Assorted

So, I know I still don't have pictures up of my one sock, and Soctoberfest is 'officially' coming to an end (though over at Ravelry, it looks like a bunch of us are going to stay in the community) BUT I'm happy to say I finally made it to the heel flap of sock two. I'm also proud that I was able to figure out how to transfer my dpn pattern to two circs! I'd taken Cat Bordhi's book out of the library to figure out how the two circs thing works, but I had to return it yesterday. Luckily, I think I've conceptualized what the changes are, so I was able to figure this out relatively easily.

Let's see, what else is new....I'm participating in the Tea Swap over at the Cup 'a Tea group in Ravelry, and I'm getting excited about that. I haven't had a chance to go shopping yet - I need to wait until the next paycheck clears - but I've been planing what I'm going to get. I won't spoil it here in case somehow miraculously my giftee stumbles across my blog, but I really hope she'll like it.

I've been planning out what I want/need to get, knitting wise. My birthday's coming up and, while I know I won't get yarn from anyone, I'm hoping I'll get the means to *purchase* some yarn. Here's my purchasing plan:

1. Yarn for my swapee! No telling any more here...yet. =]
2. Two more skeins of Habu silk/stainless steel(R) in color 3 for mom's scarf - more on that.
3. Yarn for the stag bag(R)!
4. One Skein by Leigh Radford(R)
   
5. If I get a good birthday haul - a swift and a ball winder.

(The linked Rs are Ravlery links. Right now I think anyone reading this has ravelry, but if that becomes not true at some point, I recommend you get on the list. It's amazing. )

Why do I want all those? Well, the first one is obvious.
As for my mom's scarf - on my trip to Purl, as I said earlier, I picked up some lovely Habu yarn after having looked at the Kusha Kusha (R) scarf. I love the textural variety that the scarf achieved, but I didn't really like the way the yarns changed. It was too 'modern art' for me, and more importantly, not the kind of thing my mom would wear. Searching through Ravelry (do I sound like someone a broken record yet with all this ravelry talk?) I found this simpler scarf(R). As I was hoping, the steel qualities show well in this larger fabric, so I'm going to make a variation of this for my mom. This means, however, I have to get two more cones of yarn, since the silk/stainless has only 281 yards to the merino's 747.

The stag bag(R). Where do I start with this magnificent bag? Despite never having done any color knitting before, I saw this pattern and new I had to make it. It even inspired me to spend this past monday doing a stranded knitting swatch! (I'll post pictures of that once I find my camera cord...it's kind of funny looking.) My biggest problem now is deciding which colors to use. I do want to use the Ultra Alpaca Light, because the past two times I was at my LYS, it screamed out at me. I want to do a brown/blue colorway; ideally a dark brown light blue. I'm trying to figure out if the 'stonewashed' is a pure gray color, or if it's a grayish blue. If it's greyish blue, then I'm thinking stonewashed and woodland mix, but I need to check the colors in person.

As far as One Skein goes, there are just so many patterns I want to make! I love the cable footies(R) and both the cable hat(R) scarf(R). For me, the scarf kind of sells the book. I love cables but haven't yet made a cable scarf because I didn't know about reversible cables and I didn't have the time to knit a tubular scarf. I need this book! I'm just counting down until my birthday. =]

Allright, that's it for tonight I think. I know, still no pictures, I'm sorry, bad blogger, no cookie. I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween! I did nothing special, and got no tricker treaters - which was good, because we had no candy. Sometimes a quiet night at home is best.