it's june!

Oh my god, how is it June already? This year is flying by. The Ingenue sweater, not so much - I finished the body (finally!) and am making my way through the first sleeve now. In a perfect world I'd be knitting a lot faster, but, I work all the freakin' time and type like a maniac for most of it, which means I can't knit in the rare free time I do have, or my arms would actually fall off. 

Speaking of work, I went to NYC for one last work trip, where I ate cheese cake and was too busy to do much else:

mmm, cheesecake...

... and then came back to LA, where I had one glorious day off and ate this: 

... because I was feeling nostalgic for New York. Magnolia cupcakes in LA = proof that California really is the best state now. 

I also bought yarn for the first time in months! Having vowed to buy no new yarn at the start of this year, I figured six months was a respectable amount of time to wait before venturing into one of LA's many awesome yarn shops. They're not particularly summery colors and it's rapidly getting too hot to imagine being near wool, but, yay nonetheless! 

one skein & one month in...

One month and one skein in (and about 2 days off since my last post later), here is what my Ingenue sweater is looking like! Hooray for Sanguine Gryphon codex! And why yes, I am using safety pins as stitch markers because I can't find any of the gajillion stitch markers that I swear I do own, and which end up pretty much everywhere anywhere I live, except when I'm looking for them. Now that the dust is finally settling and I'm a little more used to life and work in Los Angeles, I am feeling much more inclined to knit now - I just don't have the time! Fortunately I have my first (and only, until we finish shooting) two day weekend in a few days, and I fully intend to spend as little of it as possible wearing shoes or doing respectable grown-up things like errands or laundry, and instead spending it knitting with an audio book on my couch. Best! Weekend! Ever!  

One of the reasons I'm getting virtually no free time is that I've had to go to New York for work a few times lately. I say "had to" but really it was so exciting that I didn't even mind the lack of sleep or free time. I hadn't been to New York since I moved away and started traveling four years ago, so being back - even for ten seconds, and spending virtually all of it working - was crazy exciting. 

So that's here! Busy but good and trying to knit more :) 

april snapshots

above: painting the backs of my ikea bookshelves

There hasn't been much knitting since I got back to LA. In the midst of starting a new job and moving into my new apartment and everything else, I hadn't really felt the urge to knit - which is immensely frustrating! But I've gotten a few bits and pieces in, and now that I'm sort of settling into a routine - albeit a routine where I work 12 hour days 6 days a week - I'm trying to pick up more projects..

... like this Ingenue sweater in Sanguine Gryphon codex that I started this weekend ...

... or this tea leaves cardigan for my BFF. It was *supposed* to be a 30th birthday present but she turned 30 in February. 

I also made this Crooked Paths hat, which I promptly gave away and never got the chance to properly photograph. It was massive on me.

But mostly I'm just settling into life back in California! Hopefully soon I'll be settled enough to find the cord that connects my real camera to the computer :) 

2012 knitting resolutions

As nerdy as it sounds, I love making New Year's Resolutions - I like having goals and things to aspire to, even if I can't manage everything in a single year, and one of the cool things about this blog is having someplace to actually keep a record of said goals. Last year, I resolved to: 

1. Finish the Vivian sweater that I started way back in December 2009. For real this time. Fail. This did not happen, not even a little. 
2. Finish the February lady sweater that's been sitting in a sad pile next to my bed for four weeks now. This sort of happened, in that I unraveled the sweater (it was doomed) and knit it into a Goodale Cardigan instead. 
3. Seven sweaters fit to be worn in public. This happened. You can read about it here. 
4. ... at least one of which that I've designed myself. Also happened! 
5. Finish the reading/viewing for the Design Your Own Shawl class, for which I have woefully fallen off the wagon during the craziness of the holidays. Fail. Never got back on that wagon.
6. ... and then actually design a shawl using the information from this class. Or that one.
7. No buying new yarn until I've used the yarn that's accumulated in our tiny apartment. I am very happy to say that this totally held for the first six months of the year. I went a little crazy buying yarn in preparation for returning to the States (had to get on those remaining five sweaters, after all), and gave up on the yarn diet while living in LA, which I'm okay with. The point was mostly to cut back on spending money on yarn for a bit and to work with what I had for the remainder of our time in Japan, so I think it worked out well. 

So, this year, I'm resolving to: 

1. Finally learn to knit Fair Isle (as you can see from the photo above, I've already started that one, but I swear I made the resolution before I started knitting!) 
1. ( Suck up all my knitting resolve and make the dream sweater I've been wanting to for years now - Ysolda Teague's Little Birds. Which means - terrifyingly - learning to steak as well. )
2. Finish (or accept the failure of, and rip accordingly) the UFOs that have been haunting me for anytime from weeks to years now: Swallowtail, Mr. Darcy, Vivian, plus all the half-knit design prototypes that may or may not be working out. 
3. Knit six sweaters (Going back from last year's seven; six seems like a good number). Ideally I want most of these to be more of the wardrobe-staple type: warm, long sleeved, neutral colors that go with everything. I never seem to have a sweater to wear, though I have a closet of brilliantly colorful bright sweaters with short sleeves. 
4. Knit less selfishly! 
1. (Specifically, make a sweater for my best friend's thirtieth birthday, and something special for my amazing godmother.)
5. Work hard at designing...
1. (... and design a sweater! This is the scariest one, but also the one I'm probably most excited about. I do have a sweater in my head, so it's mostly a question of getting it onto paper and into yarn.)
6. Be a better blog / ravelry / twitter commenter person. I know I'm really bad at commenting on other blogs and responding to comments, which I usually blame on my hobo lifestyle, but I'd like to reach out more. 
7. And finally, because it worked last year, focus on using the stash I have rather than buying more. I don't have a set amount of yarn to work through, but maybe once I've worked through about half the stash I've currently got? I think that seems fair. 

So that's it! How about you, what are your resolutions (knitting or otherwise) for 2012?