Guage (and other things)

Well, I actually kind of sort of maybe a little did a swatch-ish type thing before I started my pirates hat. I had the guage right on. And it STAYED right on, until I realized the problem was my circ's size (that sounds like a man's problem not a knitters, huh, but I digress...) and had to switch to a 16" instead of my 29". I thought is was going along well, and just seemed littler because it was next to that tiny size circ. Well, I may have been wrong.

Cathy noticed this last night at the knit-in and asked me about my guage. So I dragged out my handy dandy super duper guage-o-meter and lo and behold she was right. I had gone from 6st=1in to about 7.5st=1in. Now, someone else mentioned a good point, I'm nearing the top of the hat and it really shouldn't matter if its smaller because I will be decreasing soon anyway. Well, I hope they are right, because when I try to smash it onto my head on the needle, it seems very iffy that it will fit me. *cry*

Oh well - like I always say, my projects always have one monumental error - this time, as with others, its size...

I will put a pic up soon so you can see for yourself.

On to other news... I went to Mass Ave Knits again today to have my recycled yarned balled up. It was very exciting. I got two big balls out of it - I will post pics of that soon as well. (Charles still has my batteries in the X-Box controller... *grrr*)
I have another sweater almost picked apart, too. It was a striped sweater so that made things a little interesting lol. Oh, and I got two more skeins of Katia sock yarn on sale for $3/ea, and three patterns. One was FREE!!! Yup, a whole sock pattern book for free cuz it was really old and worn but idc about that lol. The other was a sock/mitten/hat set pattern and the last was a pattern book FULL of sweaters for kids. Did I mention that those two books were $1/ea????? :-) Happy Camper Am I. (And since I'm a picture junkie, I'll show it all to you soon.)

I feel like crap today, so I'm going to go try to finish my hat and watch tv.

Mass Ave Knits - I AM IN LOVE!!!

This place is so wonderful!!! It's HUGE and they have like 3,452 of everything (although they were out of the one thing I really wanted lol - wooden cable needles.) They have walls and walls and walls of yarn and huge work tables and little cubby holes to sit and knit and snacks and a SALE ROOM and and and and the list goes on and on! I will definitely go back!!

I bought a few goodies - some Katia yarn in a cute colorway of greens, yellows, and lavender - made me immediately think of "The Lime & Violet Knit Along!" which I might have to sign up for now. Since they didn't have the wooden cable needles I wanted in stock, I did find a variation that I haven't tried yet by Clover. And the pièce de résistance [duh duh duh] my very first birch dpns. I am uber-excited to try them out. I bought size 6 thinking it would be pretty multi-purpose.

Oh, and I've also included a few pics of some yarn I forgot to shoot that I bought the other day for some crocheted doilies that I might try to make one day and a little Barbie shirt that I made a while ago - which turned out to be a little crazy, but the kids didn't care.

DIY Charts and LYS

I have some graph paper (regular not knitting) and I'm really thinking about going and buying some colored pencils and making some charts of my own. I was thinking about some great designs trying to go to sleep last night. I'm not an artist in any way, but I used to mess around with drawing squares and colored designs alot in high school - I think that will come in handy, then again it could be a major flop... like when I thought I could design my next tattoo - lol don't ask... So maybe when Syd gets home from school we will go do that, we are going to a LYS we've never been to yet - Mass Ave. Knits.

Speaking of LYSs. Man, we went to one on Sunday, and well, I will never refer to it as a LYS again - it's a nasty, dirty, cluttered, yard sale in a building. I had called the owner about knitting supplies and she claimed she had what I was looking for (sock yarn, some dpn, etc.) but when we got there I almost fell over. There was so much dust on the merchandise I didn't want to touch anything for fear of a sneezing fit. And she didn't even HAVE any sock yarn. She did have some knitting needles, but they were just all thrown willy-nilly (yes, that's a word) in two areas on the wall with absolutely no rhyme or reason. So, the bottom line is - don't visit the Crafty Owl in Indianapolis.

We did visit Cottage Knits in Columbus a few weeks ago and everyone there was VERY nice. They had coloring books and toys for the kids and a quaint little knitting nook, where 4-5 ppl were knitting - all around my age or younger. The owner was super helpful, and they had a decent selection of yarn from what I could tell afterall it WAS my first LYS experience. :-)

Knitty Paws is also on our list of places to visit soon, I'll let you know how it turns out.