A Visit To Twisted

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While in Portland my friends graciously offered to help me find a yarn store. And we wandered our way into Twisted and y’all….it was amazing.

They had a well curated shop of lots of amazing mainstream yarn lines and many indie dyers. And with no sales tax in Oregon….I fell down hard and basically handed them all my birthday money. The staff was knowledgeably and helpful but just let me shop and squish yarn in my preferred way. They had Quince & Co and Brooklyn Tweed, neither of which I had seen in person before. I think I lapped the store three times just taking it all in! My friends were so great and helped me shop. They asked some very thoughtful questions and really took an interest in how the whole knitting culture worked.

I came away with quite the haul. There were two skeins of fingering weight, five skeins of DK, five mini skeins and three enamel pins. And I did actually try to thoughtfully purchase so that I didn’t just buy pretty yarn to linger in my stash. I bought yarn in color combinations that went together and with projects in mind.

The tweedy yarn will be a two color shawl, the Hazel Knits in green hues will be some sort of a faded project, the Twine will be combined with existing stash for a shawl and the Knitted Wit will be happy socks for my feet.

I can hear Jellybean rustling in his bed so I need to get moving this morning. I’ll try to get up a separate post where I geek out a little harder over this yarn haul.

Happy knitting!!

A Well Traveled Hat

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My Four Seasons hat was very well traveled during my recent birthday trip to Portland.  This is where my hat started at 6 am at the Kansas City Airport. The terminal was shockingly busy for such an early Saturday morning. But based on overheard conversations, a TON of people were headed to Mexican resorts to escape the impending arctic blast.

I only knit on this hat while on modes of transportation during my trip. And by Monday morning when I boarded my flight it looked like this. (I also treated myself to a Mimosa to cap off a wonderful weekend. It wasn’t the greatest I’ve ever had but it felt decadent to do while traveling without the fam.)

And this last photo is brought to you by the KCI airport bathroom. I literally bound off the top of the hat while we were taxiing to our gate. The gentleman seated next to me complimented me on finishing so quickly. I think I earned some bonus points with him because I had asked him if my knitting would bother him  during the flight. He nicely told me it would not so he earned some good karma points in my book as well.

It’s a good thing this was done. It was 18 degrees with a feels like temperature of 9 degrees. I literally wore this out of the airport and all the way to my car….ends hanging out and all! It was perfection!

I’m going to drop this hat into a nice Eucalan bath and hope to have some non bathroom selfie FO pictures later this week. Happy knitting!!

P.S. My shirt says “I run on Caffiene, Wine and Bad Words”. I got a few chuckles from fellow passengers during my travels.

Filling My Bucket

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I turned 35 this past November and I decided to fill my bucket a little. I have a dear friend from college that lives in Portland Oregon whom I rarely get to see. On kind of a whim I snagged some flight deals from Southwest and set up a birthday trip. Just me…no kids, no husbands, no adulting. Just a weekend with old friends to recharge my batteries a bit.

First up….I spotted the famous PDX carpet that has been highlighted by the likes of the Yarn Harlot and has inspired many an indie dyed yarn colorway. Apparently its an institution and I in true tourist fashion snagged a photo.

Right from the airport we grabbed some Cuban food for brunch and did some shopping in the little neighborhood by her house. I snagged some books from Powels, christmas presents for my kiddos and soaked up all the weird that is the Pacific Northwest. That night my friend threw me a personal birthday party in her gorgeous house. We had homemade fish tacos, wine and chocolate peanut butter cake!

The next morning I was served homemade quiche after I slept for a magnificent 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Did I mention my friend’s husband is a classically trained chef? I was in heaven….

After breakfast we did some more shopping and I picked up a new winter coat for PB and I and then my friend took me to a YARN STORE. The store was awesome and it deserves it’s own special post.

On Sunday night before I had to fly out we went out for ramen and Korean BBQ. I had Bibimbap with pulled porkand it was GLORIOUS. Then we met up with a local friend and went to a stand up comedy event that supported LGTBQ charities. We had wine at the show and laughed so hard we cried.

The morning of my flight the grey Oregon skies parted and sent me off with this glorious sunrise. I’m told that this kind of sunrise is rare this time of year so I felt extra special.

And I flew home to my hubby and babies….and an arctic blast. I did get a lot of knitting done while I was on the airplanes and while lounging around the house chatting with my friend. But I think I’ll share all that on separate posts. I was exhausted from all the coming and going but it was worth it. I may or may not be plotting my next trip already….

Sock Surgery

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Happy Black Friday, I hope you are having fun in the chaos or avoiding it all together, whichever is your bag. I’m in the “avoid it” group so I’m sipping coffee and contemplating a turkey sandwich for breakfast.

But I digress, I need to do some sock surgery. My Accidental Travel Vanilla socks made their way on to my feet and into my boots this week. But I was annoyed all day long and constantly having to unzip my boots to pull up my socks.

After lunch I was beyond frustrated so I took my whole shoe off to diagnose the problem. And I found it….the heel is too small. I knit these pretty early in my afterthought heel career. And I knit it just like a standard wedge toe, knit one round and decrease the next round repeating those until done. Nowadays I knit my heels differently. I add extra knit rounds in between the decreases to add depth to the heel to fit my round heel.

I guess the blessing of this heel is that I can pick up the edge stitches and then rip back the heel to knit a better one. I’ve pulled these socks out of my sock drawer and put them in the mending basket for a rainy day when I need a quick project.

Happy Friday and Happy Knitting!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

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Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends. May your pants be stretchy, your wine glass full and your family be well behaved. I’m helping my dad cook this year while my mom chases the tiny humans. I feel like we both scored a win with this deal. No knitting content today as I’m off to start peeling potatoes and mixing up stuffing ingredients.

chicken close up dish food

Photo by Public Domain Pictures on Pexels.com

I’ll see you guys on the flip side tomorrow….probably with actual knitting content. I have some really cool stuff started!!

This Is Real Life

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You guys…I stepped into my kitchen at 8:20 last night after my kiddos were asleep and I was greeted with this sight…dishes (both clean and dirty), dinner leftovers, appliances that needed cleaned. And tomorrow is Thanksgiving…..

I rolled up my sleeves, poured a glass of wine and listened to a knitting podcast for the FORTY FIVE MINUTES that it took to get my kitchen some semblance of clean. This is real life….this is adulting. Shout out to all the moms and dads out there that are up to their armpits in laundry and dishes. It’s a hard job and just know that I appreciate all the unsung hard work!

P.S. The wine was a nice Pino Gris in case anyone was interested. It pairs nicely with dishes 🙂

Halfway Done Zen

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I feel like I need to do a little pat on my own back. I have powered through a whole metric ton of bulky weight knitting. I have reached the halfway point on my Zen Yarn Garden Chevron Baby Blanket.

I have used up just under half of the blue and grey yarn. And then I added in the middle color block of red. Instead of measuring these rows I simply knit until I ran out of red. This took just over 1.4 skeins of bulky red yarn out of my stash FOREVER….bwahahahaha.

I think the solid middle section in that pop kind of color really add to the color blocking of it all. And makes the blanket less sedate and more fun. It kind of blows out on camera but I adore it in real life.

And smart Rachelle decided to start weaving in my ends. I plugged on some episodes of The Good Place and went to town with my darning needle. I got all the loose ends woven but I’ll wait to trim them until after its washed and blocked. I only have four stripe sections left and this blanket will be done!

Happy Knitting!!

Knitting The Card Game

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Ya’ll….I may have lost my mind when I opened this box. Earlier this summer I back the kickstarter for Knitting the Card game and it FINALLY came!! I’ve been seeing this pop up all over my social media feeds and I’m beyond excited to have my own copy.

I immediately ignored my cluttered office and messy kitchen and started the game. I roped my dad into playing with me. He’s a great sport!

Turns out he is also a sharp tactician. He read the full rules and promptly whipped my butt. He knew all the rules and I was too busy fan girling to bother with rules. I was cruising along and I got 100 first but I didn’t know about the pattern deduct. So lesson learned….read all the words next time! We played a second time and this time I won that round. The game was super easy to pick up and I can’t wait to convince more people to play with me!!

American Thanksgiving is this week…..I will have more family around to rope in…..

FO Friday: Dark Side Vanilla Socks

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I have a FO and they are just about the wackiest pair of socks I have every knit. My Dark Side Vanilla Socks are done and ready for their recipient!

Pattern: 72 stitch vanilla sock made from a sock snake/tube

Needles: US 0s

Yarn: Knit Picks Felici in Dark Side and Cascade Heritage Sock in Grey

These socks are one full 50 gram skein of the Felici  split between two socks and then roughly 25 grams of the Cascade sock. I definitely didn’t split these evenly and one leg ended up longer than the other. You can see that one set of cuff ribbing is about double the other one. So the socks are now equal in total length but not in ribbing. I’m rolling with it.

And as pointed out so very eloquently in the comments of a previous post. The stripes are reversed because I knit toes from both ends of the sock snake so when I split in the middle they became opposites. And you can totally see that because the red and purple stripes are exactly opposite one another in each sock.

These delicious socks are bound for Portland Oregon as a gift for a dear friend whom I plan to visit this fall. I have a quick weekend trip up my sleeve to celebrate my recently acquired status as 35 years old. She is a dear friend and VERY knit worthly. Not to mention she is letting me crash for free in her house, so it’s only fair!

And I still have the other 50 gram sock snake in this color to deal with. I need to decide if they will be socks for me or another quick gift pair for Christmas….decisions decisions…..

Crazy Orange

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Jellybean needed to blow off some steam the other day so I took him for a post school trip to Skyzone. He got 60 minutes of literally bouncing off the walls and I got to sit and knit where my project matched the landscape, lol.

I had one other mom ask me what I was knitting. I gladly obliged and told her about my project. I even told her she got bonus points for knowing it was knitting! I’m still plugging away at the brim of my Four Seasons Hat. I am not aiming for any particular length or measurement. Just knitting until it looks good and then I’ll start the main body. Nothing super scientific as this is just my purse/zen project.

See you guys tomorrow with something extra cool!