Mi Vida En Español

The Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza

Earlier this year, Dan & I had the incredible opportunity to spend a week in Mexico with some friends & it was one of the best trips I've ever taken.  While Seattle was still cold, rainy & nasty we enjoyed plenty of relaxing, sight-seeing, delicious food, frosty drinks on the beach & lots of opportunities to brush up on my Spanish.  Nearly every time I travel, I return with a hunger to see more, do more, learn more about the world as well as with an appreciation of how good my day-to-day life is.  Especially after visiting Mexico (even the tourist-trap, Americanized city of Cancun), I realize how luxurious life in the US is in comparison.  


Before I left, I had completed two Boob Hats for the tiny humans that a couple of acquaintances have just/will soon welcome to the world.  I gave the first one away at a baby shower just before I left & the second to a friend-of-a-friend who was visiting.  Sadly, both went to their new homes before I photographed them.  I'm not usually one for knitting baby items but a friend posted the crocheted version of this hat to my Facebook & someone asked me to make one for them.  I just happened to have some nipple-colored yarn in my stash so I tracked down some soft & yummy Karabella Aurora 8 in a matching shade & cast on.  A couple hours later, I had two boobs.  I knit the newborn size & I just couldn't get over how small they were.  These hats fit comfortably over my fist & it's crazy to think that someone's head is that small.  


For vacation knitting, I brought Sadie Bellegarde's Mermaid's Lagoon Socks pattern & the skein of Punta Merrisock Handpainted that I got from the Cornwall Yarn Shop in New York over the holidays.  The pattern was a little more complicated than I'd had in mind for vacation knitting so it progressed slowly, mostly due to the fact that all the knit stitches are knit twisted.  It looks awesome but it is tedious as hell. 

By the way, this sock is nowhere near as far along as it appears here, I just couldn't get it any farther onto my foot!

Since returning from vacation (which admittedly was a few months ago), I've also started on the Gray's Ferry Cowl by Courtney Kelley, from Knitscene Spring 2012.  Still a little burnt from my CPH, I needed something truly mindless & the socks just weren't that project.  I'm still working on them but when I want something I can just zone out with, this is my go-to project.  I even had the yarn already in my stash!  The brown yarn is Blue Sky Alpacas Sport Weight & the green yarn is Frog Tree Alpaca Sport Weight, both of which I picked up back in 2008 on a knitting group field trip to a going-out-of-business sale in Bremerton, WA.  The whitish/yellowish yarn is a mystery fiber that I got from a yarn swap around the same time.  I think they go great together!  

There appears to be a typo in the pattern (as others have pointed out on Ravelry) in which you are asked to place a marker every 30 stitches when you should be placing one every 40 stitches.  Other than that, it's an easy, laid-back project that I hope to get some wear out of during the transitional seasons (which is most of the year here).  I'm just a little concerned that it might stretch as two of the three yarns are 100% alpaca.  I knit some gloves out of alpaca a few years ago & they stretched, pilled & felted like crazy.  It's a warm, super-soft fiber but nowadays I prefer it in wool blends.  In my experience it just isn't very durable on its own.