Tons of Knitting, but no Talking

I've been hibernating from, well, most of my life recently. I've been doing plenty of knitting, but I haven't been talking about it much. Some of it didn't even make it into Ravelry before I gave it away.

I finished the big Alpaca scarf, but the person I was going to send it do died. I had made her a very large alpaca Kiri (I think it was a Kiri, it was definitely some kind of leaf lace) and she loved it so much that I thought she might like something smaller to wear all the time. I didn't manage to finish it in time. (Although I suppose that's unfair to me, given how unexpected it was.) I was thinking of sending it to her daughter, but it blocked out a *lot* shorter than I thought it would, so I'm not sure it's a useable size for a full-size person.

I've also been doing some baby knitting -- my boss is pregnant, and doesn't apparently have anyone to knit for her, so I've been trying to make things. Unfortunately, I'm not so good at cranking out things to order and it's been slow going. I guess I'm just not cut out to knit to order, even when it's my *own* order. I've got about half a baby hat, but since the main body of it is knit in reverse stockinette on size 1 DPNs, it may be a while. It's a good thing I don't believe in giving baby presents before the baby is born!

To soothe my soul, I finally started my red Frost Flowers and Leaves, but I have no photo of that. It's gotten off the DPNs to the Magic Loop stage, but it still looks like a crumpled red ball of ramen. The color is gorgeous, though. I'm really pleased.

Since Seanan has to go to San Jose today and Himself is out of town, I restarted Shedir to have something relatively portable to take with me. It's currently on size 2 needles, so we'll see if that makes it small enough. I sort of refuse to put Calmer on size one needles, that's just... silly. Besides, my size one DPNs are in the baby hat. I suppose I could get a small diameter size one circ from KnitPicks and use that if I really have to, but since I'm staring down the face of some really expensive dental work, I'm not sure it's worth spending the money when I can just wait for the DPNs to be available.

So that's pretty much the state of my knitting. I'm sorry I've been so quiet recently. I shall try to be less neglectful.

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!