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20080827

Books, Yarn, and Podcasts

As an advance warning, this post is going to be all over the place.

Let's start with the recent purchases. As some of you might be aware, I'm desperate to make Helen a pair of knee high socks, and I now have the yarn, the pattern, and the needles. I was pretty thrilled when the Interweave Summer 2007 issue got to me, but I can only see about four patterns in it that I'd ever really make. The issue is worth is since I really want to make those patterns and I am terribly grateful for the toe-up sock instruction.

Lorna's Laces Yarn


I did start the socks tonight, but for the first time out of all the socks, mittens, scarves, and hats I've made, I twisted my work when I joined it. I was horribly disappointed and I set the yarn and needles aside to work on my other simple anklets. My anklets are a simple stockinette sock with a short row heel. This is my preferred sock for myself. It normally requires less than 200 yards for me as I have relatively small feet. The Koigu I'm using for my anklets is nice, but I'm tired of blue. How is it that I fall in love with yarns when in skein form, but then hate them when they get knit up?

Koigu KPPPM


I also bought Custom Knits recently. I follow Knit and Tonic pretty faithfully simply because I love Wendy's patterns, so I knew the book was coming out. Wendy's patterns are often classically beautiful or truly fashionable. They are the type of sweaters that I'd buy if I were to go to a nice store at the mall. Now, I love to knit, but I'm not one to just knit a sweater to knit a sweater. I need to know that I'm going to at least think I might like the ending result of my knitting prior to starting to knit. (This is why I knit so many damn scarves and socks and hats and mittens. No matter what, I know I'll wear these things. It's also why I knit for other people who are less picky than me such as my mom.) This is why Wendy's patterns are perfect for me. I know that I want to knit them because they look cute or pretty or classic. I've already decided to knit Pink, the Karma Tank, and Tang from the book (eventually). I just need to buy some yarn for this first and then finish all the other projects I have queued up already. I hate to have yarn for more than five or six projects around the house.

I know, I only like to knit on one thing at a time normally, and I hate to stash. I'm an abnormal knitter in the internet blogging world, aren't I?

Let's get to the Podcast Reviews. I'm still working through old Podcasts, but I can tell you that I've decided I kind of like Knitting at Night. Even though I have a hard time identifying with the podcaster, Casey, I find her voice nice and the balance she has between personal stories and knitting information to be quite good. I'm glad that I gave her a try after her first several episodes which had sound problems. Because she has a lengthy backlog of episodes, and because she podcasts pretty much weekly without fail, I have not gotten to any new podcasts this week. I've barely kept up with the ones I love that have come out this week!

YarnCraft came out with episode 23. It was all about yarn based crafts for or with children. Well, that effectively killed me giving YarnCraft another try for a while. I have listened to three episodes and I just have not been impressed. It seems, largely, like an advertisement for Lion Brand Yarn, and I don't knit with their yarn. I don't get much out of the episodes, and I don't have the time to dedicate to them. I might give them a try another half year or year from now. Remind myself -- try Cast On in two months and YarnCraft in a year. I also got the latest episode of Yarn Thing due to her comments on my blog. I'll give her Season Two a try.

Knit Pick's Episode 62 was another interview and I loathe when she interviews, so I just deleted it without thinking about it further. I've got too little time in life for crappy episodes of her podcast. It's a real shame too, because I normally love the Knit Pick's podcast and I want to hear about their yarns and her knitting queue. Bah!

Pixie Purls put out a new podcast, episode 19! Unfortunately, I listened to her episode while extremely tired, but she had a new feature that I loved. She highlighted other people's Finished Objects that she had liked. I couldn't resist looking at the posts she linked. She also discussed whether Ravelry and Flickr have killed knitting blogs. This was an interesting topic, but she's had better.

Manic Purl put out a new episode as well. Her episode 10 was okay, but she too has had better.

I was going to talk about sock yarns I've fallen in love with recently, but this post is already hideously long. It'll wait until next time. As some of you don't know me very well, I'm going to be giving up my job very soon, which is causing me a lot of depression. However, this might mean that I'll have more time for posting. I might try to enforce a twice a week posting schedule if that occurs, to be upgraded to three times a week if twice a week works well.

Talk to you all later!

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