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! 

Hello from Peru!

Hello from Peru! For the next few months, my boyfriend and I will be volunteering with an NGO up in the Andes that works with local weavers; I'll know more about what we're actually doing once arrive, but in general, details about our travels can be found over here, at my non-knitting centered blog, which has served to reassure my many non-knitting relatives that I've been keeping warm and eating properly for the last few years. 

We've only been here two days, but I'm really liking Peru so far, even if it it's freezing. We've already encountered a number of alpaca, real and otherwise:

... and also seen lots of women knitting things, including some truly awesome Batman finger puppets that I'll try to post photos of later. 

Though I'm not totally sure what the internet situation will be like once we reach our town, I have enough yarn in my suitcase to last me way more than the three months we'll be here, including a few skeins of Bay Area yarn to remind me of home; I started a Swallowtail shawl on the plane, using the Thornill Lace I bought at Piedmont Yarn and Apparel back in Oakland, and have not yet decided what to do with this crazy gorgeous yarn from Pigeonroof Studios: 

Hopefully something good! Anyway, hello from Peru, and talk to you soon from the Andes :) 

renegade craft fair

Another nice thing about being back in California was being able to go to San Francisco Renegade Craft Fair! I've wanted to go for years, but have never been able to go, so it was very exciting. Both my friend and I spent too much money, and wanted to spend more.

There wasn't a huge amount of yarn, but I picked up a gorgeous skein of this yellow-green yarn from the Spincycle Yarns booth. I still don't quite know what I want to do with it, but I love how pretty it is.

Other than Spincycle, there was also a basket of yarn at the awesomely named Rhinofluff booth: 

And there was a ton of other stuff that I just loved looking at ... (please excuse the moody cell phone pictures!) 

... like belt buckles ...

... three eyed stuffed animals ... 

... russian dolls ...

... and this bird. 

Yay, Renegade Craft Fair! I hope I can go again someday. 

ishbel in the sky

Before coming home to Oakland, Iain and I stopped for the weekend in London so I could fly out of Heathrow. Since Iain is staying in Scotland for the summer, I've been fairly bad about rationalizing all the yarn I've bought recently as a much needed distraction - I can't miss my boyfriend if I'm too busy knitting obsessively, right?

Anyway, while in London, we stopped at the gorgeous Loop yarn shop in Islington, where I picked up a skein of Juno Fiber Arts Alice Sock. All of the colorways were gorgeous, but I eventually settled on a ($32!) skein of canopy, a sort of bright robin's egg blue with a bit of green in it. I'd been planning to make a pair of socks, but once I got back to hotel and wound this into a ball, I decided it was far too beautiful to put on your feet. The only other pattern I had printed out was Ishbel (from the earlier, failed, and now frogged Ishbel that kept me company throughout Vietnam, India and Scotland), so I figured that was as good a use as any.

Fortunately, it turns out knitting on an airplane with no real distractions is an ideal lace-knitting environment. I blazed through the stockinette body, and then the entire A chart. I also figured out where I'd gone wrong in my first attempt: in trying to stay on top of the pattern, I'd put markers between each 8 stitches, not realizing that the borders eat into those stitches and that if you just trust the pattern as it's written without trying to overthink, you'll do fine  - at the time, I couldn't figure out why I kept coming up wrong on both ends of the row, and it was maddening. This time, I just read the pattern super carefully, paid close attention to where the S1, k2tog, PSSOs lined up, and though I'm sure there's still a bit of weirdness, it definitely looks much better this time around - I can't believe I was in such denial about my first attempt being totally hopeless. The slightly heavier cashmere sock yarn looks much nicer than the initial skein of madtosh praire, too - I am completely won over by this yarn and how soft it is.

So anyway, that was my goodbye to the UK - having Ishbel to focus on during the long flight back did keep me from getting too sad about having to say goodbye to Iain for the next two months. If you are ever in London, I do highly recommend Loop. I've been to a few yarn stores since heading back from Asia, and they have by far the biggest selection of yarn (and the widest color range) that I've seen so far. I love also that they have a nice selection of books from some of my favorite independent designers like Stephen West, Ysolda Teague and Gundrun Johnston; and also, a good range of luxury and more affordable yarns.   

Definitely recommended! 

etsy red wine yarn love

I know I can't *buy* any yarn till I use up the prodigious stash that has taken over our living room closet, but I still find myself window shopping, particularly on Etsy. Being on Etsy is dangerous to my resolve, though, because how gorgeous is this yarn?

oooh, sparkly

Despite living in the land of Habu and Noro, I hardly ever buy Japanese yarn - the shops near my apartment stock mainly overpriced, acrylic fare - but I thought these were too pretty: 

above: oooh.

Span Jewel (about ¥715 for a 68 meter ball) is a nylon, acrylic, wool and polyester blend, with sequins (sequins!) and a fuzzy halo around a metallic base.

I also picked up one ball of Bacara Pur Fine (a nylon mohair wool blend?) to match - I'm really not too sure what I'm going to make with them. Something awesome, hopefully, which probably means that I'll reject about a million ideas on the grounds of not being awesome enough, which is what always happens when a ball of awesome yarn finds its way into my hands...