And the winner is...

According to the random number generator, the winner is comment number 8, also known as Miss ZaftigWendy! She's won her choice of:

Hill Country Sweet feet 100% merino in "Blueberry Wine". A lovely yarn, I didn't like how it was working up so I thought this would be a good alternative for it! =) (Colors are darker than the photo shows!)

Or, if those colors don't suit her taste, I'm offering one of the following: 1 or more skeins of yarn from Knit Picks totalling up to $10 or a $10 gift card, if she chooses to put it towards a larger order.



Now that that is said, I'd like to thank everyone for your opinions! I threw Oblique in there, without having given her too much thought. However, she was the most popular choice among the commenters (Mariah was a close second)! I was only considering the Ecowool for that sweater until Cyd gave me some pause with a really good point:

"I love that one Oblique, I think I have to queueueue that one myself, heh. I think it would be lovely in either of the yarns, depending on which would go best with whatever you'd wear underneath, since it would show through."

I think the Malabrigo is a better neutral, being a lovely beigy color it would go with pretty much anything. However I know that Malabrigo will pill like crazy! Oblique is a nicer sweater, one that I could wear to work which would make one made out of Malabrigo a high maintenance sweater! And Malabrigo looks great cabled, making it a good candidate for Mariah, and Mariah would be more of an at home, weekend sort of sweater so if it pilled then it wouldn't matter as much.

So I think my decisions are:

Oblique in the Ecowool and Mariah in the Malabrigo.

But who knows what the future will bring. ;-)

Thanks for playing!!

Long, Long Ago In A Galaxy Far Far Away..

Er, wait. That's the wrong star movie.

Friday night I went to see Star Trek for the second time. If you haven't seen it at all, I highly recommend that you do. It's a seriously awesome movie. You don't even have to know anything about Star Trek to appreciate it, but you will appreciate it a little more if you do (Plus there are hot guys in it). I went to see it with fellow blogger, Candice. We had a very nice friend-date. Haha.

I keep meaning to update this blog but I am hesitant to do so without decent pictures. But, alas, I'm too lazy to take pictures. There seems to be a dilemma here.

Anyhow, last week a Subtle Stripes Kit from CozyMakes arrived in my mail. I immediately dropped all of my other spinning to start this. Since I was spinning it for the BF he got to dictate how the yarn was spun and the order of the stripes. So he wanted a think/thin funky yarn. It ended up so, and it's pretty bulky. Here is a crappy flash photo from the other night, the yarn deserves more pomp and circumstance as my first skein of finished yarn, but I was anxious to start knitting it and it was night time...


It's a long weekend! Thank goodness! I have some reading to do, as always. Only 2 more weeks in the quarter, which I am grateful for. =)

And now I'm going to leave you with a picture of my contest winner (Heather, AKA Zuzusunshine) from a few weeks ago. She happened to be the 2nd person drawn and she was visiting from Cleveland for a yarn crawl. It was fate.
This is how she's going to wear it; nija style.

This isn't Heather, This is Jesse (aka 1stitchatatime) who stood there with the bag of yarn on his head in the wind! Ooo, amazing!

Drumroll please...

So I entered everyone's name into an excel spread sheet, organized by Blog Post and date commented. The numbers went from 1 to 38 and the number that the random number generator picked is... 32!!

Congratulations, number 32, better known as PDXKnitterati or Michele! You've won my Ishbel along with a skein of Malabrigo Worsted in Pearl Ten:

Why yes, this picture is recycled, just doing my part for the Earth.

Thanks to everyone who participated, I wish I had more prizes to hand out to you, but alas, I am a poor college student. ;-)

Ohio is finally having some nice weather and I hope wherever you are, you're getting some too (Good weather, get your minds out of the gutter!!).

Things I'm thinking

1. Asking my LYS to order a whole bag of Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed (I get to buy it at whole sale, being an employee. =D) in 'Jewel' for this cardigan (sorry NonRavelryers, it's a Ravelry download only).
2. Knitting a lovely, long, cabled cardi out of the mmMalabrigo that I've ordered (A whole bag, 10 skeins!). Yes, I know it pills. I'm going to knit it on size 7s to combat that some. I have a sweater shaver, also. (I like this one [Sorry, another Ravlink], but it's in a Vogue Knitting I don't have... the shop may have a copy but I haven't checked)
   
3. Ripping out Hey, Teach! (Ravlink here) And knitting Wicked with it like I had originally planned (With more wear it's only stretched and with me losing weight, it's soon to become far too large!). I know... It's only been done for a week or two and I feel bad about wanting to kill it already, but you gotta do what you gotta do!
4. Taking Summer classes instead of Autumn ones and finishing a bit early (I found out they offer 500 level courses for English during the summer).
5. What in the HELL am I going to do after I graduate?!?
6. It's your last chance to enter my contest! You have until Midnight tonight, to make a comment on any of the blog entries between 4/16/09 and 4/24/09, one entry per comment (Only one comment per entry will count). And tomorrow I'll be drawing and contacting a winner! Exciting!!
   

Hey, You!

I finished my Hey, Teach! last week.

I did a photo shoot with the BF yesterday. He did a pretty good job.

I need to find another button for it.


In this one I was just straightening out my sleeves and he snapped the pic. It's actually one of my favorites. =)




I'm adding this one because it's the BF's favorite. It was a "C'mon take the dang picture and stop screwing around!" face. ;-)



Specs:
Yarn: Knit Picks Mainline in Adobo ~10 skeins (~820 yds)
Needle: Size 8
Pattern: Hey, Teach! By Hélène Rush (Free pattern from Knitty.com)
Thoughts: Easy to follow pattern. It fits pretty well, although the bottom of the sweater is bigger than I'd like. I assume that's because I'm fairly busty. My bust is ~43" while my waist is ~36". It's supposed to be a little flowy, there's not a lot of waist shaping except some decreases right before the ribbing.
Mods: A lot.

• I knit a garter eyelet hem instead of a ribbed hem (Knit one row [WS], k2tog yo one row, knit one row).
  
• I knit twisted rib at the waist because I thought it would hold its shape a little better (I don't like how the knit stitches look in regular 1X1 rib, all stretched out).
  
• I knit 3/4 length sleeves, according to these instructions.
  
• I knit the button band with the fronts instead of picking up stitches afterward. I should have planned the button holes a bit better, though. As you can see I didn't get one at the very top. I'm planning on going back to the store where I got the buttons and getting a smaller version of the same button to put there (I think they have smaller of the same style, hopefully).

Sweater back story here, here, here, here, and here.


One last thing, if you haven't heard about my contest you can read about it here. Don't forget comments on this post count, too!

Blogaversary

As you can see by the ticker on my side bar, in about a week it will be my blogaversary it was my blogaversary a couple of days ago!

So, in the blogging tradition, I'm going to offer a contest with a sweet prize.

You see, I finished my Ishbel the other day. It's beautiful. I love it. Unfortunately it ended up being a little small. Well, small for me anyhow. This was for several reasons.

1. I used a smaller needle size


2. I didn't realize the scarf size was written for fingering weight, not lace weight


3. I have a thick neck. No, really. I almost never buy commercial necklaces because I know they'll fit like chokers. A 20" chain hits me where an 18" chain hits most people.

So it's lovely and gorgeous and I don't want to reknit any of it (Malabrigo doesn't like to be frogged, anyhow). So, I thought it was perfect that I was in need of a blog contest prize.

The prize is, then, my lovely, gorgeous, soft, mmMalabrigo Ishbel*. I will also be including a skein of mmmMalabrigo worsted in Pearl Ten so you can make yourself a matching accessory (Maybe a beret or fingerless gloves?).

Heeeere's Ishbel!:


Stats:
Yarn: Malabrigo Lace (Merino Wool) in Pearl Ten, about 2/3 of the skein
Needle: Size 5 24" circ
Pattern: Ishbel by Ysolda Teagues from the collection Whimsical Little Knits
Thoughts: This was an easy pattern to follow. I find that Ysolda is always thorough in her instructions and pattern lay out/charts and this was no different.
Mods: A couple. I used a smaller needle and to compensate for that I increased to the shawl proportions on the stockinette triangle and followed the lace instructions for the scarf version.

So what's the contest?

Leave a comment on this post (With a way to contact you, your blogger account is fine), and any posts between now and next Friday, April 24th. Next Saturday, April 25th, I will number the comments and use a random number generator to pick the winner!



Another gratuitous picture of the prize with, I think, the best representation of the color:




Good luck everyone! ;-)


*Just for clarification, it is scarf sized, not shawl sized.