I love my lovely new boots but none of my hand knit socks fit inside of the new boots and I don't have any knee length socks either. Well, I have one pair of socks that has got to be 20 years old and aren't made of any kind of natural fibers. Yes, I know. No one should have socks that are 20 years old but these have sentimental value to them. But that's a different story.

So naturally, I think the answer is a new pair of knee length hand knit socks. After using the Ravelry search that I love so much, I found Vintage Knee Socks by Hannah Fettig from her book Closely Knit: Handmade Gifts for the Ones You Love. They are knit with lace weight yarn held double. I'm hoping that they will be thin enough for me to wear under my boots.

Picture Copyright Hannah Fettig

Hannah's book is available on Amazon and I'm sure it's in your local book store too. But me being me, I requested it from my local library. I love my library. It's such an amazing free service, I don't know why more people don't take advantage of it.

I'm thinking Shadow Lace Yarn from Knit Picks for this project. Maybe Vineyard Heather. I'm thinking some nice purple socks under my black boots might be just the thing to make rainy winter days better. Since I'm planning on ordering my yarn for my Moorish Lattice Cardigan from Knit Picks, what would it hurt to get a few skeins of lace weight yarn?

Speaking of Moorish Lattice Cardigan, I purchased and printed out a copy of the pattern. My Valupri is almost done, so I really need to start prepping for my new cardigan. The thought of having nothing to work on sends shivers of fear down my spine. It's not a good idea for me to not having any thing to work on, it's how I get into trouble!

Hope you had a nice cozy, lazy Sunday too!

Oh how I love comfortable shoes. I've crammed my feet into enough extremely high heels and too small flats to last me a life time. I've been searching for a pair of heeled boots for a while but everything I liked was either too pricey, too high heeled, not heeled enough, too pricey...too everything but what I wanted. I also generally wait until too late in the season to actually find a pair of boots, by the time I find something I like, they're sold out in my size.

But this year, I found these. They're B.O.C Kramers and I love them. They are so comfortable. I feel like I'm wearing bedroom slippers at work.
They are really great. I can wear them under my boot cut jeans and with skirts. Too bad I don't have any skirts that I can wear them with. I might have to make a trip for fabric to make a couple. They'd look great with a pair of tights and a skirt. Love, love, love these boots.

Since my Vera is off the needles I've been in search of my next project. I seriously considered doing another Slouchy Cardigan because I wear my green one so much. I would like to do a second one eventually, a gray or black one, but for right now I'm looking for something more interesting to knit.

Thank goodness for Ravelry. Where else can you search a million patterns all in one place? I love their search feature. You can sort by size, gender, type of garment or accessory, yarn type...etc. After many, many hours spent searching for just the right thing I found the Moorish Lattice Cardigan by Kirsten Hipsky. The pattern is for sale on Webs website for only $1.99. A $1.99 people! Now that's a pattern price I can live with!

Picture © Kirsten Hipsky

I love the lattice work on this cardigan and the fact that it has pockets. I'm constantly trying to put my hands into pockets that don't exist on my Buttercream Jacket cardigan.

Since I decided that I'm going to order Wool of the Andes in Worsted Weight from KnitPicks for this pattern (in red of course), I realized that I was going to need another project to occupy my brain, my hands and my needles. I had 3.5 skeins of Berroco Vintage left over from Vera, somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 yards. Too much to just toss into my "stash" (not that I have much of one), so I started searching again on Ravelry for a pattern to meet my needs. I found a lot of things I really liked, of course. But I finally found Valpuri by the Berroco Design Team. This one is a free download.

Picture © berroco

The cables are really interesting on this and I thought in Sloeberry, which is a purple color, it would be nice to wear to work. The pattern calls for it to be knit flat but the construction is pretty basic, so I decided that I'm going to give it a shot and kit it in the round. This will be the first time that I've tried converting a pattern in this manner. It's knit bottom up and so far I've finished the ribbing and one repeat of the cable pattern.

I'm so nervous that I'm not going to have enough yarn to finish this. I'm knitting the size 36 and the pattern calls for 8 balls of Berroco Bling Bling. Each ball is 50 grams and 92 yards. I'm using Berroco Vintage, it's 100 grams and 217 yards. I have 3.5 balls for a total of 759 yards. The Bling Bling is 736 yards, so I should be good but when ever I use something I have on hand and didn't specificly buy for a project I get so nervous.

I'm taking detailed notes for my conversion to knitting in the round and I can't wait to see if I can pull this off. In the mean time, I need to block Vera so I can start wearing it. Even though the pattern shows the finished sweater with a button closure the pattern did not give directions for it. I need to find a way to close it after I get it blocked. I'm thinking a button over a snap. We shall see!

As I said last week, I've been lusting after this Jordana Paige bag. But at $89, it's out of my price range right now...and will be for a while. So yesterday I was searching on Targets website for a new purse. I have a black satchel bag that I love but it's getting to the point where I carry so much stuff that it's some times hard to fit my wallet into it. Between my eyeglass case, my cell phone, my iPod, my camera and my wallet (not to mention the stuff that always seems to collect in the bottom of my bag) there just wasn't enough room. Normally I don't buy colored bags. Black and only black. I wear a lot of black and gray too but for some reason something made me look at green bags. I guess I couldn't stop thinking about the Jordana Paige.

Normally, I'm not much of an obsessive person but this bag...I don't know. I just couldn't stop. I even went so far as to mention it to Hubbs but when he asked how much and I said $89, I could see that there was no way he was going to approve a handbag that is almost half of my car payment. Too much money.

So in my search at Target, I found this bag:

Not an exact match but pretty dang close and at $25, it was a bag I could get behind. So off we went to Target. The Target in Elk Grove had the bag and it is big. Way bigger then I would normally carry but since I also want to be able to stuff a knitting project into when necessary instead of carrying an additional knitting bag I think it's going to work.

I love a new handbag. Makes me feel all spiffy.

My Vera is off the needles. She still needs a blocking but she's done. More pictures to follow.

Even though Saturday wasn't the greatest day weather wise, Hubbs and I took the opportunity to use some passes to visit the Sacramento Zoo. Being that the weather was very over cast and threatening rain, we pretty much had the zoo to ourselves. After our cross country trip earlier this year, I'm a bit spoiled for having places to ourselves, but I love being able to see everything without having to fight with a ton of of other people.

Swan

A Lemur that wasn't sure about the umbrella I was holding in my other hand

Giraffe

I love how his upper lip hangs so far over his bottom lip

Ostrich

African Reg Hog and her babies

Not sure what this thing is called but I love his horns

The Chimpanzees were eating large pieces of pumpkins

The tigers were so pretty

Monkey! He looks so sad.

Flamingos. They sound like geese when they're feeding.

Jaguar

The King of the Jungle, the lion

Ant Eater

Snow Leopard

Toucan

Tortoise

Hawk

We really enjoyed the zoo. We got to talk to some of the handlers and I even got to pet a hedgehog. The only thing I could have lived without was the reptile house but that was the part that Hubbs really enjoyed the most. Snakes scare the spit outta me but it was still interesting. Hubbs went first in the reptile house and warned me if there were snakes in each part so I was prepared for them and not jumping out of my skin. Even though I don't really like them, it was still neat.

I love the zoo and I can't wait to go back again. Hopefully next time we'll be able to see the pandas!