Thanksgiving, spinning and yes, even an FO…

…happened over this past long weekend.

Thanksgiving…happened. Everyone told me it was fine and I know I sound pretty annoying when I talk about it but I was beyond disappointed with my dry turkey and burned stuffing. I’ve been doing this for at least 12 years now, you’d think I’d have it down. I’m consoling myself with the knowledge that RR’s deep-fried turkey was moist and delicious so our guests were able to combine his with my bone-dry offering so it was hardly noticeable. What did I learn from this experience? I won’t be in such a hurry to put the thing in the oven next year and I’m done with 20+lb birds. Done.

On the plus side, it made great soup (I started with this recipe – and then messed with it):

Turkey Soup

In my defense, I was jarred out of a lovely dreamless sleep in the pre-dawn hours by the freaking fire pager. The dispatcher announced that there was a car accident and where – I put two and two together immediately, RR was a bit slower. Someone lost control of their car on the way to work at the end of our driveway:

Early Morning Fire Call

See the car 2nd from the right in the picture? That’s my Jeep. I told you RR was a bit slow in figuring out where the accident was. ;o) This lovely wake up call messed me up for the rest of the day – I was not prepared to be up at 6 (I didn’t go to sleep the night before until about 3ish).

Okay, whining is over.

Next, the spinning!

Remember this (on the left)?

Spinning !

After spinning all 8oz for (what felt like) 100 years, it became 750+ yards of Navajo plied fingering weight:

Amethyst

Two skeins since I couldn’t fit it all onto the Sonata plying head. One skein is 200+ and the other 550+ yards. Just as I was finishing up with the plying, Kelli aka Knitter Bunny brought these to my attention. She said they knit up quickly so I thought I’d give them a try – guess what, she’s right! Even with Thanksgiving, I finished these up in a couple of nights of knitting while watching TV:

Serpentine Mitts

Pattern: Serpentine Mitts by Miriam Felton (free pattern).

You can see my Ravelry project page here.

Yarn: My handspun – Crown Mountain Farms pencil roving in Amethyst spun to a 3-ply fingering weight. (I’m pretty sure I still have enough left for matching socks)

Needle: Knitpicks classic circular size 2.5mm

Thoughts: I like this pattern, it was fun and quick to knit. You think they’ll be too tight, but if you follow the directions and measure (and trust the designer) they fit like a glove. (no pun intended…) This was also my first thumb gusset – it was easy! Go knit a pair! ;o)

Sock Candy…

…or Eye Candy…whatever.

I finished three pairs of socks on Wednesday this week:

Jaywalkers on the side
Jaywalkers part...

Jaywalkers – done from the toe-up with a Turkish cast-on, a Sherman heel and a picot bind-off (which I hate with the fire of a thousand suns. It looks great and all but ohman was it a bitch to pull off) in ArtYarns Ultramerino4. This is like the eleventy-millionth pair of Jaywalkers that I have knit and there is only one thing different about this pair. They fit.

It’s a freaking. miracle.

ETA: The Jaywalkers were knit by hand – not on the CSM (I wish!) and they took me weeks to finish. These were my Lake George knitting. Sorry for any confusion…

CSM socks
CSM Socks

These are a lovely design that I threw together on the CSM when I decided that this Cherry Tree Hill in ‘Earth’ deserved better than just a plain old cranked sock. With a picot hem – much easier to do on the machine. Trust me on this.

Ribbed...YES RIBBED CSM Socks
CSM Socks

Last but definitely not least we have a pair of ribbed – YES I SAID RIBBED – socks from the CSM in the lovely ‘Thistle’ colorway from Blue Moon Fiber Arts.

I am so fricken happy that I managed to finally get the ribber to work on the CSM. The ‘mock’ rib just wasn’t doing it for me and damnit, I wanted ribbed socks!

So I decided that Wednesday was the day. I made that ribber my bitch. Heh. ;o)

No Monday Post…

…this week because I had to meet with clients in Queens yesterday – no there was no yarn shopping :o( I did get breakfast at the diner on the way and a good picture while heading out of the city, though:

The Chief Diner

NYC Sunset

Today’s post is late because I’ve been chasing around a ‘lost’ package that the sub UPS guy decided to just give to a random person yesterday and then note that it was delivered ‘cross street’. What. a. nightmare.

In other exciting news, last Monday during that refreshing cold snap we had in the Northeast I broke out the CSM to make some socks. The grand total made that day was….FOUR pairs (seriously, how cool is that?), two of which are for RR:

CSM Rainbow Socks for RR
CSM Blue/Green Socks for RR

CSM Sunset Socks
CSM Phoenix Fiberworks Socks

CSM Socks

The top two are for RR and are made out of Austermann Boot Stretch. The bottom two are for me, the Left one is Stretch, the Right one is Phoenix Fiberworks sock yarn (the one with silk…tag is long gone so I’m no help). Not bad for a days’ work, eh? ;o)

One more thing – Bloglines has their new beta version up for testing. Not sure how I feel about it yet but go check it out for yourself!