This is “Zombie BBQ”, what a great name! You got the red color for blood, the purple for bruising, and the green for guts which = absolute gorgeous! I fell in love with this when it came into the yarn shop, and just had to get me some. I have my eyes on using it for small cardi, this is the worsted weight.

The other day I purchased some Zombie BBQ in DK and used it to make my own little Zombie, but with a Vampy twist.

I made this over the last weekend, and I’m in love with my little Zombie-Vamp Kitty. Do you see the fangs I gave it? It soothes my love for Zombies and my absolute love for Vampires.

Pattern:Grisig the cat
Yarn:Lorna’s Laces “Zombie BBQ” DK weight
Gauge: No specific gauge, only that the fabric knits tight
Needles: US 2 Addi Lace, Magic Loop
Start:7/9/10
End:7/12/10

See you Friday!

Pattern: Monkeys by Cookie A.
Source: Knitty
Yarn: Socks that Rock in Muddy Autumn Rainbow
Blend: 100% Superwash Merino
Needles: US 2
Started: 09/25/2009
Finished: 10/01/2009

And another “M” project with Cash Vero, 55% Merino Extra Fine Wool, 33% Microfiber Acrylic, 12% Cashmere

Here’s “Mystere” from Twist Collective’s Winter 2009 issue

I started it last Monday, 11/30 and am already done with the back. I’m so excited with this project, I can’t wait to show it off!

“M’s” are very nice!

Since a good amount of time has passed since my last post, I do have so much to share, but will do so in different posts so as not to have one UBER long post.

First, look at this yummy yarn

This is Mirasol Nuna yarn, that I picked up for a special project at my LYS, Green Planet Yarn. This yarn is so soft and scrumptous, I just love it!

It’s 40% Merino Wool, 40% Silk, and 20% Bamboo, want to know what this lovely yarn grew up to be???

This is the Reykjavik hat from Through The Loops designer Kirsten Kapur, she is one of my fave designers in the Knitty world and I absolutely love this pattern. It’s quick to knit and will definitely get you into the mood for this season!

Pattern: Reykjavik Hat by Kirsten Kapur
Source: Through the Loops
Yarn: Mirasol Nuna
Blend: 40% Merino Wool, 40% Silk, 20% Bamboo
Needles: US 5
Started: 11/22/2009
Finished: 11/25/2009
Measurements:18’ at the brim, and from edge of hat to tip of hat it’s about 22’. With the Pom-Pom it’s almost 23’ long.
Mods:None
Notes: This is unblocked, I might block lightly to loosen it a bit, but otherwise unblocked it fits snug.
Raverly Project Link

Before I leave you, here’s a sneak peak at what’s to come in future posts:
Status on Bulky Shrug, My Monkey’s, Socktoberfest Mystery KAL 2009, Fall Vest 2009, http://www.ravelry.com/projects/RockyMoreno/karma-tank, Elm Row, Stop Drop & Weave Scarf, New Moon Knitted Bracelet and new projects like Mystere, Alice Mittens, Kirigami, and more…. ooh, and stash enhancements!

First, I’ll start with a project I started Saturday (yesterday), it is the “Bulky Shrug” from Knitting Pure and Simple. I’ve had this pattern for awhile, I was just waiting for the right “super bulky” yarn to come along. Working at my LYS, I ran into just the perfect yarn, “Spud and Chloe“. I never knew of this yarn until I was arranging the yarn on the shelves and realized how lovely it was. I love the easy labeling Spud & Chloe has, they clearly label their yarns “super bulky” with “outer” and “sweater”, easy peasy! I picked up 4 skeins in Gray enough for my Bulky Shrug. Look at this sqooshy-lovely yarn:

It’s “Outer” Super Bulky, Superwash 65% wool, 35% Organic Cotton, did I mention my LYS is “Green Planet Yarn”? The owner is truly great, and the store is stocked with great organic yarns.

For the few hours I spent working this new Bulky Shrug, this is what I ended up with, it’s turning out great!

I’ll be sporting this baby at work next weekend!

Onto my other endeavors, spoilee endeavors, I purchased 2 skeins of Canopy yarn (sorry no pics), in Acai colorway, a lush red made of 50% baby alpaca, 30% merino, 20% bamboo. I choose to make the “Bella’s Fingerless Gloves” pattern for my spoilee, Svendel, to wear when she goes to see New Moon later this month! I love this, easy knit and fast too!

Another item I made, which is a new love of mine’s, is knitting jewelry. In my 1st Love Bites swap at the beginning of this year, I was given a beautiful knitted bracelet and I fell in love with it. I scoured ravelry for a pattern but nothing. So I improvised my own pattern and voila!

I love these bracelet’s, I have so many ideas for other designs, but this one was easy and fast. Inexpensive and versatile to make, the choices are limitless. This is the bracelet I sent to my spoilee but I have another I made, however I felt that the beads were too large, so I made this one, and I was very happy with the turn out. I’ll post a list of supplies needed to make these as well as the pattern to make later this week.

For now that’s all I’m parting with, there is more but that will come in more posts to come. It’s November, and yes, gift knitting shall start, as well as all other holiday fun! Happy Sunday!

So here we go!

First off, is “My Tux” from Custom Knits, knit using Sundara Sock Yarn, Spiced. I love this color, it is so beautiful!

Here it is, almost done, needs finishing…

But wait, I have a big boo-boo I made, when I prepping for the pattern, knitting my swatch, and also measuring what size, I must of been tired cause I had cast on for a size too small 8( So, it fits, but doesn’t go around my boobies. My boobies have always been an issue for clothes, everything else is small, but the boobs aren’t. A good thing on one hand, but an annoyance when shopping for clothes or in this case knitting clothes. So I’m at a dilemma, do I frog? Seriously?!? I’m pratically done! I don’t know, I think I might take the frog plunge, but I’m hesitant. Will see, I wish I could wear it now 8( But it is lovely!

Ok onto my 2nd, this is my Elm Row knit with Scout’s Peach Pit, I love this color! I just fell in love with it at last year’s Scout’s Dye class.

I’ll take a photo shoot this weekend to honor it properly! I also have some new changes coming to my blog, I’m going to revamp the site soon, so stay tuned, and I have some new patterns I’ve written that I’d love to share!

Catch you all on hump day

~Rocky

1st, what’s wrong with this picture?

I had finished the Swallowtail months ago, but had yet to block it, but thanks to Cheryl, I now was able to block it. Being that it had been a long time, I forgot how my Swallowtail was supposed to look, and blocked the right/left edges wrong. But I referred to the pattern and voila!

I’ll start with the Bad so you can leave the post with the Good

I’ve been offline for awhile because my first issue was that my camera stopped working. I kept messing with it trying to bring it back to life, but no luck. I still have some kind of hope that it will start working *fingers crossed*. I delayed posting because it’s sad to post a crappy picture when you put your heart into your knitting.

My second issue, which actually turned out to be a bigger issue than my camera ,my damn wireless router died on me. It is over 4 years old, about the lifespan of your average router. I had to order a new one, and I had requested overnight shipping over the phone about 6 p.m. about a week ago. I opted to pay the extra fee for shipping. Well, Friday came along and guess what, no router still. I contacted the company and come to find that because I ordered after 6 p.m., overnight shipping isn’t allowed and I get the standard shipping. I didn’t get charged the extra fee, but it meant I would be without internet that much longer.

After I realized I would be without internet longer that I anticipated, I actually tried to use the backup dialup # I have! UGH! So I get the backup dial up phone numbers and connect my modem and setup my connection, I had the nostalgic sense of my early years in IT *sigh*. I was prompted for my username and password, and I input my info, and BAM! Rejected!.. Seems I forgot my passsword for my main account, so no luck. After messing around with different passwords, I just called it quits, and figured I’d have to stick it out. Today I finally received my router, YAY!, and now I’m back, online and happy to be posting.

Onto my 3rd bad issue, so yesterday my husband and I got up early and went to get some coffee, and them came back to make breakfast. I made my usual, over easy eggs for my hubby, scrambled eggs for me and the kids, turkey bacon, and homemade potatoes with fresh tortillas and juice. We about ready to go eat breakfast when I went to check on something in my bedroom, I walked by my bathroom, and glanced at the floor, to my horror, there was water and cruddy overflow of gunk everywhere! It was coming out of the shower drain, and the toilet was empty! I went to the 2 other bathrooms, and sure enough the same damn thing. Well, after the initial shock, we called an emergency plumber who gave us a 45 minute window to be on-site, so we ate breakfast and waited.

Plumber got here and he asked us where’s our main line, and we looked everywhere, nothing. We got the landlord on the line, he doesn’t know, so he calls the former tenant, who coincidentally lives down the street. She was kind enough to walk over and show us where the main line was. I can’t thank her enough, because we would’ve never found it. It was literally hidden by overgrown grass on the front lawn, smack in the middle! The Plumber was like “That really should be in plain view, if we didn’t find it, the work would be way more complicated”. Phew! About 30 minutes later, everything was fixed. We finally got to use the bathroom! I had to run to Safeway to use the bathroom during all this, which was a pain. My work wasn’t over though, I had to sterilize and clean all 3 bathrooms now. I spent the next 2 hours with bleach, comet, scrubbers, and plastic gloves cleaning the showers and toilets, mopping, you name it. So that’s my 3rd!

Enough bad, now onto the good…

I have been getting some knitting done, and I’ve got these 3 wonderful FO’s here:

From left to right, clockwise

1) Swallowtail Shawl in Madeline Tosh Merino “Arabian Nights”

2) Elm Row Scarf in Scout’s Swag “Peach Pit”

3) Karma Tank in Sundara Yarn ” Brown Sugar Over Buttermilk”

All three are complete, and need blocking, but a blocking kit is one highly needed tool this knitter doesn’t have 8-( I’ll be investing on one in the next few weeks, until then, these 3 precious garments bring me happy FO eye candy and I can’t wait to show off the how they’ll transform. I’ve already tried on the Karma tank so many times, and it fits perfect. I can’t wait!

For the pictures I’m using my backup video camera, which doesn’t take the best picture but will just have to do until I can get a new camera.

Even though I have these 3 FO’s waiting in the wings, I went and started a new project, with more Sundara Yarn. I’m happy to be back online and hope I’m past the “3’s”, at least the bad ones!

Happy August everyone!

I made this as an emergency knit for my family friend’s daughter’s 1 yr. bday. Size I knitted was the 18month, and the body of the dress was knit with Sundara Aran Silky in Cotton Candy. This yarn is totally luscious to knit with, literally. The darker, contrasting yarn is from a Woolgirl Seven Deadly Sins kit I received for “Lux yarn” colors 3 & 4. The Lux yarn is fingering, so I double stranded the yarn to match the gauge of the Aran Silky. Worked out perfectly. I have a good amount of notes from the pattern, which is in “Easy Baby Knits” book. The pattern is done in 2 pieces, front and back. It is a simple pattern, a wee bit worded funky but after a few re-reads, I got the jist. I have one big pickle with the pattern, both pieces start off with “x” number of stitches, and slowly decrease up the dress body. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, right? All decreases are done at the end of the row, last 2 stitches, what happens is when seaming, it’s very difficult to neatly seam up straight when you have one side that is straight, no decreases, seaming with a side that isn’t straight and has decreases. The seaming was the most frustrating part for me. One side is perfectly seamed, literally invisible, the other side isn’t so invisible. I seamed, unseamed, and seamed, and unseamed count it 3x! After the 3rd, I finally said last try, the stress was starting to wear on the material, luckily the last try came out the best. I actually had to sacrifice some of the edge of the body because I decided to seam the straight (non-decrease side) with a column about 2 columns in from the edgy of the uneven side.

After working on this, I think the pattern would’ve been better in the round, as one piece. The pattern is so simple, knitting in the round would fix the issues with the decreases. Oh well, in the end it turned out fine.

Oooh, and I need to share my Karma tank!!! But that definitely has to wait until the camera ordeal is figured out…..

Happy Tuesday Everyone!
~Rocky

The first thing I didn’t like when I initially started working the design was the yarn choice. It was originally Black Malabrigo, worsted weight, while I love Malabrigo, it just didn’t have the feel I was going for or the texture I wanted to really capture the pattern. Here’s the first one, the pattern was in the beginning stages, nothing original, nothing fancy, but it just didn’t work.

I frogged it and the project hibernated, until about a week ago. My husband had been asking me when I was going to knit his beanie, and I finally got back in the groove with the design. I was a bit discouraged from the first go around, but enough time had past that I could really get into it. I had this vision of cables, but cables that had a look like columns. Columns like that of Greek architecture:

The original pattern was just straight cables, your basic knits & purls. I switched up the stitch count and then let my husband pick a yarn from a few skeins I decided would be good for the pattern. He choose the Cascade Yarns Venezia Worsted yarn in Gray, which is Merino Silk, a blend of 70% Merino Wool and 30% Silk. It is very soft and warm, yet airy at the same time.

Here’s the final piece completed; I’ll be putting together the pattern and publishing it for free on Ravelry if anyone is interested in it. There are so many beanies out there that have cables, but this is a pattern I felt gave me the exact look I was going for.

I went for a “rope” looking brim, and it came out pretty neat. It’s one of the details I was quite happy with as the beanie took shape.

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, and I’m going to knit another one, this time for my son, who fell in love with it, but prefers black.

I’ll post probably Tuesday with the new pattern and have another new project on the needles that I’m loving!

It’s the “Karma” tank from the Custom Knits book (fabolous book!)….

Oooh, and one last awesome tidbit, Twilight swept the MTV Awards! And the New Moon trailer is great, and a huge tease! I’ve added the trailer to my site, in the “Interesting” section!

For my HSK7 Swap, the last of my active swaps, we had to knit a bag for our spoilee. To be more specific, we would knit what the spoilee picked on their questionnaire when we joined the swap, my spoilee choose a bag.

The original bag I started to knit didn’t turn out at all, I was actually quite annoyed. I decided, after much procrastinating to frog it and start over, but with a new pattern. I went with Drops 109-13 Pleated bag. This was a quick knit, and very easy. I was surprised at how easy, for some reason Drops designs can seem so enigmatic to me?

What did I knit it with? Again, I went with Blue Sky Alpaca 100% Organic Cotton yarn in color 621, which is a rich chocolate brown. Did I mention my spoilee has the same taste in colors as me? I love this color, so I know she’ll love it too. In fact all the yarn I bought her I longed for myself!

Without further ado, here’s the photoshoot!

See the pleats? This was the first time I knitted a pattern with pleats, and it’s nothing difficult, basically cables, but not repetitive. What don’t I like about the pleats??? The holes! Because your twisting a large amount of stitches, you get a nice hole left, no matter how much you try and close it up. I didn’t like it, so I mattress stitched close the holes.

Some more angles:

I was so happy that I was able to finish this in time to send my package. I wrapped it and sent it on it’s way. I can only hope it will be accepted and liked!

It’s amazing how fast things come to an end, my HSK7 swap is all done now, kinda sad, it is, at least for now, the last swap I’ll be in for awhile. I’ve intentionally slowed down my participation in alot of things to make room for my “unknown” project.

On the horizon now, I have my project to focus and research on, and some real true luxury knitting. YES, the BEST kind of knitting there is! I have to see what to make me, I have alot in mind, but I really want to make me some garments to start wearing.

Let’s see what I cast on in the next few days