knitting in the dark

I received some awesome knitting (and non-knitting) gifts from my family this holiday season…

Santa left me two skeins of yarn in my stocking… KPM in a delicious buttery yellow:

And something I had not heard of before - Mountain Colors Bearfoot in “rosehip.” It’s a lovely blend of 60% Superwash Wool, 25% Mohair, and 15% Nylon. It’s slightly bigger gauge than most yarn I use for socks, but I’m very excited about these colors:

When I returned back to Brooklyn from Seattle my roommate gave me two knitting books with some interesting patterns because he thinks I seem to be in a “sock rut.” I showed him my Pomatomus-Socks-in-Progress and asked if that looked like a “rut” to him… (no way! I love knitting socks!)

And while shopping for knitting and sewing accessories for my mother’s stocking at Knit-Knot (which I heartily DO NOT recommend) in the Pearl District in Portland I found some Brown Sheep Co Wildefoot Sock in “jungle” that I will be knitting up into socks for my father for next Christmas… and will be my contribution to the Green Socks KAL:

I sincerely doubt I will be able to wait for the proper months in Project Spectrum to use some of these new yarns…

So - no posts because I’ve been exceedingly busy in technical rehearsals and previews for above-mentioned shows. On the upside, my fortune cookie at Ollie’s (the best Chinese in Times Square - they have FANTASTIC scallion pancakes) last night read: “All your hard work will soon pay off.” I’m counting on it…

It looks like I’m going to have a week off at the end of the month / beginning of February, just in time for the start of PROJECT SPECTRUM! The colors for February and March are blue, white, and grey… my favorite! I plan on working on (and maybe even finishing) at least three different works-in-progress during those months…

I’ve been collecting blue and white striped shirting fabrics for a quilt from Kaffe Fassett’s Passionate Patchwork for three years now - I even have fabric I bought in Beijing in that stack - and now it’s ready to be cut into triangles and pieced together; I only need to block and seam my white Rowan Classic Yarns Julia sweater; and I have a grey cardi that I’ve been alternately working on and ignoring for almost two years now - oooh, now that I think about it I have a grey argyle vest from a Rebecca pattern that I’ve been working on for at least that amount of time (!) that I should think about finishing up as well.

Wow. I rode a new N train today. It’s fancy and clean (for now) and space-age-looking like the (no longer) new L trains. The automated station announcements may be clear now, but I will miss the personalities of certain conductors - a personal favorite being the conductor that regularly announced: “This is the N train - as in ‘nasty’.” I feel there might actually be fewer seats on the train even though it probably holds more people - but I like that the new design has four sets of doors rather than three as there’s less pushing and shoving if I happen to need to ride during rush hour (which is, fortunately, infrequent as I do not particulary enjoy feeling like a tin-packed sardine). 4/5 stars for you, MTA.