Knitting at work

There have been lots of meetings and classes lately, so I've managed to finish a sock in about a day.




I don't really feel bad for knitting at work, since it is actually keeping me paying attention in class when otherwise my thoughts would stray (as they do for many of my coworkers), but I think it might have been a tiny bit distracting for the presenter yesterday. Whenever she would pause or search for a word, she would stare at my sock. I couldn't figure out whether I was the cause or the symptom of her distraction.


In other news, I've been listening to so many knitting podcasts. I keep thinking that eventually I'll catch up and NPR will get its chance again, but then I find another one. And of course I'll have to listen to all of those as well. My current favs: Cast On, Lime & Violet, and Sticks and String. They can all also be found on iTunes, which is where I found them.


The only thing I have against them is that they all play from the podsafe network. Of course I think it's a wonderful thing that there is such a thing and that they use it, but they all have similar tastes, very dissimilar to my own. I think if I hear Skullcrusher Mountain (look towards the bottom) again I will scream. I think at least three of my podcasts have played it.


Anywho, on to the second sock!

The ugliest sweater

This is the sweater of dooooooooooom!

I made this sweater from Charmed Knits, which has patterns inspired by the Harry Potter series. This was supposed to be a Weasley sweater, done in almost magical time. It took me about 4 days, but I hadn't had time to quite finish it before the party on Friday. I had it all seamed and had the ends woven, but hadn't had time for the neckline. The results, as you can see, are so ugly that I busted up laughing and refused to let Orion wear it to the party. That would just have been mean.

Maybe I'll finish up that neckline and try to auction it off on ebay or something. Give it to the homeless. Anything, just to get it out of our home and out of my sight!

Lots of knitting, but not much to show

Considering how long it's been since the last time I've posted, you would think that I would have a ton to show for it, right? Wrong. I've done a lot of knitting, but I don't feel like I've gotten very far.


So here are the socks made from that beautiful Interlacement yarn:

I had wanted to make them toe up two at a time, but had messy problems with the cast on. I should have documented that, but was so frustrated at the time that I didn't think of it. What happened was that the endmost stitch kept getting longer and longer. No matter how I tried to tighten it, it kept getting bigger. I finally gave up when it was about an inch long. Then I would frog my work and do the same thing all over again. Ech.


Here is the progress on my mystery stole:

What we have here is a little in on clue 3. I forgot to take a picture after finishing clue 2, but that was only about 6 rows ago. I couldn't block it for this pic, though, because I would have had to turn on the light in the living room, which would have woken Orion. I can't wait to have that one-bedroom. I'm tired of being forced into the kitchen every morning.


Here is a soft little side project I did because it was mindless enough to bring to my first Stitch'n'Bitch meeting:

As a sidenote, the people there were awesome, but I had unwittingly stumbled in on bring-your-kids-to-SnB night. I have decided that I shouldn't have kids. I just don't know how to deal with them.


And finally, here is some lovely yarn that I bought since I loved that sock yarn so much:


The purple is my first Koigu. I had been eyeing this particular colorway for a while now, but hadn't wanted to pony up the $24 a pair of socks costs. After feeling just how nice it is to work with yummy sock yarn, I caved. The green is Jitterbug, and costs about the same. They are both so nice that sometimes I just touch the yarn. Does that make me crazy?


My final project, not documented here, is to make a Weasley sweater for the Harry Potter release party on Friday. I decided to do this Sunday night, rushed out to buy Charmed Knits (a book of Harry Potter-inspired patterns), and went to Michael's to buy some cheap-ass Red Heart yarn. 5 days. I had originally, insanely decided that I was going to make two of these sweaters. It would have been really hard, but not impossible. They have no shaping and are drop-shouldered, so they go pretty quick. However, I got so sick yesterday that I couldn't knit at all. There's no way that I can do it now. At least Orion will have his sweater. He's letting me read it first, so it's only fair that he gets the awesome costume. Even if it is Red Heart.

Ants

The first clue for Mystery Stole 3 is finally out!!!!!

Here is the first half:



I'm using Jaggerspun wool/silk and a teal 8 seed bead. However, this is my first major lace project, so it takes me a really long time to get stuff done, and a lot of concentration. And perhaps a bit of swearing.

The grey cardi was almost done when I mysteriously started running out of yarn. I bought what should have been plenty; I have been paranoid about this exact situation occurring. I don't know what happened there. In any case, I was pretty bummed about the whole thing since the yarn was expensive and I was sure that they wouldn't have any more. When I bought it about 2 months ago, I bought all but one or two of the balls in this lot. The knitting genie was smiling at me, though, because Lakeside magically had some left. I'll try to finish it up when I get done with the present MS3 clue.





For the final knitting news: I finished Orion's socks. Ope, no I didn't! GOTCHA!!! I had them all bound off, woven in and everything. He tried them on and one of them was at least 2cm too short. I cut the end off, and I'll add the proper length when I'm not so mad at them.




And here is the reason that I have been not been in touch with everyone this week:







If you will notice, those are hundreds of dead ants, lining my windowsill and frame. These are just a small sample of what I woke up to Monday morning. I felt something on my arm and woke to see a nasty little bug. I freaked out a bit about it and blew it off. A few groggy minutes later, I killed it on the wall above my bed with a paper towel. Then I happened to glance at the sill, where not one, not five, but hundreds of ants were streaming and swarming. It would have been bad enough if it had just been like an anthill, but no, there were also hundreds of winged ants beating themselves against the glass and buzzing around our room.

We alert maintenance, and God bless them, they were out that morning. But the ants proved too tough. They sprayed twice and laid out traps, but those ants were going nowhere. We stayed at a hotel one night, just so that we could get some sleep. They were only really bad in the morning -- the rest of the time the winged ones kept to themselves. Nothing brightens a day like waking up to a swarm of ants, though.

Finally, they called an exterminator on Thursday. I've decided that he and my dentist are my new heroes. I still have to wait 4 days before I can clean them up, but I can tough that out. We have to give the poison time to work.

KAL

Someone, possibly at Knitter's Review has turned me on to a mystery stole knit along. Part of the mystery is that now I have no idea who gave me the idea. In any case, it's like crack. None of the "clues" are out yet, but I have been reading all of the posts and looking at countless test swatches. I even did one of my own -- how unlike me!



If you want to join, do it soon. It closes to new members on July 6th.


Random Yarn PR0N!!!!!




I saw this just sitting there, looking all lonely at my LYS. It needed a home. It needed a purpose. I have given it both. Just one look, and I knew it was destined to be in MY home, on MY needles, ending up on MY feet. It was love at first sight.

There has been progress on the Swing Cardigan:



The fronts are done, and the sleeves are over halfway. After that, it's all finishing, baby.

As per Jen's suggestion, I discussed the possibility of hiring out the dirty work with the folks at Lakeside, but they weren't sure. I think they aren't used to machine sewing requests. If I can't get someone to do it, I'm either going to buy a sewing machine or come up with something ingenious. Maybe I'll put tiny buttonholes in the ribbon, sew them on, and then just use little buttons that don't really need a buttonhole... In any case, there is no way that this would be getting cut if I sew it by hand. I don't trust my hand-sewing that well.

Now off to arena football!!!!!




Just in case any of you were worried, I've finally located my little lost sock yarn. It was safely in my stash the whole time, snuggled under some acrylic that I would have sworn hadn't moved in at least 4 months.

Oh no oh no oh no

I finished the front of the grey cardi, and have therefore remembered why I stopped in the first place. The buttonholes are supposed to be machine-sewn and then cut. God help me, they're supposed to be CUT!!!! What am I going to do?

To be warm

So the wrap that I was making for the office is finished. I like how it turned out, but I don't so much like how I look in the picture:



For some reason, I never, ever, ever look good in pictures. The one for the staff info pages at work makes me look demented -- some sort of mad lady scientist. I really hope I don't look like that running around in the wild.

In other self-pity: I read a couple other knitting blogs (knitting is my obsession, after all), and they all seem to get so much more done than I do. I know they aren't knitting any more than me, since on the weekends I'm pretty much knitting constantly, so what is it they do? That wrap was mindless knitting. In the round, so very little purling, simple cable pattern, worsted weight yarn. It took me all weekend. For someone like Wendy, fingering-weight socks seem to take about 3 days of transit knitting, but I've been working on those socks for Orion now for two weeks! What gives?!

As someone in my LYS once told me, knitting is not a race. I think that's easy to say when you are probably faster than the person you're saying it to. ;-)