If it's April, it must be hooking time

Not that kind of hooking, gutter mind. This kind of hooking:

Once again, I am participating in the spring Potholder Swap run on Ravelry. This time around, I've challenged myself by using slightly thinner yarn (sportweight vs. last year's DK weight) and a pattern that uses some new techniques.

The pattern I'm using is the Crochet Flower Pot Stand by Lindervrouw, using the English translation of the original Dutch pattern from rubyredeclectic.blogspot.com. I made a few changes to stay within the swap designated size, so instead of working 10 rounds, I'm only doing 9, and they're coming out at about 7.5 in across.

I've gotten 4 out of the 6 sides done - since the potholders need to be double thickness, I'm making both sides the same. I actually have done five sides, but somehow I managed to make the second purple/green version with 16 petals instead of 15. No idea how that happened, but there you go. Thankfully I've got enough yarn to make another one, so I'll keep the mutant one for myself.

Next up on my list of WIPs to finish off this week: ummm...maybe the grosgrain ribbon backing for my Unravel sweater so I can actually wear the damn thing would be a good plan?

Non-striking postal service

A few weeks ago, I packed up some parcels and took them off to the post office to ship to the States.

In spite of various and sundry postal issues, I now am the proud possesor of this pile of September HYFC fiber:

I don't know why I so fell in love with this stuff (pink, green and brown? Seriously?), but I did, and was desperate for more. By the time I got ahold of her, Adrian was cleaned out, so I posted on the HY forum swap thread looking for more. A flurry of Ravelry PMs later, I divested some Hive, Mollusc and Sour Fig (a borrowed picture from the HYFC flickr group), and ended up with twelve more ounces of Winter Storage (September Club fiber) and some lovely merino in Harmonia (the purpley-brown one).

I'm hoping to have enough to make myself a sweater out of the Winter Storage. Which will require some super fluffy woolen spinning to stretch out 20 oz to enough yardage to cover moi, size Large. But between this and the purple stuff, it's looking like January is going to be a happy sweater spinning month!

In other news: today I hit a new knitting milestone - I walked out the door wearing three handknit items: this, this and these. There was frost on the Combat Zone car, so more wool seemed like a good thing. Toto, I don't think we're in Houston anymore!

Best.Procrastination.Ever

I was very lucky early this autumn to get in to Alice's Knit Love Club 2010 sock club. And someone happened to suggest on the group forum on Ravelry that maybe we should do a mini-sock swap for the holidays. So I've been using the swap as my excuse to churn out teeny tiny socks at every opportunity.

Pattern: Toe up magic loop wee tiny sock swap sock by Sean Higgins
Yarns: assorted. Green Mountain Spinnery Sock Art Forest, left over from Glynis, Trekking XXL left over from socks for my Dad two Christmases ago, and some random bits and pieces from the bowels of the Sock Yarn Blanket scraps.
Needles: 2 US 0/2.0 mm dpns
Gauge: ? socks are about 2 inches high as pictured
Start/finish: 15 Nov -25 Nov 2009, but each one only took about an hour
Comments: fun, quick pattern. Purple sock is worked in garter rib on instep and leg, red stripey is stockinette with a 1x1 rib cuff and the candy cane one is stockinette with a picot bind off. I just hope my downstream swap person likes them!