the luscious leafy scarf is complete. so comfy-cozy! wool, silk, cashmere... hoping the recipient can wear it on multiple occasions! (don't worry, the gifting will be later, and not right now in this 90 degree weather. ai-ya.)

as i'm in the midst of all these projects (ebbing and flowing... bi-directional, i assure you!) i'm in the mood to disclose some rants and raves.

top things i love about knitting:

1. working with the most supersoft, supersmooth luxury yarn.
2. finding a spectacular pattern, finding a magnificent color, and smooshing them together to my interminable liking
3. discovering a seemingly endless bounty of resource and support between my stitch 'n' bitch, knitting blogs, and online forums
4. making gifts for friends and family and crafting a piece that will really show how much (and in what color!) i care for them
5. being a crazy lady and getting my knit on in public

also among the above list are manuevering through highly elaborate cable or open-work patterns (i absolutely adore the 'a-ha' moment of completing a cable, and you all know how obsessed i am with knitted leaves), admiring shiny pretty things (i am so in love with adrienne vittadini fiora *drool*), and being a complete couture-pattern addict.

top things i hate wish i were more predisposed to like:

1. weaving in ends. it always seems like such an anticlimactic end. c'mon, don't you just want to bind off with a bang and then yell to the hilltops that you're finished? instead, you hunker down with your needle and get a million buggers back into the woodwork. necessary, true, but not my cup of tea.
2. large expanses of straight-up stockinette. i love the texture and silkiness, of course! but it gets so repetitive after a while. this is what i'm learning with the theresa sweater. thank goodness it's child-sized, but in the future i'll try to find patterns that at least have some shaping going on every few rows, since "continue St st even for 108 rows" can be a little challenging in the patience department (in which i'm woefully lacking).
3. aluminum needles. i have some pairs that my mother used to use--long metal straights in various colors. pretty, yes; wieldy, no. perhaps i'm completely spoiled now with my denise set and some pairs of bamboo, but the metal ones are so heavy and so slippery. picking up stitches along a collar with one of them made my entire arm ache. do they make titanium needles? the only thing i could find are these titanium crochet hooks. sooooo cool.
   

so there. whines complete. at least i partially know what makes me gleeful and grumpy... learning along the way!

moving along to boyfriend sweater news. yeah, you heard me.

so niknak and i are totally enthralled with loop-d-loop (i think it's the latent goth in all of us) and we've decided on the zip-off color-block yoke sweater, which has splotches of three colors separated by a gazillion zippers, give or take a few. lots of cool full-fashioning shaping and zipper action, and it'll be even more gratifying when he shall let me wear it on occasion. :)

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hooray! it's a full man's sweater, so there's a lot of yarn, folks. it takes 16 skeins of needful yarns/filtes king "modigliani", which is a bulky tubular merino wool. i love nak, but i'd rather shower him with $120 worth of spicy dumplings than one laborful sweater. this train of thought always brings me to knitpicks, surprise, surprise.

i hope knitpicks will start to carry more bulky yarn, because i do tend to go off in that territory, and knitpicks is so darn amazing and affordable! merino wool... they do have it in DK weight... would it be economical to double-strand it? would that work for the pattern gauge (14 sts = 4")? do i know what i'm doing?

this article on double/triple/nple stranding for gauge adjustment saved me. go irrational square roots! so, after doing some calculating, i think doubling up on the knitpicks merino will work (the numbers say i'll have a gauge of 15 sts, which should be good enough to finagle; anyway, nak is weeeee!) and the entire MAN SWEATER (not a vest, not a sherpa hat, not a wristwarmer) will cost a whopping $43. oh yeah! i do know the unfortunate bleeding incident with grumperina (don't worry, it's relatively non-violent), but us sigtronic folks put our heads together and went with the colors storm (dark blue blue), cinnamon (dark nutty brown), and nutmeg (heathery beige). yay yay zipzipzip.

'tis the news update for now. time for dim-sum. now where are those 600 dumplings i ordered...?