Schreech......under the wire

Lookie lookie...February Sock from Stash is finished! They are done in Lorna's Laces Denim. Following my usual foot of Squaretoe, Queen Kahuna Heel, and then a leg of Baby Cable rib. Somewhere in there I ended up knitting both heels three times because I knit them wrong twice. Sigh.

What's a knitter to do?

So of course, being the Traveling Knitter, when I got a day off in Pittsburgh I had to have a shop hop. 4 stores of yarny goodness. All with very different flavours and personalities.

I did really well...3 shops - no yarn. But then I had "a bit of a fall down" in the last one. 2 skeins of claudia handpaint to finish a pair of socks. Why 2 skeins to finish? Because if I got the yarn home and it didn't match I wanted enough to make a pair right?

I did score some books though. Let's see...Knitting Ganseys, Stahmans Shawls, Fanciful hats(admittedly as an investment) and Mostly Mittens, which I was very happy to see because I wanted to make another pair and am NoWhere Near the Buffalo library.

The fall down would have been bigger by 100% (4 skeins instead of 2) except that I happened to ask if they had a sample knit. Nope but the store owner looked online, without much success, for a sample. Then...Ravelry....Yay! Ick, this yarn canstayrighthere thankyouverymuch.

I get internet in another week and while I foresee this job being so busy and traffic so bad that little knitting gets done I look forward to being able to read blogs again.

Going dark for a while

Well, I will be sans internet for 2 weeks. Y'all don't forget about me out there, okay?

In terms of Ravelry groups goals I am doing well for the February socks, but will finish the Stash Knit Down 2008 Mile with only .93 miles done. Not as productive as I thought I am. Still it was fun playing.

I'm off to bed. I have to drive 14 hours, but be someplace by 2pm. So it will be middle of the night driving. I plan to hit the caffeine and sugar at regular intervals. Since caffeine is not one of my regular indulgences, I get goo-oood buzzes off it.

Light a Candle - Use the Force

This flame is for Craftlilly.




In the meantime, since that candle is definitely for her I am trying to minimize the impact of the forces of chaos in my life by using the force. This includes casting on a spur of the moment -my-head-is-going-to-explode- project. Hope I have enough yarn since the gray is a remnant from a sweater I made TAO 5 years ago. Funny thing...I was really sick of that sweater by the time it was done, but he wore the now ratty thing the other day, and I found myself admiring the stitch patterning and thinking - A deep Navy in a nicer yarn - R-i-ght that'll help.

Oh, and if anyone has some matches, I could use a candle too; Life is kicking my arse here.

Good golly it's garter.

The Thanksgiving shawl from Elegant Ewe is finally finished. It was actually not that long of a knit, I just didn't work on it very consistently. Cast on November of 2007.
I did choose the optional beaded border but not for all the way around. Cold glass beads around the neck? I think not. The optional short row shaping around the shoulders really does make it stay on the shoulders very nicely. The photos make it look as though it is really quite large, but I am short waisted. On a normally proportioned biped it would hit just about the top of the hip.
Yarn = Bare (not quite 3 skeins) with my own dye job.

We were never here

Wave hands like Jedi

Apparently I have been in a funk lately. This has gone unrecognized until today. I have painted walls and ceilings. (Ow Rhomboids) Cleaned the basement, snowthrown, filled bird feeders, run errands, swapped yarns, and knit. Does that sound like a funk? No....but upon further consideration of the symptoms we begin to recognise the signs.

I knit Carmela 8 from the Adrienne Vittadini fall 2002. It's a cable trimmed wrap cardigan, hitting just below the hips. Yes, I knit the whole thing. The Azaleas are in the picture because they are far more interesting than the sweater. I was laying it out today for seaming and suddenly realised that if I wanted a plain vanilla sweater I could have purchased one at TJM-xx for less than the cost of the yarn. Heck, if I were going to wear something this boring I would wear my sherpa lined zip sweatshirt with pockets and be snuggly.

Instead of knitting miles of stockinette I could have been finishing any number of UFOs. But I got a bad case of startitis and cast this on, and just kept going. Sad, sad, sad. And nary a knitter around to ask "What the H-ll?!?"

So now I am going to frog this sad classic and knit something with a little Zing.