Yarn and fibery goodness

I've got lots of yarn and fiber and projects to share with you! The first is the totally finished Baby Surprise Jacket for my nephew, when he's born. My sister's baby shower was a month ago and she really liked it and I really like the way it turned out. I hope baby Paul gets lots of use out of it!

Finally all the buttons are on!

Last night, we had our usual Sunday night dinner with my mom and had a lovely time playing with all of her beading things. She has an extensive, beautiful collection of beads and I wanted to make myself some more small stitch markers, because all the small ones I have are on projects and I needed some more! It was a lot of fun just hanging out making things, here are the ones that I made for myself (not pictured are some I made for a person that I'm doing a swap with on Ravelry, I didn't want to post them just in case she read this and I want them to be a surprise):

Of course, the way the pictures got loaded, these are ones that Laurie made for me.

Ten little pearl ones.

Ten little mother of pearl ones, these are lovely don't you think?

Crystal ones.

This next project is one of the reasons that I needed new little stitch markers. This past week, when Laurie and I went to Tempe Yarn and Fiber for our usual hang out on Wednesday night, we oohed and aahhed at the new malabrigo sock yarn that came in. Unfortunately, we couldn't afford to buy what we were drooling over and I was a bit disappointed. On the way home, I decided to attack my stash (that's what it's there for, right?)! I was rewarded with two balls of malabrigo sock yarn in the colorways eggplant and archangel. I decided to use the archangel colorway for these socks. Before we left for California for Thanksgiving, we used one of our borders gift cards from last Christmas to get a book called "Socks from the toe up", which one of our TYF friends has and was making socks with and let me look it over. I really liked most of the patterns in the book and so did Laurie, so we went ahead and got it. So, these malabrigo sock will be my first toe up socks, using the Lace and Cable sock pattern from the book. You may have a long memory and remember that I have two other pairs of socks on the needles right now, but I decided that I wanted a pair of socks for me before I could knit anyone else their socks, selfish I know, but I don't have any to call my own... Here's how they are coming along, I've finished the toe and have just started the lace and cables that the sock pattern is named for:

On the following Friday night, we ended up buying that other malabrigo sock yarn that we were ogling (my dear mother helped us out) and here it is:

This is the yarn I fell in love with, the colorway is "abril", lovely isn't it?

This is what Laurie fell in love with, "terra cotta"

This isn't malabrigo, it's Cascade Heritage, in the colorway "tutu", we went on a little bit of a binge, this is for another pair of socks for one of the patterns in the toe up sock book. All of these pics show the one skein of yarn broken up into two balls of equal weight, so you can use up all of the yarn when you are making toe up socks - you can just knit until you run out of yarn!

Lastly, the weekend before Thanksgiving, I was able to take a dyeing class with a friend and teacher at TYF, Barbara. It was a lot of fun! I only dyed fiber and was trying to go for a tonal look on the fiber that I dyed. I hope to use it for socks, it's superwash merino wool. Along with the wool, I dyed some silk hankies, which was fun and I like the way they turned out.

Here's a blue/green/teal 6 oz bump of fiber, possibly will become socks for Laurie.

The silk hankies.

And lovely purple/burgundy/purple-black, possibly socks for me!

My February Lady Sweater is coming along, I worked on it a lot on our drive out to CA, I'm finally in the lace part and it's going quickly, a great bus and car project! I hope to have it done while the weather is still cold enough to wear it :). Also, I am in the process of plying some Pagewood Farms BFL in the colorway "mississippi mud", I have two of the three skeins plied and I can't wait for them to be all done, it's funny that so far, they all look so different! Then, I may start on the alpaca for a scarf for Laurie's dad.