so bad, so good!

A few weeks ago, Angela and I took a trip to French Creek Fiber Arts in Avon. I've been there several times before, and I almost always buy yarn there because of their beautiful selection of sock yarn (lots of CTH!), laceweight, and books. This time, sort of on a whim, I bought this gorgeous Claudia Handpainted silk laceweight - all because I was looking at it wistfully, and the owner mentioned that there was a pattern for a silk shirt that only took 2 skeins. I ended up buying the green sock yarn, the pattern, a pair of size 1 Addis, and the yarn. I was a little dubious about laceweight on size 1s, and let it sit in the bag for about two weeks... and then, last Friday night, after doing the finishing on Siren and half-heartedly swatching for the shirt earlier in the day, I was sitting at the lab and suddenly decided to cast on.



This is what it looked like Friday night. Right now, this front piece is 11.5 inches long. In between reactions and making solution and moving the lab across an industrial building and up a flight of stairs, I have been madly knitting away. I haven't knit garments in so long, so this sudden influx of handmade blouses is going to be a treat in the fall.

Oh yeah, also: I'm no longer allergic to crochet. In fact, I bought a book on it and have nervously finished the armholes of Siren with single crochet. Take that, irrational fear of hooking! (Hahah.)

siren call

I've finally started the finishing on the Delphine top, which I'm calling Siren because, well, it's red and lacey and it seemed appropriate. I'm a little nervous to crochet around the edges because I can barely hold a crochet hook correctly, much less actually use it on a knitted item. It's funny that I love everything about knitting, especially learning new techniques to make pieces more polished, but I'm practically allergic to crochet. I do want to learn, but I think the experience of totally screwing up a granny square at age 10 when I could happily knit a garter stitch rectangle with few, if any mistakes, just kinda cemented my apprehension about my crochet skills.

Moving on. I am so happy with the yarn choice for this top. Hopefully I'll finish it soon, and can lend it to Smith's to use as a store sample. This yarn, Mirasol Nuna, hasn't been selling very well, which is a shame because it's so beautiful and quite lovely to work with.

In other news, I'm seriously considering buying a D-SLR. I've been experimenting with depth of field with my point-and-shoot, which is an amazing Canon Powershot D-700 that has served me well, despite its unfortunate run-in with a floor and the total loss of memory that happens every time the camera is turned off. It's a bummer that there's no timestamp on all of my pictures, but I've gotta say that it takes beautiful pictures for a point-and-shoot.

I leave you with detail shot:

view kirinlemon's Siren

copyright © kirinlemon

view kirinlemon's Siren

copyright © kirinlemon

socks on the porch and totally impatient

Nothing much new to say. I've been in a weird sort of in-between state the last month or so, just getting used to being out of school, just getting used to a new job. Still, though, with all this newness I can't help getting itchy feet - especially when I start thinking about the next year or so. Do I tough out a chemistry major and focus on Japanese? Do I try to go abroad my senior year and forget the chem altogether? I can't say that I'm ambitious, but there are so many things that I want to see and do... I just have to figure out how to make those things fit reality.

For now, though, I'll try to focus on the stuff I can control. Buying milk in glass bottles from the market. Going to work late at night (for some reason, listening to music and working at night both enhance my productivity and enjoyment... weird). Checking out books from the library. Playing with yarn (my favorite!).

I'm so impatient for answers. Maybe I'll go play with kittens before going back to the lab, 'cause they don't have to think about the future.

Summer at Last!

Long time, no see!

Since I last wrote, I have finished finals, celebrated the graduation of several good friends (including the lovely Bethany, who I am going to miss like crazypants), and started my summer internship at NTI, a benchtop nanotech development company.

Labcoat + goggles = skillz of a super hero! It's great to have something to do, even if a lot of it is prep work and cleaning up after reactions. Next week, as a short break from work, Ondrea, my friend Val and I are going to a Dave Matthews Band concert in Cincinnati... I am super excited!

Lately, I have been pretty obsessed with the color green. Last summer, I had a sudden and inexplicable hankering for bright green yarn. I've been trying to find it ever since, but have always come up empty - or, more often than not, with a green that's nice but not quite what I was looking for. Well... this last weekend, Angela and I went on a trip to Trader Joe's and French Creek Fiber Arts, where I found my green - twice!


In edamame, one of the most delicious beans on the planet, and....


....the most beautiful, electric, slightly variegated green yarn ever. Om frickin' nom.

I can't stop photographing this yarn... holy crap.





Geez, what an attention whore.

when things don't quite work out

I started these cabled gauntlets in January of 2008, in the midst of a Fair-Isle lull. I was watching six hours of Lost every day, and occasionally slipping downstairs to watch people swing dance in the basement of my dormitory. This was my portable project, the one with only one color and one pattern, for when I wanted to knit but didn't want to lug around my increasingly heavy bag filled with size 3 Addi circulars, 12 different colors of Shetland wool, and my battered copy of Knitting Classic Style. So cables would be comparatively easy, right?

But it became neglected as the months went on. I found mistakes, both in the pattern and in my own knitting. And, once I finished the first one, I realized that the pinky finger popped up unpleasantly. The gloves, in short, did not fit like a glove. And the long, gauntlet cuff? How, exactly, was I supposed to fit those under anything? Back into the UFO pile it went.

I finished the Fair Isle sweater in mid-July, and although I always meant to pick these back up and finish them, it just didn't happen. But today I pulled out my bag with the needles and stitch markers and mess of yarn, and I found a big glaring error in the middle of one of the hands, and decided, like hell I am going to fix these. Not during finals, and not ever.

So I cut off the fingers, and wound the yarn. Gulp.

So they - sorry, it, a big hank of purple spaghetti, is soaking now, and visions of a pink-and-purple striped v-neck are dancing in my head. (Plus, said v-neck uses some other dk-weight cashmerino I have left in my stash. Boo-yah.)

After almost four years of knitting, I find myself back where I started: one project on the needles; mind swirling with ideas of what's to come.

shades of pink

Oh, spring semester. At the beginning, everything is so promising, yet so cold: the landscape is covered in ice and snow, and the plows come out in pre-dawn to pour salt on the sidewalks. Classrooms are warm respite from the wind, and we sit, well-dressed and awake and ready for the challenges of the next 15 weeks.

And then spring comes, and the ground thaws and even when it rains the world turns to glowing shades of green against the bricks and sky. And we put on our flip-flops and pretend to study outside so that we can smell pollen and wet dirt and get our butts muddy in the grass because really, it's not warm enough to shed our coats.

The end of spring semester is the most frustrating, beautiful time - when all we can do is cram our heads with stuff that we'll forget in the first few weeks of summer, but all we want to do is sleep in the sun.

Lately I've only been working on Zetor (which I've taken to calling Zetorina, with an -ina as a special marker of its pink, frothy nature). It's this time of year that I remember why I love pink. The way it looks in lace, carefully curled up next to my chemistry textbook in my bag, or in sakura branches like fingers reaching up towards the sun. There are only two weeks of school left, and Zetorina is probably 4-5 repeats away from the edging and bind-off.

I'll be sad when it's finished.

What's working; what's not

I've been working like crazy. This last weekend, I spent between four and six hours a day studying; the last of my three exams is this afternoon. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the process just a little: packing up my books, hunkering down in the library with my computer (for knitblog breaks and problem-set answers) and a little square pillow stolen from the window-seats. There's something very zen about diving into a subject with nothing but a textbook, some good music, and pencils with erasers worn down to little nubs.

All that being said, I think that I've come to a conclusion in the last week or so:

while I love chemistry, I don't feel like majoring in it significantly advances my career goals or overall happiness. The fact that I am dreading almost every chemistry class and requirement (woooo physics) I have left leads me to believe that I should leave it at a minor, and pursue the subjects that make me happy - East Asian studies and the arts.

There. I said it. We'll see if I change my mind this time... but I have a feeling that I won't.

But oh, hey, right! Knitting! I've been doing that, too. I cast on for some Retro Ribs with some Shibui sock yarn, kindly picked up for me at Webs by my friend Ondrea. I'm not sure what the colorway is, but it's a really beautiful, rich green. I didn't like the striping at first, but it's definitely grown on me.

I keep on having this weird problem lately with my socks. The first sock is reasonably tightly-knit, probably because I don't know the pattern well enough yet. And the second sock... well, it's not quite a needle-size looser (and hence I can't fix it by going down a size) but there is a marked difference in the way it fits my foot. I think I just get comfortable with the pattern and start knitting looser. It's beginning to drive me crazy, as it has happened with 3 pairs of socks now, at least. It's not bad enough to rip, but it's bad enough to deeply offend my perfectionist sensibilities.

Oh yeah. You know when you get knitting lust, and you have to cast on for a particular thing right now or you're going to keel over into a sad, twitchy little puddle of goo?

Hello, Zetor Scarf!