tap, tap... Is this thing on?

Well, I'll tell you why I'm posting again.

1. My love is away for almost two weeks. (crying, pulling hair out in clumps, shaking fist at the sky)

2. Besides eating extremely bad-for-me (but delicious) food, I've been knitting like a literal madwoman.

3. Election Day is in two days.

4. I just bought 3 balls of generic cashmere in a mulled wine kind of color on sale, and I'm surprisingly excited about the fingerless gloves I'm going to make with them. I mean. Really unreasonably effing excited. I-can-only-hope-I-feel-this-way-about-my-first-child excited.

My camera's battery is drained (and the spare is with my love, see #1 above), so this isn't a completely updated list, but here's some of what's been happening on the old knitting farm:

October's Bounty: Yadge Jumper & 2 of 5 Noro Kureyon Hats

As I'm sure I've mentioned earlier, the jumper is based on a pattern from knitpicks (and comes with matching dorky hat, which doubles handily as a swatch.) The hats are all in the same yarn and all based on a free pattern by Christy Snell. I'm working out how to line the hats so that they're less... itchy. The colors are much lovelier in real life. It's hard work figuring out which color should go to which loved one.

The Secret Message Inside the Jumper
(aka the only word Yadge had mastered
when I got to this point in the pattern.)

The Cuteness Revealed

To my genuine surprise, Y unwrapped the box and then threw this shit right over/onto her head, instead of making a face and setting my work ablaze with her laser eyes. I have seen her in it once since, though I have the unsettling feeling that her parents dress her up in 'my' clothes whenever we visit. Like I'm a crazy knitting aunt or something. (Me? Never!) Oh, well. I guess it's good to have a role in life.

Knucks!!

These are some kind of miracle. They represent my first attempt at knitting gloves. They represent my first unsolicited delivery of an assload of funky bluepurplegreygreen mohair yarn from a yard-sale-shopping-beloved-friend (which yarn was held together with a strand of black merino wool). They represent probably the coolest thing I've made so far, and also the realization that I am an eXTREME knitter, but not much of an embroiderer. From the knitty pattern by Pamela Grossman.

Finished but not photographed:

• One pair Baltic Booties, for a new cousin in the NC.
  
• One pair One-Hour Baby Booties. (That picture is from the first time I knit these. The new ones look exactly the same. Same buttons from same trip to the LYS, even.) The Baltic Booties are not only somewhat ugly (I could use a lesson in colors), but they're made of extremely scratchy wool. The one-hours (cooked up in a super-squishy acrylic) are going in the same package as the baltics as an apology/ compensation for scratchiness.
• I took apart the first Noro hat I made, because I wasn't really digging the two-strands-held-together effect. So now it's one soft and attractive hat (made from one strand) completed, and another one still on the needles.
• Not that even Future Me will care about this, but my first felted bowl was a bit too wobbly, so I knit a gold i-cord to tack to the bottom as a base.
• A shawlf of my own (in the same turquoise color as my grandmother's), with a wildly inappropriate lace pattern on one edge. It looks retarded, but it's warm and I love it.
  

On the needles:

• OMG MY FIRST REAL CARDIGAN!!! (From a book of 1001 sweater patterns passed down to me from my aunt. We may have different politics, but we're both knitters! Yay!) I frogged the original black cardigan. When I looked at it honestly, it was just too faggy, even for me. (When I was young, I learned that 'faggy' refered to the wearing of aquamarine sweatpants and/or cat sweatshirts, not men who love other men. I like my childhood definition better.) The new one was knit in a matter of weekends on my *new* Bond Ultimate Sweater Machine. (woo!) I was trying to finish it for my cousin's wedding at the end of October, but I ran out of yarn. Boo hiss. It's all seamed up -- now I just have to finish the collar, add button bands and a belt, and weave in the ends. It's looking pretty hot, but I could be disastrously wrong about that in the end.
• Sizzle. Too cold for eXtreme cleavage cotton. Need wool. Will finish next Spring.
• One last Noro hat, plus I really f*cked another one up, so I have to add a few inches to that one in my spare time.
• A pair of Manly Mitts for my man[ly] in black & grey. Because, in addition to being a Goth (not really), my man is also a Winter. Which means that blacks and greys don't make him look like an old sponge. (Yes, I mean the contraceptive kind.) I'm also trying to figure out a double-knit hat for him in the same colors, but I haven't started on that yet.
• As of tonight, a pair of modified 'Fetching' fingerless gloves. Modified to include a button closure at the cuff (a la this pattern), 'cause that's hot. Fingerless gloves are apparently also newsworthy, as I discovered upon googling the inspirational pattern I linked to just now. I was actually inspired by looking at Urban Outfitters' website. Say what you will about how ridiculously trendy and heinously overpriced they are, they've got better knitwear than most knitting magazines. This is also my first real attempt at cabling, and it's going well so far. I'm loving this merino/cashmere blend so hard, it even feels warm to me when I pick it up after many minutes.

In other news, the worms are multiplying. No videos, sorry. I'm working on getting them to migrate now to the next shelf in their condo.