Turtles and photos and blog clients, oh, my...

Someone pinged me on Ravelry to ask if they could use my Barbara Walker Turtle scarf as the "official" Turtle Pattern photo. Somehow, this terrifies me. Out in the big wide world, people are going to see my acrylic knitting as the ur-Turtle. Now, I know that people don't really expect the photos of stitch patterns to be anything like as good as the photos of actual patterns, but still, somehow I'm worried that I'm going to get hordes of Barbara Walker fangirls pinging me and asking how I could possibly think that my Caron Simply Soft play-knitting was good enough to be used as The Photo for this pattern. (See what I worry about when I'm not busy enough?)

In actual knitting news, the grey Pi is done. Finished. Well, almost over with, really. It's off the needles, at least, which means it can go marinate in my "to be blocked" pile until I can stand the sight of it. No new photos, but since I haven't put one here before, here's the old photo of it (several dozen rows before it was finished, but looking about the same, except this photo's got needles in - not that you can see them here, but if you could, they'd be size 4 Addi Turbos):




Although I was desperately tempted to go ahead and cast on for the Mystic Waters mystery shawl that I've got clues for and am way behind on, I decided to virtuously try to finish at least one more project before I did. Not that I was sensible and picked the cabled scarf I've got half a ball of yarn left on, oh, no. I picked the Log Cabin of DOOOOM, although I must admit that it's because the LCoD has gotten too big to be anything other than messy sitting around in the living room, and I think it's starting to bother TG. (I realized reading over the first few entries last night that I have been inconsistent in my acronyms,and I shall have to fix that).

My camera's screen is broken and I can't afford to have it fixed, so this is going to continue to be a photo-light blog, at least in terms of new projects. I am solemnly assured by my own experience and other knitbloggers that there must be a picture in every entry, though, so I think I'm going to start blogging the old projects, so that we can memorialize my "oooooh, knitting" phase (before I got to the "oooooh, knitting with things that aren't made from dead dinosaurs" phase I'm in now, you see). Hopefully that'll encourage me to post more often, too, because I'm starting to feel guilty about neglecting the poor little blog. I downloaded a whole new web browser; just so I could have a blog client, so we'll see. (ETA: And it looks like that client screws up the HTML so badly that I'm not really sure that it's any good either. Feh.)

When you forget to read your knitting...

But first, a quick meta note: I foolishly upgraded my computer to the beta version of Leopard (Apple's new OS) about a week ago, and have had incredibly flaky internet access since, which is why I haven't been around. They have now released the final version, so I should be upgrading to something a bit more stable soonish.

Meanwhile, in knitting news...

The grey Pi continues, sort of. I got through to the last 20 rows (thank goodness), but I screwed something up. You know, when you get to rows of almost 1000 stitches, it behooves you to pay lots of attention to what you're doing. Sigh. I got about halfway through row 98 (um, that's patterned rows, so it's actually row... 196?), cheerfully knitting away, only to discover that I'd gotten off my count and was putting my patterns in the wrong place. 400 stitches of tinking, here I come. I must admit that I'm tired of this project and kind of want to just pull it off my needles and put it in the trash and pretend it never happened, but I'm so close to the end that I can't quite bring myself to. Besides, I know that's only because the Mystic Waters KAL has started and I really want to knit the first clue on these needles.

Must not abandon almost finished project for new project just because I'm tired of it, right?

Okay, so I'm sure all you pi shawl knitters are looking at this entry a bit sideways and thinking "what kind of insane person gets to past the 6th increase row and still isn't done?" Okay, fair. I think it's that I like my shawls really long in the front, and when I stretch out the plain garter bit, it's only just going from shoulder to waist. Somehow I suspect the blocking gods are laughing at me, though, and when I finally finish, it's either still not going to be long enough, or it'll be enormous and I'll have to give it to A., who's a giant.

It would be a fair revenge on A., though, since I called her about a week ago to find out how big her head is and she still hasn't returned my call. I want to make her a Shedir hat out of the same grey Drops alpaca I'm using for the North Star scarf, but I know she's got a big head and I want to make sure it'll fit before I cast on. Huge grey Pi would be a suitable revenge, I think.

The North Star scarf proceeds apace. It's become my KIP project, much to the amusement of the Wednesday Stash ladies. I don't think I'm going to go to that knit night anymore, though. I rather like some of the people, but the group is really huge, and I think I talk too much for them (or perhaps it's just that I'm overly foul-mouthed). I had a lovely time until everyone showed up, though, so maybe I'll go for the pre-knit-night agglomeration and leave at 6:15... I'm trying to snaffle the people I really like for the Mondays At Starbucks, so we'll see. It was just sort of funny to see everyone saying "oh, you can't knit that in public!" Of course, since they said that, I managed to have to tink one row about five times (before figuring out that, like a good little idiot I'd managed to knit the wrong row), but I did finally get another four rows or so done.

Next week's Monday should be good, though, since I think the person who came last week (R.) and the person who came the week before (J.) will get along famously, and we'll have to see if anyone else shows up. Amusingly, R. and J. are both knitting projects out of the exact same yarn (well, it's the same brand and it looks like the same color), so I'll get to be envious of all the Smooshy Sock I've ever encountered all at once! Alpaca revenge shall be mine, though.

Anyway, now that I've gotten the Endless Bloody Pi rant out of my system, I shall go back to my tinking and watching "educational" TV while waiting for my weekend houseguest to show up. (Well, she's TG's houseguest, really, but since he's not here, being at the airport collecting her, I shall claim her for the moment.)

No new knitting...

Really, I spent most of the last two days drooling over my cones of Zephyr - and the color card that came with them.

I suppose I did make almost 10 rows of progress on the grey Pi, which is something of an accomplishment when each row is getting up around 400 stitches. Those of you who've made Pi shawls can gasp in horror now -- I'm in the 48 ridges section, merrily heading towards the 96 ridges section. I expect to quit somewhere in the middle of that section, less because I'm happy at how big the thing's gotten and more because, well, I've been knitting it for something like three months and I'm just tired of it.

I'm using what is technically a weaving yarn, so it's very very fine. This may explain why I've had to knit so insanely many rows to get it to do what I want. It may also explain why the yarn smells funny. I think I'm going to have to wash it, although the alpaca I blocked at the same time as the last project I blocked in this yarn also smelled funny, so I didn't realize at the time there was anything I could do about it. The notion of dumping my wool into hot, soapy water and then swishing it around (which really reads like a recipe for felting) makes me very nervous, but we shall see.

As soon as I've knit another 8-bazillion rows, that is. My next increase row reads k95, yo, k1, yo, k95, inc center 271 st. to 573, k95, yo, k1, yo, k95. Sounds like ever so much fun, doesn't it?

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.