I quit

Enough Already.
Back in Oct 2006, I cast on the Feather and Fan Shawl from the Gathering of Lace. It takes about 2200 yards of spider fart yarn. I picked up a beautiful skein from Black Bunny Fibers. (And let me interrupt myself to say that woman's colour sense is amazing. She used to have one called 70s carpet. I love her colours.)

Okay...back to the Summer Garden Laceweight. It wound up into a 2400 yd ball about the size of a seedless watermelon. (ie:not very portable). From there it went to it's own project bag, and traveled around the country with me. Sometimes spending months hibernating untouched, or indeed, not even taken to whichever state I was headed.

In the spirit of Frog or Finish I pulled her out again...uncomfortable spot...too much invested to frog, but still about 1300 yards to go. Row count in the 140s is roughly equivalent to 3 inches on a sock for each row of the shawl. Nevermind that there are people on Ravelry who have knit it in less than a month. This shawl was becoming my own Sisyphean challenge. Then the small misfortunes began. The hole caused by a dog claw, the huge miscount that resulted in 18 rows having to be ripped and reknit, the paranoid delusion that the frog was sneaking out of his tank at night and tinking back rows.

The true death knoll was TAO. 2 days ago he looked at my orange octopus body and asked "Why are you knitting that?" I launched into some explanation involving challenges, this book, EZ saying lace was good because you got alot of knitting for little money. Then he asked "What is it? It looks like a rasta hat gone awry" And something about the fact that he asked first "why" not "what" made me realise that energy-wise...I'm over this project. I finished the last 2 rows of the repeat, and spent nearly 6 hours doing a crochet cast off.

The first photo was the unblocked shawl on the floor with camera at hip height.

This photo is the blocked shawl on the floor with the camera held above my head. Good thing I stopped; can you imagine how much bigger it would be with another 42 rows added?

And...I still have about 1250 yards of pretty yarn to knit something triangular or rectangular out of. (in a couple of years)

Oops I knit it again

Don't adjust your monitor. I wore the other sweater a couple of days; mmmn...snuggly warm; and decided that it needed to be bigger (read...less form fitting). So I ripped it and reknit the front and back with more ease and added some short rows to the back.

Just another pair of socks

I cast on another pair of socks, and in a moment of whimsy I decided to get out Little Loopy and take a picture of the toe, since I got the yarn from The Loopy Ewe.

However, Little Loopy seems to think it would be a better winter hat than a sock toe.

Sock-ra-tee

Yes,I went there - it was a good day for a bad pun.

There has been a recent thread on Ravelry about Frog it or Finish it. I didn't join into the fray, but it did make me think about UFOs that are languishing. Among them was a 1/3 done shrug in The Knittery's Merino Cashmere Sock. Great shrug pattern, some nice examples finished on Rav, but really...would I wear it? When it's 8F outside, 64F inside; I'm not wearing a lacy shrug, I'm wearing polar fleece lined jeans, REI basegear shirts and a windfleece sweatshirt. (If I'm going to the basement, add wristwarmers and a hat.)

Looking at the middle ground between la girlie and le popsicle, I decided to knit a long sleeve Tee. I wanted something snug fitting to function as a baselayer, yet pretty under a cardigan. It took about 750 yards of sock yarn. I love it, but if I were to knit it again I think I would do seamless circular knitting with raglan shaping because the arm seams seem just a widget tight. Oh well, that can serve as motivation to shape up! The cashmere adds just that touch of mental shashay - mmmn, cashmere, yet the sock yarn aspect makes it more wearable - oh no, cashmere!

How about y'all? What do you have languishing that could be something useful?

YogaWarmers

Remember my Alamo Souvenir? I had a hard time reconciling myself to gasp walking on cashmere, but didn't want a shawl/scarf either. So I knit these.

Close fitting legwarmers/footless socks that I am calling YogaWarmers. They have too much negative ease to ever do that weird bunchy thing that legwarmers did in the 80s; which I confess I never mastered, instead feeling like I just had really fat ankles.

They're for yoga in that I can pull them on under my workout pants, perfect for early in the morning before I've warmed up and then as I heat up slip them off easily, and just as easily slip them back on for corpse pose.



The cashmere makes them decadent, the merino makes them smooshy, and the nylon means they'll snap back. I cast on at the ankle on US 2s, worked 2 inches of 2x2 rib, increased to a 2x3x2x2 rib which carried me up the calve to almost the fullest part, then upsized to US 5s for the last 4 inches and bound off. The odd purl count kept them from being true rosary knitting, but they were good for "not really watching what TAO wants to, but TV too loud to read" knitting.

They would have been finished more quickly except for that whole monogamous-knitting-failure thing I have going on.

Chasing the Frog

This week I picked up a tiny deep water frog for our dining room tank. Now when you research this breed there are oodles of things you're supposed to do to ensure their health and safety. So I came home and promptly set about performing all of them; nevermind the logic that points out that frogs live without this stuff in the wild and also that when the government intervenes in health and safety guidelines it's usually impracticable..

I built a little habitat within the larger tank which the frog steadfastly refuses to live in. And spent a fair amount of time dip netting and chasing, trying to corral him toward it. A few days later I shifted it to the area he seemed to prefer...he promptly moved to the corner it had previously been placed in. All in all he seems more content to burrow his head into the rocks and moon us. I finally decided to let him be, if he dies, well, he dies. At the same time, I wonder if my recent struggles have been someone dip netting my personal aquarium, trying to guide me in a certain direction, while I just burrow in and moon the universe.



This is the Rib Yoke Cardigan from Summertime Knits by Classic Elite. Knit in New Tweed by Takhi and since I've previously shown my gorgeous seaming I won't show it again. My modifications were few, I changed the buttons to accomodate 3 bigger buttons on top. In the Stash and Burn group on Ravelry there is a thread about 3 button cardis. And it is true that certain cardigans lend themselves well to this treatment, keeping your clavicles warm while letting out that "over a certain age" heatwave. At the same time, there are those occasions when I want full torso warmth. So I put three eyecatching buttons at the top, then used buttons that blend in completely for the rest. Voila...I can wear it either way.

This project was also an object lesson in why you should swatch, wash & dry swatch, then measure. My washed gauge achieved I set off on the project. And spent the whole time thinking...this is too small, this will never fit, I will have to lose my twinkie arms to wear this, etc. Finished it, blocked it, and it fits great!

Hope I remember that lesson.

Finishing in the New Year

Holding with secular tradition...I chose not to do laundry today...and I worked on finishing things. One thing I finished....

Damson by Ysolda Teague in Butter Peeps colourway of Dream in colour Smooshy.

Now I'm off to finish last nights bottle of Belgian Lambic. But before I go...does that look like the Millenium Falcon to anyone else?

Another Decade

Another decade has crawled/flown/limped/dragged/danced by. I got on the scale, took a good look in the post-shower mirror, and decided that; while I am in good shape, I either want to be in top form or dead by the time the AARP card arrives.

Sound harsh? Not really. Mediocrity is as close to the bottom as it is to the top, and to me...that looks like a lousy way to live. There are times where it feels as if the unknown evils of the deep are reaching up to grab my ankle and pull me down to a scum filled drowning death. Equally, there are times when it's all good. And I'm okay with both of those, it's that trapped in the middle feeling that I want to avoid.

You may have noticed that my definition of mediocre has a lot to do with balance. That's because life is about balance. Well, balance and choices. And I foresee that the next 5 years will be filled with a wrestling match/dance between those two forces.

Happy birthday to me, Merry Christmas to y'all.

Ripley - fast and easy

A quick satisfying knit: Ripley by Ysolda Teague. I used a DK angora,nylon,merino blend (from the stash) held double for gauge. Easy easy easy. The photo styling of the pattern shows it worn either with the pleats toward the side front, or at the nape of the neck. Due to user error I got the little seam at the pleat, phooey. The little pleats at the nape instead, make this hat a delight to wear in the house. It's snug to the scalp, covers the ear tips, and the pleats pull up that weird bunchiness you get around the back with a regular hat. Very handy for winter houses/hotel rooms.



I forsee enough wearings to make the handwash nature of this hat worth it.

But winter hasn't started yet!!!

A little perspective: I've gone out to fill that bird feeder, which hangs from my laundry line, which in summer I have to stand on tip toe to unhook and fill up.

Happy Holiday!

From our stash to yours.