Aran Fever

In case you have been wondering about what I have been up to since my last infrequent post ... well ...I've been getting bitten by the aran bug.  Two years ago I purchased enough yarn to knit an insanely cabled cowl-neck pullover, and that 1800 yds of worsted weight wool in blackberry from Knit Picks has been carefully stored away in the knitting stash ever since, waiting for the moment when life slowed down and there was time to knit a crazy-involved project.  And then Vogue Knitting came out with their emag for Fall 2012, and there was this amazing article in it about the history of Irish Aran knitting, and then I clicked on the links to ClanArans.com as a follow-up to the article, and then I realized that I owned two gorgeous books full of patterns for Irish Aran sweaters and Scotch Ganseys, and  now I can think of nothing else.  Want to see what I've just cast on?  (pictures  borrowed from Ravelry.com)  This is the "Two Hearts" aran sweater by Lisa LLoyd (found in A Fine Fleece).

Mine will be done in an insanely dark blackberry.  There is a reason, dear readers, why the Irish trend toward knitting these lovelies in light greys and white.  For one, you can't see those tiny (US 5 and 7) cabled stitches you are making in a dark color unless you are directly underneath a very bright lamp.  This is going to take me a year ...

Before I could let myself cast on for a new and massive sweater project, however, I had to finish at least a few projects and do some dying of sock yarn and some frogging of project designs that have crashed and burned.  Sidebar: my first foray into teaching socks two-at-a-time begins next week, so hooray for that! 

Here's what I've been up to lately, sans the Knit Picks submission that was sent off on Tuesday (fingers crossed like a Celtic knot on this one). I've knocked out a pair of Hiker Chick socks for my sister's birthday done in a yet-to-be-named colorway of mine that is sapphire blue, lilac, and white ...

and I've knit up a few men's/boys' beanies for my October Fall Festival booth downtown.  I've decided to do school colors for all of the high schools and middle schools in the county in the hopes that these will be snapped up.

I've spent some quality time knitting on Honey's seamless shawl collared sweater that I started last winter, as well as a few hours of insomnia working on a shawl design that includes recycled bulky yarn, big cables, and the herring bone stitch and is also one of those projects that might take me a year to complete.

I dyed 19 skeins of Rocket Sock and Mission Sock yarn last week (you may have already drooled over them in my Etsy shop).  Here are a few pics of those:

And now I am off to work on the awesome Aran project!  Knit happy!