Girls just want to have fun!

I have been on a huge knitting/ finishing kick. I am so happy about this! I have had some of my FO's in the to be blocked/ wash pile for too long. I am designing, thinking about making shawl pins, and doing a bunch of random research. I also want to finish my level one TKA master's program. So lots of progress and new stuff to blog about. I also have a fun long rant about my hair. :D

Knitting On My Mind
I am kicking butt and taking names on Ruby. I have officially past the half way mark! If I keep this up I may actually finish this some time in March. That is only 3 months late.... I know it is worth it and my in-laws will love it!

I have been on a sock kick lately. After making a bunch of vanilla socks. I decided to try selecting a pattern stitch from Ann Budd's "Getting Started Knitting Socks" it is a 6 stitch repeat and I have done gauge swatches both in pattern and st st. It's so funny how important the gauge suddenly becomes when you are the one working from scratch. :P I had to wonder to myself does this count as designing my own sock? I am not sure.

What I do know is I did try to do some variations to make it more original for example...I wanted to do some different kind of cast on like the slip knot cast on designed by Jeny Staiman which was featured in knitty 2009. Here is a link to her blog entry and video for the cast on. http://curiousknitter.blogspot.com/2009/09/jeny-stretchy-slipknot-cast-on.html  

I fully intended to use this but I got impatient and decided that learning how to do lace socks with an unfamiliar pattern was enough new stuff to throw at myself without the added frustration of learning a new cast on. But I will keep it in mind for future use. 

Some other original/ different thoughts for my new sock are going to be to try a different heel than the slip stitch heel  maybe go with the partridge heel. I may or may not do a different toe...

Knit's on Parade

1. I finished the wool peddler's shawl from Folk Shawls. I did it in silky wool and it was amazing to work with and blocking was very easy. I cannot wait to wear this! MMMM warm.

2. I finally got pictures of my July Pi shawl from Elizabeth Zimmerman's knitters almanac knit in noro silk garden sock. Sorry for the blurry picture this was the best I could do by myself. It is not even close to the correct colors. You can see the neat back and the pretty ruffles. I want to make this again. It is definitely my go to shawl when I am cold in the house. The colors make me happy and it is warm without being overwhelming.

3. Behold a more accurate look at the front of my July Pi Shawl. My shawl pin is actually a bracelet from my 2nd birthday and a bobby pin that I straightened. I am impressed with my creativity/ thinking outside the box skills! The pin made me smile because the bracelet used to be so big on me it would fall off or slide all the way down to my elbow. Look at how small that is! It is one of the few things I have from when I was very young.

Curly Girl

People that know me are very familiar with the fact that I am pretty low fuss about my look. I am a t-shirt and jean, little to no make up kind of gal. More often then not I am wearing my hair in a ponytail.

My hair has been transformed by a new hair care method called curly girl. The funny thing is I found this method by accident. I was joining groups on ravelry and I found one for curly haired people called curly girl. I thought to my self... you have curly hair why not join? Little did I know this was an amazing method for treating your curls! Read all about it at this website http://dormroomcurly.blogspot.com/2008/12/style-definitions-table.html. I am sure I will be talking about this in the future.

Naturally when I found the curly girl method I was very hesitant. I didn't want to consider adding much more than shampoo and conditioner to my hair regiment. I was quickly swayed though by the before and after pictures from people on ravelry. Still I held out for another 5 months because I didn't want to invest in all new hair products. The total cost was about 9 dollar for all of it. The products were found at places like walgreens. I did not know it would be so inexpensive! I have to say the results are amazing. I went from wavy straight-ish hair to this.