Happy New Year!

Hello? Is anyone still out there?

Hi! I've missed you! I can't tell you how many times over the last 6 months I've thought with excitement: "Maybe I'll have time for a blog post!" Now's the time. Perfect timing, actually, because the knitting bug has really returned with a vengeance in the past few days.

I'll return with a bang: a finished project! A pair of socks, in fact. Now that I'm looking back, they seem to be just about exactly two years old! I started them on a plane ride home a couple years ago. Charted socks aren't exactly easy to carry around and work on, so they saw little knitting time, unfortunately, despite the stunning pattern and the amazing colorway. I'm wearing them right now (again). They are amazing! Forgive the futon shots (it's where I've been parked since the semester was over mid-December) and the Kylo Ren lounging pants. :)

If you are a Harry Potter fan and haven't snagged the Interweave Harry Potter Knits special issue, go get it! You can get it as a book now, too, if you aren't in the States and couldn't get it. It has been wiped of all HP-specific names and references, but I think most of the really good patterns made it. I can't wait to knit a few other patterns out of the magazine, but I have loads of other projects I need to finish or make first. :P

Here's the Raverly project page with all the details. Unfortunately, the Etsy shop where I got the yarn closed up. :(

It feels good to be back! I'll ease myself back into the blogging routine slowly and show you a couple of the things I've been working on next time. How have you been?! What are you working on in the new year?

Miniature Projects

For me, the hardest part about blogging lately has been photos. I either forget to take them, am too lazy to take them, take bad ones I don't really want to share, or can't remember to take them off the camera. I've been pretty busy this summer, but also pretty lazy. The knitting is picking back up after a few months of just not really wanting to. I'm also learning how to share knitting time with the other hobby I've picked up and not talked much about: my dolls.

At some point I told you there were more than the one. The first one is gone, living with my step-mom now as a special thanks for all of her work on our wedding. I have four total, two I often forget to count  because they are small and unfinished. I think the important ones are complete enough to share now, though.

Lenore arrived in December. I painted her face and gave her gorgeous eyes and full eyelashes this spring. I've acquired a few bits of clothing for her, but she's a really odd, not terribly popular shape, so I'm looking forward to sewing things for her.

Aileen came to me in February, I think. She was pre-owned, so she came painted. I might redo her face at some point, but it suits her for now. I've had her in a few different wigs (I made this one myself out of the suri alpaca from a previous post), but haven't quite found the right one yet. I'll make another one out of a really neat wool that I think will be just about perfect. These aren't the eyes she'll keep either. I have a couple pair on order and I hope one is just the right green.

I also knitted her a sweater last month. I'm really proud of it! It has pockets! I hope to make a me-sized one someday. Her wig here is my favorite yet, but I hope I can get just a little closer to what I want.

They have been a lot of fun. I have so many projects planned for them, but everything takes time and sometimes research. Some things, like the wig and Lenore's face, I was able to do in short spurts. I'm hoping small sewing projects will be a bit more gratifying and more instant than the weeks and months other projects have taken me. Knitting the sweater only took a couple days. I can handle that. :)

Friday, I'll share one of those photos of me that I don't like just so I can bring the blog back to life a bit. I just finished a gorgeous sweater that needs photos and I need to show you the sweater I'm working on now as well! I'll just schedule photo-day and take care of all my blog picture woes in one fell swoop.

How have you been?! How is summer treating you?

The Good Stuff

As you might have noticed Monday, I got post-writing happy last week and started scheduling posts, (but forgot to put pictures into Monday's...oops). Lack of blogging is largely due to wanting to talk about things in a certain order but not being the least bit ready to do it that way, so I'm tossing order out the window and going for topics I've got the photos for.

That said, here's what I'm sure you've been waiting for: the knitted wedding dress!

Complete with me-made crushed tulle underskirt and me-crafted ribbon belt. "Crafted" is maybe too strong a word for the belt. I literally pinned two flowers to a piece of ribbon. It looks gorgeous, though.

Yet, that is not the limit of my craftiness! Oh no! Naturally, we needed a personalized cake-topper. I whipped it up super quickly, super last-minute with the help of the clay stash of my friend Ali.

Aren't they the sweetest? We think so too. :)

And that is as far as I've delved into our wedding and honeymoon pictures. There are a lot of them. :P I can understand why photographers charge so much to take, evaluate, and edit photos. It's going to take us years at the rate we are going....

Coming soon: what I'm working on and a new FO!

Meet Steve

I'm happy to announce that we have welcomed a betta back into the Bunnies & Bettas household! His name is Steve. Or The Captain. Or Captain Steve.

I've missed the bettas more than John has and managed to talk him into* getting one on a short stop into Petco for some litter. I've really enjoyed watching him. He likes to hang out in a cave in his aquarium just like Ophelia does. I think they might be related. ;)

John has advanced from bettas to angelfish to discus. I keep asking him to write up some fish posts, but he is resistant. He's been busy working on a million other things, so I can't blame him. Discus are stunning and huge and colorful. I'll ask him for a discus post so you can see our new additions. (He has tentatively said yes, so get excited!)

*I picked one out and said we were going to buy him.

Ocean

My vision was to finish this top in Oregon and model it on the beach and make a video with those pictures set to the song I named it after. Alas...I stood at the sort of yucky, artificially blue pond near our house amidst the gnats and only got two decent photos. Just imagine how great the vision was as you read.

Ocean

Pattern: Hélène by Veronik Avery
Yarn: Knit Picks Lindy Chain in Sagebrush
Needles: US 4
Project Page

This is one of those rare instances where I am sort of glad patterns age in my queue much longer than I anticipate. This pattern was released in 2011, when there was one color of Quince & Co. Sparrow, which also happened to be one of the very few linen yarns on the market. Now, in 2015, I had the choice of many Sparrow colors and also this much cheaper, much more colorful, Lindy Chain, among other various linens and linen blends. Naturally, I had to go with a minty green. It's sort of been my jam since last fall, though I don't know if that's shown in my knitting or not....

The pattern is a piece of cake and (I know there are sleeves but) NO (knit separately, then attached) SLEEVES. No sleeves might by my jam for a while too, she said after already starting one or two sweaters sleeves first, ignoring the pile of sweaters without sleeves >.>. In fact, this pattern is so great that even after swatching and half-checking my gauge, I knit the whole thing at a gauge that was entirely too small (row-wise, the only gauge that matters and the only part of my gauge I didn't check) and it still fits me perfectly. Magic? I think so.

I really want to recommend the yarn to you. I do. I mean, I knit a top out of it and it's great. It hasn't fallen apart, didn't spontaneously combust, or anything. But, it's a chain construction and it snags sometimes, even with dull needles. The snags are pretty easy to fix with a bit of tugging, but it's obnoxious. It also didn't soften like I expected. I might toss it into the washing machine, but I don't expect that to help much. It's an alright yarn. Great for the price, really. I can't give it 5 stars, though.

Have you knit anything with linen? If so what? Which yarn(s) have you used that you would recommend? I'll probably give Sparrow a go. People talk highly of it. What do you think?

Ah! Almost forgot the music link. Named for one of my all-time favorite songs. It's by a country duo no one has ever heard of that I still think is absolutely genius. It's one of Spike's favorite songs too. :)

Portland

Well, I got an unexpected day off today, the house is clean, and I had to frog my knitting project to go down a needle size (*grumble grumble...swatching, I know...grumble grumble*), so let's write a blog post, eh?

We're married! Yay! It's honestly not that much different than it has been for the last 5 years. I'll get to the wedding in a future post (the dress, most importantly, I'm not the kind of girl to bombard everyone with wedding pictures, but I can't not share the knitted dress). Today, let's talk about what I brought home from our honeymoon trip:

Yarn, of course! Lots and lots of it, haha. We drove from my hometown in Idaho to the Oregon coast (another future blog post) and ended up in Portland, where I met some fantastic Ravelers who took me on a mini yarn-shop-hop. I left with all of this scrumptious wonderful stuff! At first I had planned to buy colors that would remind me of my trip. Then I decided local dyers would be a good choice. And then I went off the rails altogether.

We went to three yarn shops, all gorgeous and all brimming with the most amazing yarns. First stop was Twisted. I was going to be good and buy for my queue if I bought anything. The first thing I bought was this Hazel Knits Artisan Sock in Sagebrush. I've heard people talk about it, the color was gorgeous and reminded me of the ocean, it was soft, would work for a sock pattern I've been wanting to make. Done. I should have bought the amazing local stuff they had, but I couldn't match it to a pattern and I couldn't choose my favorite colorway. :P I'm going to have to order it, though, because now I feel I can't live without it, haha. I'm still very pleased with my regional buy, though.

Next, at Happy Knits, I scooped up some Black Trillium Fibres Merilon Sock in Hedwig because it was local, gorgeous, Harry Potter-related (I was with HPKCHCers), kinda reminded me of the Oregon fog and rocks I saw a lot of, and would make John some happy socks (to distract him from the other yarn I was buying).

Finally, we stopped at Yarntastic. There was a sale on my favorite yarns AND a locally-dyed yarn in a Harry Potter-related colorway dyed exclusively for this shop, so I did a bit of both: a sweater quantity of Rowan Felted Tweed for Stasis (I mean right?) and the Potions Master sock yarn from Nerd Girl. Yum!

Some of you will say I shopped with great restraint. Some of you will think I went a bit overboard. I'm at peace (though there was a moment trying to cram it all into the suitcase where I was not). Vacation yarn is a must, I think. And when I've got friends showing me the best of the best, well...who can say no?

I had a fantastic time meeting these ladies and hanging out with them for a day. I really loved Portland and would love to go back. I think there are about 30 more yarn shops I have to visit, so I just have to visit again. :)

It Ain't Easy Bein' Green

At long last, here's what I've been referring to as my Slytherin sweater (Caligula would have been Slytherin, for sure!):

A Viper for the Roman People

Pattern: Grace by Jane Richmond

Yarn: Countess Ablaze Viscount of Spark in "Caligula always found some cause for envy"

Needles: US 4

Project Page

I tried to be really smart with my yarn-buying last year because I'm trying to destash quite a bit. I've been largely successful, but I have to buy up yarn from time to time. Just have to. Last year, one of my favorite indie dyers, Countess Ablaze, was dying special monthly batches based on the 12 Caesars using quotes from Suetonius' biographies of the Caesars as inspiration. I'm a classicist, so I can't turn something like that down. I jumped at the chance to grab some Caligula-inspired yarn and matched it to Grace, which had been in my queue (and in a book on my coffee table) for a while.

At first, I was a little apprehensive about making myself a sparkly green sweater, but if one is going to have a Caligula sweater, one must absolutely go nuts and embrace the insanity! I'm glad I did! I'm also a Slytherin through and through, so green and silver is a necessary wardrobe staple, eh?

I will never wear this buttoned. The bands are too flimsy to sustain that kind of wear. If I ever change my mind (it is kind of cute), I'll have to sew some ribbon to the bands for stability. In all other ways, this is the perfect sweater! If you haven't made yourself a Grace cardigan yet, you need to! I'm going to wear this thing to death!

If you are interested, this year's journey with the Countess is through Homer's The Odyssey. The yarns have been really, really stunning. I haven't had the opportunity to get any, but I plan to. :)

I don't think I've mentioned, but I am getting married very, very soon! That's part of the reason for my blog flakiness this year. It'll be the reason I may go silent for the next month or so, too. I'll try not to! I have lots of freshly finished things to show you. :) If I can find the time in the next week, I'll get those lovelies scheduled. Then, when I come back, I'll be able to show you the wedding dress and lots of other cool things!