I’ve been knitting, I’ll get photos up soon.

In the meantime, I’m casting on for the Knitting Olympics tonight! My project of choice will be flip-top mittens that are a modification from Knitty’s Cigar pattern. The mods were made by my sister the Pirate.

Otherwise, I’m working on Lighthouse Gansey socks using KnitPicks Stroll in pumpkin, as well as starting a scarf. I’ve also been knitting some more ferret sweaters for a special cause. I recently lost one of my little sweater models, Palom, to a severe blood infection, and I miss him terribly. In his honour, I’m knitting a bunch of ferret sweaters to be donated to the local ferret rescue for fundraising sales.

Here’s some pics of my boy in his favorite blue stripey sweater (Regia Canadian Color) before he got sick. RIP my little Palom.

And one with his sister Porom, who is all alone now. I’ll be adopting a friend or two for her from rescue.

Wish me luck in the coming weeks!

On that note, I am running a growing-in-popularity pet portait business, AlliePets. Got pets? Want a portrait of them? Check it out! I love to draw and I love pets, so combining the two is pretty much the most enjoyable business venture ever.

I’ve also become a Passion Parties consultant! It gets me out of the house, and I get to inform women on inspiring confidence in the bedroom and beyond; it’s empowering!

Remember that puppy? That is the partial reason I stopped blogging? He’s ten months old, a nutcase, and a herding prodigy:

Oh, but you come here for knitting. I have a pet blog already.

Rogue is progressing ever so slowly but steadily.

I’m enjoying it; when I stop enjoying it, I put it down for awhile. Works well!

Otherwise, I’ve been perfecting the ferret sweater (including hoodie and cabled editions), working on toe-up socks thathave barely made enough progress for photos yet, and am planning babystuff for a friend.

Hi, did you miss me?

I come bearing patterns. A pattern for a cute little ferret sweater. :D

Palom, my adorable, huge boy in the photos, was kind enough to model the sweater for me. In fact, he’s still wearing the Noro one. And napping. He loves his sweater.

I made two, a blue stripey one and one from leftover Noro sock. If you’ve got ferrets, it’s a great stash buster for leftover sock yarn!

Palom got a treat for being so photogenic, and to beg forgiveness for scruffing him for an underside shot in the second photo. Sorry, little man. Enjoy your peanut butter chew.

Pattern will be in my pattern list to the right momentarily! (Decided to do the post, first.)

With that last one being prominent, you’d think I have photos to show. Well… not yet.

With not much time to run errands, I’ve not been able to get camera batteries. On top of that, the weather here has been disgusting. Rain and clouds. Not photo weather at all. Today was actually sunny, but aformentioned battery problem kept me from photo-taking. I need one of those little portable light studios everyone makes for photographing their knitting.

My Rogue is progressing swimmingly. It’s such a delicious pattern. Well-written, and engaging. It keeps me interested and entertained. I stop every row to ogle the side panels. I’m currently on the cable midsection and I tried on the sweater thus far and it fits so great. Love.

I’m still working on my Lighthouse Gansey sock as a travelling project, although I haven’t gone out much lately with aforementioned work.  I’ve also, just tonight, cast on for another cabled newsboy cap, since I wore my last one right out (and it was made of ACRYLIC, jeezus!) and I have this lovely leftover dark grey/black Patons Classic Wool Merino. I love hats.

Photos will follow as soon as I remedy the above.

Happy spring, Happy April, and Happy Knitting. :)

Now I’m not recycling knitter, normally. In fact, this was the first time I’ve had the inkling to do so. But when I was browing the used items, I saw a good chunk of hand-knit sweaters. This one just… stuck out to me. It was so nice and clean, the wool hadn’t pilled at all, the colours looked so.. nice.

I couldn’t help but wonder if someone lovingly knit this for someone else, and that someone else wore it once, if at all. Regardless, what attracted me to it was the blue. It’s one of my favorite shades of blue, and the wool strands themselves are grey and blue, flecking together to make this realy nice slate colour. The red wasn’t too shabby, either, And there was plenty of it. I’m not one to wear ski sweaters…

So I began to frog it. Frogging Fair Isle requires a certain bit of Zen composure, but this person knew what they were doing and the weaving wasn’t too difficult to pull apart. I couldn’t help but feel a little bad as I was frogging, though.

I had pretty much convinced myself that this sweater was a by-product of the curse. That the curse had left this poor sweater to be picked up by someone who needed something warm and pretty to wear, and here I was with a full stash box, frogging it up to become a yet-to-be-completely-decided project.

But I kept going. The yarn was too nice.

Turns out I wound up with a lot more than I had bargained for, despite knowing the whole time that this was a big sack ski sweater. I wasn’t fond of the creamy white colour, so it was disposed of. The sleeves were also disposed of, and the remaining blue and red became 5 very crimped and kinked hanks.

This was very exciting, as it was the first time I’d ever done my own hanks (ghetto fabulous-like, using the back of a kitchen chair), and had to wash them. I quickly cleaned my kitchen sink to spotlessness and prepped my area for some very professional washing/drying.

Of course, living with two grown men gives little to be desired in terms if what one would call “professional” working space for their precious hobby. One does what she can.

The “wet” side. Freshly washed hank gets hung over the washing sink until it’s down to a slow drip. Then gets moved to the side with the dishcloth.

Dry-er hanks were migrated to the dishcloth on the stove. Given there were only five hanks, I may have overthought some of this process. It worked well, in that while they were getting a lot of the initial water out, a lot of the kinks had worked themselves out.

I wasn’t sure how well the washing would work out the kinks. It’s still a bit crimped, but much better. Though I greatly desire a camera that isn’t 2.0 megapixel -digital- zoom for reasons like these, you can sort of make out the blue and grey flecks in the wool, in some of these photos.

Once the hanks were all on a slow drip, I set up my even-more-professional hang-to-dry system in a nook of the closet in the spare room.

Four towels beneath them, and there they shall sit until tomorrow.

In the meantime, I’ve decided that I would like to use it to knit a vest. One of those nice vests with a cable or somesuch in it, to go underneath a plain blouse, of which I have several that would match this colour blue, lucky! Currently I’m in a debate between Alison Hansel’s Leftovers pattern (with a possibly-added argyle pattern or something otherwise professional and interesting using that deep red, which would look neat), and Amy King’s Boogie pattern (seeing as it has some lovely cables that I did say I wanted, and is knit on 6mm straights – less cost for needles than leftovers).

And yet I’m still having trouble focusing on babythings. I think first on the list will be a cute brown bunnyhat, using the SnB Nation pattern. I have a nice cotton/wool blend yarn that is a tan-brown colour, perfect for a little non-gender-specific bunny.

In fact, I might cast on for that tonight. All this yarn preparation has me itching to knit.