Ehem. Now back to your regularly scheduled knitting content.

Sorry about that (both the long blog break and the excessive political wanking). I have been knitting, even if I haven't been posting about it at all.

I finally broke down and busted out the Noro sock yarn. Say what you will about the feel of it, the thick and thin nature, the VM, but the colors are absolutely To. Die. For.

I'm moving to a new office, which I was cleaning out today, so I took advantage of a window (!) to take some pictures

Pattern: Stripey Noro Socks, by yours truly (pattern now available for download here)
Yarn: Noro Kureyon sock yarn, colorway S40
Needles: Knitpicks Harmony dpns in US 1/2.25 mm
Start/finish: 10/3-10/17/08

While harsh in the skein, the yarn feels fine on my feet. I haven't tossed these babies in the dryer yet, but I've heard that makes a grand difference in the feel. I originally meant these for a Christmas present but they ended up being too big. If they do shrink or shift around in the dryer, I will gift them. Otherwise, I'm keeping these things for me me me.

I love the striping on the heel. I kept the heel flap in stockinette so it would work out, and I managed to get everything to line up just right. Hooray!

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I guess it's now November so it's time to take stock of October's accomplishments:

Knitting
Ummm...Noro socks. That's it.

Spinning:
Cotton Candy
Superwash merino, as yet unblogged because I need to unload a cubic buttload of pictures from our camera.

Other:
Halloween costumes! (see above disclaimer on superwash merino)

What was I doing last month?

Oh wow

I am sitting in a hotel room in College Station, watching CNN with tears running down my face. And all I can think of is a story I heard on NPR last week, in which they were interviewing voters in some of the swing states. And one man spoke about a text message he had received. It said

Rosa sat so Martin could walk.
Martin walked so Barack could run.
Barack runs so our children can fly.

African-American children, Latino-Americna children, Asian-American children, even my own hybrid Yankee-Texan children. All of them.

This is an amazing moment. Truly.

FO: Gathered Pullover

The nice thing about having a number of ongoing projects is that every so often, you get to indulge in a massive spurt of FO generation. Which means lots of fun, "look what I made!" posts on your blog, thereby boring the bejeezus out of your readers (all 6 of you!). But tough noogies my friends. Here's another one.

Pattern: Gathered Pullover, by Hana Jason, Interweave Knits Winter 2007 (Rav linky)
Yarn: recycled from a sweater I found at Goodwill. Some kind of multi-plied red wool, in copious quantities. Someday I will either purchase or borrow a McMorran yarn balance, and figure out exactly how much yarn this took.
Needles: US 7/4.5 mm
Start/finish: I made the 40.5 size, 6/12/08-9/24/08.
Comments: I read the thread about this sweater on Ravelry before I started, so I knew at the beginning I wanted to do a bunch of modifications. My gauge was slightly larger then called for (5 sts/7 rows per inch instead of 4.75 st/6 rows) and picked a slightly larger size to compensate. I added ~2 inches of waist shaping, and left out the increased/decreased stitches in the middle of the cable motif. I also knit a bit longer after finishing the motif before starting the neck.

I was a bit worried that it was going to end up too short, but blocking fixed the hem curl admirably.

For the neck, I knit it in the round with a centered double decrease (slip 2 tog as if to knit, knit 1, pass two slipped stitches over) in the middle of the V. Finally I bailed on knitting the sleeves on their own and messing about with setting in sleeve caps, and knit them from the top down as instructed in this genius tome.

The finished product is nice and light and flowy, thanks to the larger-then-recommended gauge, and fits perfectly (bad Photobooth picture not withstanding). And I will never fit another sleeve cap again in my entire life.

The End.

Please send Gillyweed, stat!

Yesterday I swam for a long time. A very long time. 112 laps worth of a long time.

Why did I do something so silly? Because I'm scheduled to complete* this event in less then two weeks time. And I needed to at least swim the distance once before hopping in to Lake Travis.

I can say only three things about the experience: 1) I hope I'm faster on race day, 2) damn, am I sore today and 3) doing 5600 yds in a 25 yd pool is damn boring.

*Note I did not say "race". Because I will be participating, not racing.

FO: Summertime tunic

OK, it's time to get some of these FOs blogged before the new year. First up is my modified version of the Summertime Tunic.

Hideous picture, but you get the idea

Pattern: Summertime tunic from Interweave Knits Summer 2007 (Rav link)
Yarn: Classic Elite Premiere, colorway 5295, 50/50 cotton/Tencel, 108 yds/50 gr, every single inch of 5 skeins were used (size 37.5 with modifications)
Needles: US 6/4.0 mm
Start/finish: 3/2/08-9/22/08 How embarrassing is that? 6+ months! Phbbbt.
Comments/modifications: The first thing to say is that I absolutely love this yarn. I don't usually really like knitting with cotton, but the 50% Tencel in there makes all the difference in the world. It knits up fluid and drapey, and in the wearing doesn't stretch out quite as quickly as 100% cotton would. Gorgeous stuff.

I did a few mods on this pattern. To wit: 1) I only had about 500 yds of the yarn, so I started at the top and knit down. Then 2) instead of doing the ribbing and continuing down past that as in the magazine photos, I pulled a lacey ribbing pattern out of BW Vol 2 and used that as edging.3) I bought some ribbon to use for the straps and then when I got to that point, couldn't find it, so I worked a 3 st I-cord with the last remaining scraps of yarn and used that instead. That's it. I lucked out on the fit, and after a couple of wearings, most of the stretching was width-wise not length-wise, so all's well.

Thankfully I finally got all the finishing done before "winter" arrived. I've worn this a couple of times and gotten compliments on it, which definitely qualifies as a success.