Bad, bad blogger.

After being utterly miserably ill during and after Thanksgiving, and then depressed and crazy for most of December, I have finally returned to the land of the living, just in time to say goodbye to the old year and hello to the new one.

Lest you think that I haven't been knitting, rest assured that I have, I just haven't gotten around to documenting any of it. :)

I finished my green Hemlock Ring (only to discover a dropped stitch while I was blocking it, which I have carefully stuck a stitch marker into and will rescue when I go on my next finishing kick). It's a lot smaller than I was expecting, even after looking at the finished dimensions in the pattern and thinking "gee, that's kind of little." Of course, that may be because I'm comparing it to my log cabin, which after two washings (and therefore two dryings, one hung over my shower curtain rod and one properly blocking in an attempt to make it square again instead of oval) has grown to about 6x7 feet. Not that I'd really know, since my friend S. is usually under it -- she still maintains that it's her favorite thing in the house, including the residents, the cat, and our cable, which has what she refers to as the "porn channel" (aka Chiller, the all-bad-80's-horror channel).

After finishing the blanket, I had all this Eco left over. I wasn't really sure that it was enough for another one (despite having about 1.5 skeins of my 3 skeins left over -- I really think I finished HM when I did because I was tired of knitting feather-and-fan). In my insanity, I cast on for what has become known as "the world's ugliest sweater." Using Barbara Walker's instructions in Knitting From the Top, I carefully made a seamless V-neck raglan. I even put a crochet finish around the neckline to keep it from getting wonky. Unfortunately, when I ran out of yarn, I had, oh, 70% of a sweater. It hit on my high hip and had about 3/4 length sleeves. Well, what's a shawl knitter to do when she needs to add length to things? That's right, knit on a border! Keep in mind here that I don't actually own any of the "how to knit borders" books, I just own a whole bunch of lace knitting books. So... I dug out Victorian Lace Today (well, okay, I looked through all my pattern books and decided to use VLT), picked out two relatively similar borders (a smaller one for the sleeves and a bigger one for the bottom), and knitted on three borders. They're perfectly well knitted, they're beautifully attached, and I swear to you that if the sweater weren't made of the only color on the face of this earth that doesn't go with the black Paton's Merino I knitted them in, it would probably look okay. On a black sweater, it might even be cute.

Okay. I have accepted that my sweater is kind of ugly. That's okay, it'll just be a house sweater. Then I put it on. The sleeves are way too long -- fortunately, folding them in half fixes that problem perfectly and doesn't look too terrible, since the lace edging is scalloped at the bottom. Unfortunately... The weight of the bottom border has tugged the body of the sweater down so far that the new bottom of the sweater is pretty much at my knees. I'm really incredibly tempted to block it down just a bit further and then wear it out of the house, claiming that it's that incredibly trendy "short ugly dress over jeans" thing. (I only have to block it down because it doesn't quite cover my rear in the back, which ruins the effect. Plus, well, lace requires blocking and I can't suppress the habit.) I shall have to poll my gentle readers when I get some photos of this thing. (But hey! My first sweater! And it fits in all the places that it should fit! Well, the armscyes might be a bit on the small side, but not unwearably so.)

What else? The mini-cable scarf is dead, long live the mini-cable scarf. I remembered how short the first one was and decided that it was sort of silly to make another scarf I knew I was going to think was funny looking. So I ripped it out and have started a Toddle with it instead. My oldest stepbrother, AAJr. and his wife AALady (yes, seriously), just had their first baby, a girl (who fortunately was named something starting with a letter *other* than A!), so I'm going to send them the BSJ (more on this in a minute) now and the Toddle for next year's holidays (is that pre-planning or what). Fortunately for little EA, they're Jewish, so hopefully she won't run into the "birthday at Christmas" problem quite so badly.

The BSJ is done, all except for the buttons. Unfortunately, I'm having some problems getting buttons. The nearest button store to me is only open Fridays and Saturdays, 11 - 4, but I shall persevere and hopefully remember this week that I have to go during that time. Meanwhile, the 3-mile round trip is probably good for me, and I do get to go by the comic book store while I'm at it, even if I can't buy anything.

Shedir has been abandoned for the moment, as has the North Star. Instead, I'm spending all my "fussy knitting" time on a Daffodil tea cloth/shawl from Marianne Kinzel's Second Book of Modern Lace Knitting. I'm using the same grey weaving wool as I did for the grey Pi, since I've got enough of it to do anything. The disastrous start I made on Mystic Waters was been ripped to be retried at a later date. I suspect I may need bamboo size 4s to knit it with the Alpaca Cloud, since what killed it was a stitch I dropped in row 70 or so that I just couldn't get back up. I'll have to try it again sometime when I'm less stressy.

And that's about it for knitting. (Oh, and the Noro cartridge rib scarf I'm making to use up the last of the Silk Garden 8 while I wait for TB to make up his mind about which colors he wants on his stripey scarf, but that hardly counts. I mostly started it because I was having the kind of day where it takes you four tries to type something like "and," and I was looking for a project that was too simple to mess up.) Other than that... Nothing much changes. I'm still unemployed and therefore on a yarn diet. My parents bought us a new microwave for Christmas, so I'm on a big "let's gather up all the old electronics for the recycling center" kick. Houseguests and parties and cleaning, oh my!

I hope you're having a nice end-of-the-year, with appropriate holiday wishes all around.

Try, try again?

So there I am, cheerfully knitting away at the blue Shedir, and about half-way through the third set of cables, I realize that there's no way this is going to be a one skein project. I turned it upside down, and also realized that not only could I get my entire head into it without stretching it, I was probably going to be able to stuff one of the cats in there too if I kept going the way I was.

I ripped the entire thing. The Calmer is now sitting in a ball on my knitting table mocking me, and waiting its chance on the size 2 needles. I'd started with the recommended size 3s, but since it was coming out too big, I've decided to drop an entire size and see how much that helps before I start throwing the yarn ball at my computer and yelling at the designer for claiming that this project could be done in one skein on 3s. The yarn is really stretchy and I was making a point of not stretching it out too much when I was knitting it, so that might also be making a pretty big difference. I have a photo essay of the poor thing's death throes that I'll post as soon as I can find a camera cable.

My quest for a "quick" project continued. I'd always meant to make a Baby Surprise Jacket, and finishing off the Log Cabin O'Doom means that I had about three full balls of Cascade 220 (split among the 5 colors, of course, but that's still quite a bit of yarn). Ding! I cast it on yesterday afternoon sometime, and just now finished weaving in all the ends. It's not actually finished, because I want to throw it at TG and see if he can correctly origami it into its proper shape. I think it's actually fairly easy, because the way I set up the stripes was to change color any time I found an instruction. (So the first 8 rows are one color, and then you run out of actually written row-by-row directions, so I changed color. I changed again two rows later because she's got you doing special increases, etc.) I know what the various instructions were for, so I know where the pieces go.

The BSJ was pretty easy -- I did use the "notes" sheet that's floating around online, but I only needed it in one place, right at the beginning, and I flat out ignored it in several places afterwards because her interpretation of the directions didn't match mine. I'm mostly pleased with it, although in one place I wound up having to change colors on the wrong row, so there's one place where the stripes aren't seamless. I have some varigated Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted allocated for another BSJ, and I think that'll be lovely because every row will have the color-change dashes, so you won't be able to tell where things happen at all.

Photos of that either her or on Ravelry tomorrow, when I've got actual light to work on. Actually, maybe Tuesday -- I'm going to a law school forum thing tomorrow, and I may be too fried in the morning to take photos, depending on how neurotic I decide to get about the whole thing.

I don't think I actually did anything non-knitting related this weekend, really. TG has a loaner parachute for the next couple of weeks (he's looking at changing sizes, so he's borrowing possibilities from the manufacturers to see how he likes them), so he's been off at the drop zone skydiving all weekend. Yesterday my friend N. came up from school, and we walked to the knitting stores around here and then came home and wound up her yarn before I sent her off to do her homework. (No serious yarn porn from me, sadly -- all I got was three skeins of Misti Alpaca laceweight, which she bought for me as a late birthday present.) We also had our friends R. and L. over for dinner, when I discovered that as easy as the BSJ is, it's not great company knitting because of all the counting. Today, I did mostly nothing but knitting, although I must now go get my laundry out of the machine and pay attention to it.

Oh, and I bought a spinning wheel last week. It's not in very good shape, but I think with some TLC, it'll be very nice. I'll post all about that later, though, since the laundry is calling and this entry is already quite long. Hope you had a nice weekend too!

Phew...

The log cabin is almost finished. It's off the needles, but it still needs to have its ends woven in. It's already been claimed by S. and Grace the cat as their new mutual favorite thing in the house (including both me and TG). Fortunately, I was smart enough to weave in most of the ends as I went, so I've only got four or so, and I'll do that as soon as I get around to being in a finishing kind of mood (or I get tired of seeing something not-quite-finished being dragged around the house by various friends and pets).

Instead of casting on for Mystic Waters, though, I decided I needed something quick and rewarding to work on as a present for having finished two of my three big projects, so I now have a Shedir on the needles for my friend A. TG bought me some Calmer when we went and looked at the Eco+ for the Hemlock Ring blanket, so I'll have a couple of projects coming up in non-substituted yarn.

I'm not loving the Calmer -- it's splitty beyond belief, and I still have my doubts about the stitch definition. I mean, I've seen the original in the Knitty special issue, but mine doesn't seem to be doing that. Perhaps my gauge is off. But really, I'm hating trying to cable this stuff -- I don't use cable needles, so between the splitty and the slippery, it's kind of a pain. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure A. will love it, and since I have two balls, perhaps I'll make another one and be used to it by then. (And no, I never did actually learn to properly cable with a real needle -- I find it fiddly and actually more difficult than just figuring out how to not drop the stitches in the first place.)

It does feel good to have something I can make visible progress on in less than an hour, though!

Grey is not my friend.

I'm sure it seemed like a good idea, lo these many months ago when my last bout of startitis took over my brain, to start two grey projects at once.

I have these huge cones of grey wool I ordered from WEBS, you see, and I felt bad that I hadn't done anything with them, so I started knitting things from them. (Lots of things, actually -- I managed to finish two lace shawls before running into my current problem.)

I live in California, where there are two seasons -- the green season and the brown season. I started all these projects in the brown season, when it was beautiful and sunny almost every day, and the grey was just a soothing color that didn't require a lot of thought to knit with. Now, it is the green season, where the skies match my yarn and all the light is that weird cloud-light that leaves you wondering if it would be totally environmentally irresponsible to turn the lights on. It's kind of depressing to be knitting on grey things right now, when I want bright, beautiful colors to keep me cheered up. But I must persevere, in the name of cleaning up my knitting area(s).

My grey Pi shawl is nearing completion -- I've got one more repeat of my current pattern to go, and then I think I'm going to have to do at least a couple of repeats of the next one to balance it out. The top of the shawl has smaller, daintier patterns, so I'd feel weird just ending it with the big bold pattern I put in for the third patterned section. Also, I tend to like my shawls big, and I can't tell how big this one is yet. I think it's not quite big enough, though -- if I hold it up to my shoulders and try to stretch out the front (since it's a Pi-square rather than a proper Pi), it doesn't quite come down to my waist. I know that's not the same as a real wet blocking, but it gives me some idea, at least. Of course, since each row gets longer and longer, "nearing completion" feels more like the sort of pretty lie you tell yourself to finish a workout than it does an actual quality of the knitting. I'd put it down and let it hibernate, but since I'm knitting directly off the cone, I think that would get messy. Besides, I want my size 4 Addis back to use on something else.

My grey Miss Lambert's Veil from Victorian Lace Today, however, has been languishing by the comfy chair for the last four weeks, patiently waiting for me to get back to it. Much like the Pi, it's being knitted off a cone, so I can't just put it away somewhere, and I don't want to rip. I think when I'm done with the Pi, I'm going to have to move the Veil over by my TV-watching station, and try to figure something out for reading the pattern out of the book. Maybe I'll make a copy so I can put it on my clipboard like I've been doing with the Pi.

Oh, well. At least it's finally getting chilly enough that I won't feel silly working on my Log Cabin. Knitting Cascade 220 in the middle of the summer was a bit odd-feeling, although I know that if I want my huge Log Cabin to keep me warm when the real rains come, I have to knit during the dry season to have any reasonable hope of finishing it. I suspect that BC will steal it every time she comes over, though -- she feels the cold more than I do, and the Log Cabin is wonderfully squishy and warm. It's brought me a new respect for the humble garter stitch.

If I can finish the Pi and the Veil and the Log Cabin and the Wavy scarf, I can cast on for another non-travelling project. Despite what it may look like, I much prefer project monogamy (well, for values of monogamy that mean "one for at home and one for out-and-about, but given my preference for lace, I don't think that's unreasonable). I still have two travelling projects, but given how much KIP I've been doing recently, I'm not going to stress about it -- although I might stress about not having anything portable queued up to replace them.

Anyway, less chattering, and more going to take a shower and get ready for my day.