. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift?

I do!

17. How old is your oldest UFO?

Uh ... nine months? It's a tank top I started last year with Elsbeth Lavold Hempathy. I ordered the yarn online, and it supposed is a worsted weight yarn so I ordered the amount I would need in a worsted weight yarn. I do not know what kind of crack they are smoking over there, but Hempathy is barely thicker than sock yarn, so I had to knit it double-stranded. And, shockingly, ran out of yarn halfway through. I haven't gotten around to buying more and with the dyelot situation I might never....

18. What is your favorite holiday?

Christmas, love love love Christmas.

19. Is there anything that you collect?

Anything with monkeys on it - my house is pretty monkey-tastic. I also collect a lot of Care Bears stuff. And books, and, you know, pets.

20. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on? What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have?

I subscribe to Vogue Knitting, Interweave Knits, and Vogue's Knit & Simple. As for dying to get my hands on, I never really know until I see stuff. There is a Blue Sky Alpacas pattern for a Cropped Cardigan that I have my eye on, and there are still a lot of yarns I haven't tried out there - I recently got my first skein of Mountain Colors Bearfoot in a swap and it's fabulous, and I've never tried Schaefer, or Claudia's Handpainted Yarns, or any of the Brown Sheep yarns, not Missions Falls or Cherry Tree Hill or Fiesta or a hundred more I'm sure. If it's soft and pretty, I'd love to try it!

21. Are there any new techniques you'd like to learn?

I have tried most if not all at this point, but if you think I'm missing out on one...

22. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements?

I am - I wear a size 8 1/2 shoe. I like fairly short socks though maybe two inches above my ankle, three at most, because my calves are gargantuan for some reason.

23. When is your birthday?

June 23rd

Posted by Erin at 07:21 AM | Permalink

It's true in my regular life so I don't know I would think it would be different for knitting - I'm a real hardcore mongamy kind of girl. I don't do casual well, I can't "cheat" on one project with another without having both suffer, and basically anytime I try to have more than one project going at a time, it is bad, bad news.

I'm slowly and steadily knitting along on Venezia, but I'm not even to the increases yet (almost). It's looking to me like it might be a little shorter than I'd like so I might even throw another few rounds in just for fun.

I finished knitting all of the pieces of Norberta, then spent a few hours last Saturday sewing up his parts and stuffing them. Now he is sitting in stuffed, seamed pieces, hoping I will one day decide to attach his legs to his body and make him some eyes.

I've been working on hats for Children's Hospital, too, and like with everything else, I knit up about half of one and get bored and go do something else and somehow it is taking for forever to knit a few small hats. Those will be the first priority for now, though - I'm thinking about trying to add some longer "hair" to one of the girlier ones, but I can't decide if I want to do it fringe-style or with i-cord or in narrow strips like Cleopatra-style.

So it's a lot of knitting projects but nothing to write home about. There was a small yarn binge this past week though, so maybe when that gets here there will be pictures.

Posted by Erin at 02:30 PM | Permalink

On Thursday, I decided to take a break from Venezia to start Knitty's Norberta. Shocking, I know. It was rewarding at first, but now it's half finished and reminding me of why I don't usually knit toys - they are always so cute, and they knit up so quickly, and then you are left with a dozen tiny pieces of knitting that you have to spend all day seaming together. My stuffing jobs are never right, and I have no idea how to attach limbs so they are truly secure. I'd rather knit my all-over Fair Isle sweater on tiny needles all day than deal with the frustration.

As of Wednesday evening, the sweater still looks like the swatch below, except in sweater size:

Posted by Erin at 06:02 PM | Permalink

I have not re-abandoned the knitting blog! But there's not really a lot of progress to show when you're busy at work and end up with only an hour a night to knit, and you're working on a ten (down to seven) color fair isle sweater on size 1 needles. What I have is lovely, but it's not much to look at yet. On the plus side, I haven't gotten bored or frustrated with it yet, which is also why there aren't any interim smaller projects to post about. And even if my camera batteries weren't depleted, so far I've knit one full repeat of the pattern, which means at this moment Venezia looks exactly like the swatch I posted below, except it's a big band instead of just a 72-stitch swatch.

My only quandary so far has been deciding whether or not to separate and rejoin the different colors between the rounds where they are needed. The finished product would be much neater if I did this, and if I run all seven colors up the side at all times, that adds a bit of odd bulk to that one area of the sweater. On the other hand, it's three or four extra strands (in almost all cases it would still make sense to be running one or two of them without snipping) of fingering weight yarn so the bulk is pretty negligible, it will make finishing a heck of a lot easier, and I am already pushing the limits of the yarn requirements (I ended up making one size larger than I planned, and I'm adding an extra 2.5" to the length of the body) so leaving them connected gives me the greatest chance of not having to order another ball of whatever color I am most likely to run out of.

Which means it is the least portable project ever, with its tangle of seven balls of yarn.

Posted by Erin at 08:18 AM | Permalink