bootees and photos and pirates, oh my!

First up, I finished the bootees. Super cute and very easy, but I have two complaints:

• button loops are very flimsy (or at least mine were with the Baby Ull).
• no advice was given on how to seam... I would have loved to know what technique the designer used.

If I had it all to do over again, I think I'd stop at the right strap and make these into lil' Mary Janes. I'm not thrilled with the criss-cross straps, because I think it puts emphasis on the gaps where I cast on the strap stitches.

All that said, they are still mighty cute:


In other news, I cast on We Call Them Pirates (a Hello Yarn freebie). This is my first fair isle effort, and it's superfun. Observe the fun:



I had to put in an emergency call to McR to learn how to do invisible/provisional cast on. I tried to muddle through with the videos on KnittingHelp.com, but this was the first and only time that lovely Ms. Finlay confuzzled me with her technique. McR suggested the technique described in the unfortunately dated-looking Knitting from the Top she loaned me some months back, and that made a lot more sense to me. It was this nifty little wrist flick movement that went very quickly, and it didn't even result in twisted stitches like the KH.com method. I may have been doing something wrong, as I found the cast-on very loose to work, but I was able to tighten it up as I knit onto it.

I'm lurving the Cascade 220. It's so sturdy and forgiving, and it's making my first experience with colorwork a breeze. Let's just hope my brother-in-law's massive head is going to fit (I'm allowed to say that because I'm married to his identical twin, whom I love beyond the measure of his huge head... plus it doesn't look huge... and while I'm still in the parens, I'd like to add that Anthony should under no circumstance go ruining his birthday surprise by snooping around). Otherwise I'll have to shrink it to normal human size and keep it for myself.

*mwaahahaha*

Last but not least, I finally updated Ravelry with all my sexy stash photos. I had way, way too much fun taking those.


Yarn porn. Total yarn porn.