I am Thunder Snow!

I broke up with XM this past week. They were real asses, transferring me all over and even hanging up on me when I refused to answer any more of their lineup questions. Since I already sent them an email, I didn’t see the point of wearing an old hat. I demanded they refund December while they were at it. We’ll see if they actually canceled it. I did find something even better to occupy my ears – Slacker radio. It’s sweet with its artist and crappy song blocking capabilities. I made my own channel with all my favorite artists too. The G2 has my tech loving name written all over it. Perhaps later next month I’ll be able to get it. I couldn’t get the web player to work in Firefox so you may want to download the desktop player or try IE.

I did a small shop update today, 95% of which is Colortopia skeins. The sun was out today and I got caught up on all my photography – Raverlry stash pics included like this AMAZING YP Black Apple.

I’m test knitting up the Colortopia 12.

It’s doing some crazy pooling the likes of which I haven’t seen. I like it!

YarnZombie also did some kick ass Colortopia socks. You can check them out on her blog. It’s weird that this sock was knit from the same dye pot.

I also finished the first of the Hot like Wasabi socks for my uncle. The sock is longer than my Loopy Ewe sock blocker! The toe looked all sad and warped when I put it in the blocker.

This alternating rib is getting to be one of my favorites for DK weight socks. I alternated every 10 rows on this one. The green is so hard to photograph and I have no idea why. It’s so vivid in person.

I felt compelled this week to photograph a sweater I knit a while back. I bought some discount cone yarn from Webs that turned out to be a pretty dumb thing. The yarn still had spinning oil on it and was very easy to break – not ideal when you are a tight, high tension knitter; I think it was meant for weaving even though the listing said it was ok for hand knitting. I loved the tweedy color and was trying to save money as I know I was not long out of grad school when I knit it. The buttons were a steal from Sawyerbrook (they still have an amazing button selection) – uber cute were these orange carved leaves. I knit one more sweater after this one. The cost of all that yarn and the huge amount of time it takes me to complete the project always has discouraged me from knitting more sweaters. I wear this sweater quite a bit despite its slightly too short sleeves. So my advice is to buy the best yarn you can afford and compare the pattern dimensions to a sweater or sweatshirt you already own to see if you need to knit something a bit longer or shorter. It’s an investment of time and love and it should fit!

I may tackle that Ribbon sweater pattern next year. I’m still working on holiday knits and I think I’m going to have to rethink some of my plans as I am not going to finish everything. I also want to knit myself a new winter hat, one that actually matches my orange coat. I’m going to dye up some roving and spin the yarn! I’m thinking one ply should be the orange of my coat and the other one can be all color crazy. I ordered some Targhee wool to use yesterday. I’m hoping it’s here by this weekend so I can play.