This appeared out of nowhere in the middle of September: it’s a Branching Out in Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud, and it also happens to be the first thing I ever knit, we’re talking February 2006 here. It’s feather-light and it looks alright. At the end of September I moved from NYC to Portland, Oregon (bonus points: I had a job offer!!). I currently live in inner South East, and I’m triangulated by a fabric store, a yarn store, and a yoga studio. Portland can be overcast and drizzly and it’s frequently cloudy and damp in the mornings, so I wear this scarf on my head like this to keep the humidity away from my precious mane. Anyway this weekend I went to a yarn sale and scored a FULL CONE of Jaeger 2/18 Silk/Merino in Midnight for $11, which is amazing because I was really hoping to pick up some laceweight!

OMG this pattern. I love it. Unfortunately I had maybe half the yardage I would have needed to complete this shawl, and even going down three needle sizes still wasn’t enough; I had to truncate 35 rows early! This has been my first circular shawl and it was great. Each row is different, and I love that. Every time I looked at completed works at Ravelry I swooned because they were so gorgeous, and that was encouraging. I can’t believe it’s so easy to create something so beautiful. MMario’s shawls are just too amazing to be as unpopular and free as they are. Why isn’t everybody knitting them??? They’re so easy and pretty and free!

The Queen Anne’s Lace is for my dad’s girlfriend Helen’s birthday. I love knitting lace shawls but until I had a great time documenting this, I didn’t think I had anyone to knit them for. Well now I totally want a lace shawl. So versatile! I love the yarn too, it’s incredibly crisp and blocks beautifully. How does one dye something GRAY anyway?

You can wear it as a scarf!

You can wear it as like a melee helmet!

You can wear it as like, you know, A SHAWL.

You can wear it to fly!

You can wear it to help your interpretive dance!

You can use it to BE PSYCHOTIC.

YOU CAN USE IT AS A NINJA COSTUME.

Ladies and gentlemen I redid the Urchin! It reminded me too much of my slouchy Foliage and I didn’t want it to become too much of like a thing like, “Oh Chloe knit another slouchy hat (because she has gauge issues).” I just followed the pattern for the Medium size, no edits, no modifications. I keep forgetting that knits stretch so I always knit things all big and whatnot.

I single crocheted around the “brim” and it made a world of difference with how it fit on my head. I want to crochet around everything! Crochet hooks have more use than just picking your nose with them.

SPEAKING OF CROCHET HOOKS I also added this crocheted flower because, in a once in a lifetime occurrance, my mom and I agreed on something and that something was that this beret was missing something. Then the universe exploded. I made the flower out of the same yarn and then steeped it in hot, saturated, Wildberry Zinger tea with the intention of overdying it a little bit reddish, but instead it turned out this oxidized copper color, which I like. I didn’t care what color it came out, just as long as it was different than the color of the beret.

These photos were taken in the dark to match my mood. Morrissey Morrissey. (Just kidding. They were taken in the dark because it’s just too hot today.)

This is an homage to someone who rocks!