Sick toddler, sick me

Blogging will resume when health has returned. Blah.

O crappy day

Bleargh.

My day started at some ungodly hour of the morning with a brutally stabbing pain in my left eye. I have no idea whence this came, but it hurt. After several futile minutes spent trying to find the torture device that was lodged in my eyeball, I came to the conclusion that whatever it was was in my eyelid and that there wasn't much I was going to be able to do about it. I went back to bed. Fortunately, when I woke up, the eye was feeling much better. Unfortunately, when I woke up, I was exhausted as all hell. Slept past the alarms, missed key elements of the morning routine and got to work fifteen minutes late. Moreover, I struggled to stay awake all day, a feeling which took me back to the lovely (not) days of my first trimester, when my VP was tipped off before anyone else that I was pregnant because, as she said, I had lost my energy.

(And yes, I will be calling up my eye doctor to schedule an appointment. Soon...ish.)

To make matters worse, I brought the wrong knitting to work. I should have brought MIL's Cape Cod sweater, but I discovered this morning that if I did that, I would probably need my 2.25mm circular partway through the day (for the joining of the shoulders). Problem: at the time, my 2.25mm circular was stuck in the many many stitches of my Hillhead project. Since I was running late already, there was no way I could do a needle switcheroo, so that ruled out bringing the Cape Cod project.

What I really wanted to do, of course, was to bring my Persian Tiles shawl project. However, I decided to be good instead and do something more in keeping with The Schedule - so I brought Fafner. About five minutes into the morning commute I realised that bringing Fafner should have meant also bringing the main section of the blanket so that I could make sure I started the corner turn of the edging at the right spot. Naturally, I hadn't. As well, I'm using straights with Fafner, which is limiting on a rush hour commute as sometimes I don't have enough 'elbow room' to knit with them. Augh! So I dozed on the subway ride instead. Longing all the while for my gorgeous alpaca and my beautiful Persian Tiles pattern.

To top it all off, no lovely Lettuce Knit SnB for me tonight. I was so behind on my laundry that there was no way I could take a night off. And to add insult to injury, the extra sandwich I'd put in the office refrigerator yesterday which would have been my supper if I'd gone to the SnB, was mysteriously no longer in the refrigerator when I went to find it today.

Sniff.

Fafner blanket for baby Muth

The edging has crawled forward by only a few inches. Sad.

Persian Tiles shawl for Grandma

I snuck in a few more rows last night after doing my blog entry. I can't wait to get back to it. You know that 'itchy' feeling when you've got a project you can't wait to keep going on? Yeah. That.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

Tonight I finished off the left neck shaping and started the right neck shaping. I've also pulled my 2.25mm circular out of my Hillhead project (replacing it with something else, of course) so that I have it at the ready once it's time to join the shoulders. Soon! Soon!

O happy day

And I thought I'd hit the high point when DD woke up this morning with a completely dry diaper. (!!!) But no, there was even more joy to come.

Stornaway sweater for BIL

The sweater, she is dry:


More photos to come once a) I have freed up room for more pictures on my camcorder's memory card and b) DH is totally fresh from a shower so he can model it for me.

Persian Tiles shawl for Grandma

The yarn is here! The yarn is here! (I know, I say that every time yarn arrives. But the sentiment is always heartfelt.) It's beautiful:


Unfortunately the photograph cannot possibly convey how soft and lovely this stuff is in person. And how about next to the blue alpaca, which it will be paired with for this shawl:


Isn't it purty?

After that, it was only a matter of time until...


Schedule? What 'Schedule'?

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

Oh yeah, I did some work on this too. :) Neck shaping has begun.

That damn monkey

There are a few of my daughter's toys which have become permanent fixtures in the car. Two favourites are 'Lady' and 'Monkey'. Lady is an equestrian rider figurine from the Mega Bloks My Pony Stable set, and Monkey is a rubber monkey from a set of bath toys (I'm not sure how he came to make the journey from the bathtub to the car, but far be it from me to question these sorts of things).

It used to be that DD was content to play with Monkey and Lady together by herself, making them interact and giving them dialog and all that kind of fun stuff. However, recently the trend has been that I have to be the voice and 'puppeteer', if you will, for Monkey. Moreover, Monkey has now apparently become Lady's devoted slave, as DD insists that he run around the car to do all manner of things for her, like make her sandwiches, burgers, apples, etc., change her diaper ad infinitum, give her hugs...the list goes on.

Unfortunately, I have not yet evolved that third arm that I've been wanting for so long, which means that if I am going to accede to DD's (and Lady's) wishes and play this little game, I can't knit in the car.

This does kind of suck, especially with Christmas and deadlines looming. But I have to admit that my life priority to enjoy time with my charming girlie ranks higher than my life priority to knit. (Rest assured, however, that knitting still ranks higher than many, many things.) However, after Lady has downed the fourth burger in a row which Monkey has made for her, without ever having had a chance to make any burgers for himself, I have to admit that it gets a little old. :)

Fafner blanket for baby Muth

This is kind of becoming The Project That Ate My Soul. I keep rejigging The Schedule to make it possible to finish this sucker, and every week it continues to kick my @$$ and not meet my imposed deadlines. Last week's goal was to finish the edging and sew it to the main body. As I posted on the weekend, as of early Sunday this was not remotely accomplished. However, I had hoped that a drive to and from Barrie for a birthday party would start putting me ahead.

No dice.

I haven't measured yet, but I suspect from eyeballing it that I've only managed to knit up one lousy foot across one lousy side.

Stupid blanket. I wish this gestating baby's mother no ill will at all, but I'm really starting to hope in earnest that it stays in there for a while yet.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

It grows:


I'm just six rows away from starting the neck shaping, which means sometime tomorrow. I'm pretty excited about this. Because the neckline scoops lower in the front than in the back, the front yoke will not take nearly as long as the back yoke. And that means that I should be able to finish not only the front yoke by the end of the week, but also the joining of the shoulder seams and the neckband. I live in hope.

Giving myself credit

I took a page from Rock Chick's book and made myself some hang tags:


I like them a lot. They don't look 100% professional, but they are a far cry above the handwritten tags I usually provide. I'm thinking I could get more impressive results if I printed them on photo paper. More experimentation is coming.

Fafner blanket for baby Muth

This isn't going so well. My goal is to finish the entire edging and possibly the sewing of the edging to the main section of the blanket by the end of today. Instead, I have this:


Sad.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

Yesterday I hit the halfway point of the front yoke. This is good. But what is better is that I rewound the skein that was giving me so much tangling trouble. The odd thing is that I wound it into a ball. Yes, a real live, old-fashioned, cats-can't-resist-it, bounces-around-as-you-pull-from it ball of yarn. It turns out that this is the best method (that I've found so far) to prevent tangling on this #@*$&@! delicate yarn. Who knew. Things are moving much more quickly now.

Stornaway sweater for BIL

Yesterday I stopped procastinating and blocked it. Now all that's left to do is wait for it to dry. It is now officially finished, not just sort-of-finished finished. And I like it.

I ended up doing the full soak in Eucalan because I discovered (from trying it on myself - my poor BIL, everyone will have worn this sweater before he gets his hands on it) that even though the alpaca is soft and dreamy, there is still a scratchy quality about it when worn. So hopefully the Eucalan will do the trick to get rid of most of that.


I'm sorry about the quality of the photograph. Both the green and the blue appear to be complex colours for my camcorder to process, and when you combine the two - well. I'm certainly not going to win any photography awards with the shot, but it does prove that the thing is blocking. You'll just have to trust me when I say that it looks terrific in person.

More subway madness

Kelly wrote that she too encountered a knitter in public who was unwilling to bond, even if just with some companionable eye contact. It is weird. I don't get it.

And last night I had another run-in with someone who was rude and then accused me of being the problem. (I know, I know, at some point I have to start wondering if it's me, not them, but so far I don't think it's been my fault). What happened was that the person sitting right in front of me (note - directly in front of me) on the (crowded during rush hour) subway got up, so I took her seat. I did my usual little look around as I sat to make sure there wasn't anyone elderly, pregnant or disabled that I should be offering it to, but no, so I went about my business. But then the woman I had been standing beside said (to her friend, not to me), something like, "Well, I was here first, but I guess that doesn't matter, so whatever."

I told her (very politely, which in hindsight was far more than she deserved) that I would be happy to give her my seat if she would have the courtesy to address me directly, but she shook me off before I could finish saying that and said (again, to her friend) that I was 'just rude' and that she had 'said her piece'.

(What would have been funny is if I had then dissolved into sobs, crying, "Oh! I've been told! I see now that I've been living a life of unforgiveable sin! And she won't even let me atone for my faux pas! I will burn with the shame of my actions forever and EVER!!!" :D )

Ultimately someone near me also got off the train and I slid into his seat so Passive-Aggressive Princess Girl could sit down...which she did...pointedly turned away from me, and without a thank you. Another guy nearby and the woman he was talking to shook their heads at the Princess and advised me that I should tell her 'you're welcome'. We all exchanged annoyed looks of commiseration.

It's a full moon tonight. Maybe that explains it.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

Things are no longer going so well. One of the skeins is tangled pretty badly and I'm currently occupied in rewinding the whole thing from the free end. It sucks big-time.

Fafner blanket for baby Muth

Last night I began the edging. As mentioned before, this is my first time knitting around corners and I was really looking forward to it. I was not disappointed. Kelly, it does indeed use short rows and very clever they are, too. The pattern calls for casting on 28 stitches and working the repeating cable pattern until you want to start a corner. I wanted to start the corner right away, so not much of the cable pattern got done before the turning point. :) The first row of the (left-turning) corner has you work 26 stitches in the pattern (RS), turn, and go back on the WS. The third row of the corner has you work 24 stitches in the pattern, turn, and go back on the WS. You continue to follow the pattern, working two fewer stitches on every RS row, until you hit the point where you work 2 stitches on the RS, turn, and go back on the WS. At this point, my work looked like this:


Then, the pattern has you work across 4 sts on the RS, turn, and go back on the WS. Next, you work across 6 stitches on the RS, turn, and go back on the WS. And so on, continuing to follow the pattern. I haven't quite finished going around the corner, but you will still get an excellent idea of how it works by looking at what I've done so far:


There are only two problems. Firstly, my cables on the edging so far are pretty wonky and some of the stitches are embarrassingly uneven. That's actually weird, I'm not sure why that happened. Usually my cables look quite nice.

The second problem is that the edging is only about 5" wide, which is going to give me a finished blanket of three feet square. I was kind of hoping for something a little larger, even just a few inches longer on each dimension. So (depending on how much cream I have left, and I suspect I will have quite a bit), I may do a second edging once I've sewn everything together. I'm not thinking of doing anything fancy - simple garter stitch is actually what I have in mind, and done by picking up stitches around the outside of the blanket so I don't have to do any more sewing. But we'll see how it goes.

Various shtuff

Brace yourself. It's long and rambling today. And no pictures. Sorry!

Comments correspondence

1) Gillian said (in response to my experience with a rude dude on the train), "What a misreable person. Even I've never experienced that level of rudeness from a see-how-much-room-I-can-take-up type. It saddens me that we might have to get used to this general increase in rudeness. But I'm glad you got to see the lovely Kelly! Well, now that I've found you (or you've found me), expect frequent hauntings. :)"

(Explanation: reconnecting with my old friend Kelly last Wednesday also led to doing the same with Gillian, who was not only a fellow Girl Guide, but also went to school with me in grade two and all through high school and was responsible for reducing me to hysterical laughter on a regular basis.)

Gill, I saw a bumper sticker once that simply said:

MEAN PEOPLE SUCK.
I really liked it, and I think it's quite appropriate in this instance. Oh, and haunting would be cool. :)

2) Mel said, "You should have passive-aggressively pokd that guy with your needles! Unless you were using circs...then your only recourse would be to throttle him! Will we see you next week at Lettuceknit?"

Yes, I was using circs, although I didn't think of the throttling trick (even though I'm sure I could've found a way to use them pokingly). Interesting. Oh, well. Hopefully there will not be a 'next time', but if there is, perhaps I'll be more ballsy.

Unfortunately, it's not really practical for me to come to Lettuce every week. :( It is something of a production to prepare the household for an evening of my absence (leaving DH to take up much of the slack). It means committing to a big hike home (in BF Nowhere, Richmond Hill) by myself late at night. It means spending extra money (which we don't have much of to spare) on additional transportation costs. And, well, it also involves missing out on a few hours with my girlie, which kind of sucks for both her and me. However, I always have so much fun at the SnBs that I really have to start going more frequently than once every two or three months. Believe me, you'll see me soon. The idea of spending a fall/winter evening chatting with like-minded knitters in a cosy, warm room surrounded by yarn, patterns and notions is extremely irresistible. :)

3) Kelly said, "Ooh knitting around corners with short rows? Where did you come across that technique? Sounds nifty!"

It is nifty. It is, in fact, very freakin' cool. Especially when you take into account the fact that I will be knitting around corners whilst simultaneously doing cables. The technique comes from Elsebeth Lavold's Viking Patterns for Knitting book. I can't swear to it that the knitting around corners is achieved with short rows because I only skimmed through the instructions once and I may be remembering it very wrong. But I think that's how it's done - I seem to recall, for instance, a bit where Lavold explains that the usual holes you get with short-rowing are hidden by the cable crosses, thus making the whole thing look pretty seamless. I'm hoping to get started on the edging of my blanket project tonight, so I'll soon be able to explain the process more thoroughly. Stay tuned.

How my mother narrowly escaped a horrible death

Back in the summer, I finished off a very sweet little hooded jacket for a cousin of mine who is expecting his second child. The baby isn't due until this month, but since I knew November would be Crunch Time for Christmas knitting, I was smart (imagine that) and knitted the gift ahead of time. I also (or so I thought) gave the jacket to my mom so that when she had bought/made her gift for the baby, she could send them both together and thus save us each some postage costs.

Flash forward to a few days ago. I had recently reminded her that the baby would be due soon and she'd have to send off the gifts, so naturally she went looking for the jacket.

She. Could. Not. Find. It.

She looked everywhere. She apparently tore apart her closet (where she keeps presents and all her crochet supplies)...no luck. Finally on the weekend she called me and suggested that perhaps I had never actually given the jacket to her and it was still at my house?

My tone got pretty frosty. (I didn't really mean for it to, I was trying to be understanding, honest, but the frostiness just kind of...happened.) I told her it was not possible and that she had it and that she was going to Find. It.

I hung up. I checked my blog entries and discovered (to my horror) that although the blog contained the news that the jacket had been finished (complete with pictures of the finished item), I had never written about handing it off to my mom. I started to think that maybe I was going mad and that my vivid memory of having left it at her house was merely a hallucination. I searched my house. It was not anyplace that I store knitting projects or supplies, it was not where I store presents. Before tearing apart our (very scary) basement, I decided to wait until yesterday evening, when we were scheduled to have dinner at my parents' place. Maybe I could snoop around their place and find the jacket.

No such luck.

And then, this morning I got an email from my mom, with the subject of: "Bingo! sweater found". She wrote: "I had wrapped it carefully in turquoise tissue paper, and tucked in at the back of the shelf above my lower hanging rack so it wouldn't get crushed (or found!)." Colour me relieved! Life has returned to normal (or what passes for normal in my universe).

(Mel, if you're reading this, you probably now think my mother is this horrible woman whose goal in life is to make knitting disappear. :) But I swear, she's a lovely woman. Honest.)

Anti-social knitters?

Yesterday I got on the subway - very crowded, not an empty seat in sight. So instead I aimed for what seemed like a pretty good spot to stand. As luck would have it, it was right in front of another knitter. She was occupied in de-tangling her yarn (it was kind of mohair-y and looked a bit stuck to itself - I suspect that this quality was synthetically achieved, but you never know, it could've been the real thing), but I could see the needles peeking out of her bag. I too began to de-tangle my own yarn (the poor people around us were probably given the impression that knitters spend more time struggling with knotted yarn than doing any actual crafting) and tried to catch her eye in the hopes of exchanging, at the very least, a smile. Nope. At one point she bent down and picked up a skein that I hadn't noticed falling onto the floor. I thanked her very much and smiled, and she looked back at me, nodded, and...looked away. No smile.

I didn't quite understand. Don't all knitters share a kind of kinship? Was she having a bad day? Did I offend her? Did I...intimidate her?

This last thought is so laughable that I can't really keep a straight face while thinking it. Other people intimidate me, not the other way around. However, she was knitting a garter stitch scarf, and my knitting looks sufficiently complicated that maybe? I freaked her out? I just don't know - maybe I'm just giving myself airs by supposing that. But since I don't like to think of the possibility that maybe she's just plain old unfriendly...perhaps she was shy.

Anyway, I found it odd.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

No pictures today. Although I'm making excellent progress, the front still hasn't reached a point where you'd really notice the difference visually from the last picture. But at the rate I'm going, it won't be long.

Persian Tiles shawl for Grandma

Got an email this morning from the vendor - the yarn has been shipped! I expect it sometime in the next two weeks. Ohboyohboyohboy, a package is coming, a package is coming!

Perils of knitting

Saturday morning, DD had finished her breakfast and was playing in another room. I had eaten my own breakfast and was just finishing up my Sudoku puzzle when I heard a plaintive toddler voice from the living room calling for help:

"I'm covered in yarn! I can't move!"

I hastened to the living room, certain that I would find DD had overturned one of my baskets and was buried, flailing and smothering, in Silky Wool and alpaca.

Fortunately, no.

What had happened was that she'd gotten a strand of yarn looped around her ankle and was dragging it with her as she walked (something I'm sure we've all done at some point or other). This apparently constitutes being 'covered in yarn'.

Her choice of words to express what was going on (and spoken with her damn cute little voice) struck my funny bone so hard, I really haven't stopped laughing since. :)

Spreading the word

Today I went to a little knitting get-together that was really more like a knitting lesson. A number of us from an online community I hang around in decided to get together to teach people how to knit - I and one other woman would be the teachers, and anyone who was just starting or felt they wanted help were welcome to come along. I had a very pleasant time, and was very impressed with the other 'teacher'. She had super-helpful handouts prepared and a gorgeous home. Unfortunately, what with sudden problems/work assignments cropping up in the lives of those who wanted to come, we only had one student, but she was an extremely able student and it was a very nice afternoon, despite the low turnout.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

This week's target goal is FINISHED, as of this morning - I'm done with the back. Even better news, I'm already several rows into next week's goal of finishing most of the front:

Fafner blanket for baby Muth

The centre panel is complete, including the dragon's head on the cabling (although I still have to sew that in place):

It actually is a square piece, you just can't tell because of all the curling at the sides.

Next up: the edging. This is going to be very interesting because it will use the technique of knitting around corners, which I haven't done yet. But I understand it's just a variation on short rows, so I don't think it will be tough.

The day that finally got better

I really didn't think yesterday was going to pan out for me. It all started at 4am when I was awakened by a thump from DD's room (a rolling-over-violently-and-smacking-head-on-the-side-of-the-crib kind of thump), followed by some whimpers. Fortunately, she pulled it together (I'm so proud!) and went back to sleep. I, on the other hand, was not so fortunate.

I lay awake, unable to sleep, for well over an hour. When there were only 45 minutes remaining until the alarm would go off, I decided to hell with it and got up to surf the Internet (I'm such a geek). Sadly, my inability to walk away from a computer kept me surfing until well past alarm time, which put me behind schedule, despite having woken up two hours early (loser). So I rushed to get ready, and as a consequence of the panic, I forgot to shower (yes, actually forgot, how sad is that). Plus, doing my hair took forever because it refused to cooperate.

I will not bore you with the details of the rest of my morning, but suffice it to say that we were rushed, parts of the routine were cut, and it sucked. And then it was raining and traffic was bad and it felt like I was coming down with a cold, and...

...And then I got on my southbound train. I thought things were looking up, because the car was very empty, so I had my pick of seats. I sat down next to the man who'd entered the train in front of me, great seat, very choice for knitting - on the end of a row, facing forward, with lots of leg room.

I very shortly discovered that the man I'd sat beside was sitting with his elbows out and his legs spread, taking up part of my seat. Being Canadian (and meek as hell) I decided to silently assert my right to my chair by squeezing into it (without shoving, of course) as much as I could. Always before, this has resulted in the person beside me realising they're crowding me and moving back into their own chair.

Not today.

Today, not only did buddy not move over, but it actually felt like he was trying to push me further out of my seat. I probably should have spoken up at this point, but didn't (see reference to meekness, above) in favour of continuing to try and wiggle a bit into the seat space that was rightfully mine.

A few minutes of this and the guy turns to me and impatiently says, "Would you stop nudging me?!?"

Ummm...

I pointed out that he was sitting in part of my seat. His reaction?"

"Yeah, that's nice."

I told him I didn't think it was nice at all, I thought it was rude. I was dismissed. A few more ridiculous (and futile) exchanges followed until finally I accused him of getting a sexual charge out of pushing up against me and he shut up. Sadly, he still did not actually move. I probably could have followed up at that point until he did, but I was already shaking from the confrontation (more meekness) and was still reeling from the ridiculousness of it all.

Now, this was simply a rude little man who didn't know how to sit properly or conduct himself socially. So as a person, he himself doesn't matter to me at all. What made me mad (heck, still makes me mad) is the blatant rudeness of the guy, as well as his complete lack of shame for being rude, and his blaming me for the problem he created. I think this is a small symptom of a large rudeness problem we have in our world, and quite frankly, it pisses me off.

So. The day seemed like pretty much a wash.

And then...I went to the Lettuce Knit SnB.

I had a great time. Very relaxing and fun. Many familiar faces (such as Mel) were there, and my old friend from the Girl Guides days, Kelly, showed up, and Aven was visiting from out East, and Stephanie arrived after a harrowing day of photoshooting, and...well. Lots of people (friendly, polite people - such an anodyne to buddy on the train I tell ya), and good times. Happy like Christmas. I had to leave early but I was so glad I went. I really have to go to these things more often.

Oh, and don't tell my kid...but I bought her a Chibi for Christmas. She is wild about my Chibi. She likes to use it to 'draw' on the carpet, and gets really, really upset if I don't let her have it (which I am reluctant to do because a) that means I have to take the needles out and hide them somewhere safe - meaning I will never find them again - because she knows how to unscrew the cap; and b) I do actually need my needle case). So now she gets her own. Ahhh. Domestic conflict solved for just $6.90. Life is good.

The best, though, was this morning when I went in to get DD ready for school. She woke up and said, "Mummy? Did you knit with your friends?" :)

(When I told her yes, she said, "Are you back?" I told her no, I was still there. She grinned uncertainly and I tickled her, saying, "I can't fool you!" Giggles ensued.)

Then she asked if she could come to the person's house next time I knitted with my friends. I told her it was actually at a store, and that it happened after her bedtime, so she couldn't go. "When I get big?" she asked wistfully. I told her yes. :) Then she informed me that when she got big, she would have a store.

"Oh yes?" I said. "And what will people buy in this store?" I figured she would say 'yarn' or something. But no.

"Money!" she answered. "And boats!"

('Sperling-Baines Boating and Loans'? How catchy.)

Okay, so now that I've gone waaaay off the topic of knitting, let's bring it back.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

I am on fire, I tell ya. Fire. There are 100 rows in the back yoke of this sweater. I want to have the back yoke finished by Sunday night. At the moment there are 90 rows in the back yoke. I am so ahead of schedule - I'm almost giddy with the excitement of it all. Here is what 90 back yoke rows look like:


Last night at the SnB, Megan (the owner of Lettuce Knit) looked at all the skeins on the table that I was working from, and said, "I can't believe that doesn't tangle!" I assured her emphatically that it does. It so really, really does. It's just that it tends to tangle more while I'm standing up on the train, when it would be horrendously difficult to untangle anything, and far less when I'm seated and still with a nice table in front of me so that untangling would not be so onerous. (Murphy wins again.)

Fafner blanket for baby Muth

This is stalled, although I did get a few rows done the other night. I expect to be able to forge ahead this weekend.

Persian Tiles shawl for Grandma

At last, AT LAST!!! Triumph is mine, for I have won an auction on eBay for 500g of soft grey alpaca. (And yesterday I paid for it. I can't wait for it to arrive.) This is a very big deal because I have been totally unsuccessful at buying this particular yarn for the last three weeks - auctions kept coming and going and I either lost to another bidder or remembered six minutes after the auction finished that I had to bid. It's been very frustrating. But no, this time that baby was all mine, and for the low starting bid of $24US to boot - no one else wanted it. Yay! I'm also getting a combined deal on shipping because I bought some more wool from the same vendor as my SIL's Christmas present. It's all good.

The only question is, will I have enough of the blue alpaca left over from my BIL's Stornaway sweater for the shawl? I think so. For the geeks among you, here is how I arrived at this conclusion.

- Our small-weights scale says that there are 395g left on the cone of blue alpaca.
- The cone probably weighs about 100g (I weighed an empty cone in my possession which is of a similar height and thickness).
- There is therefore about 295g of blue alpaca yarn left.
- The auction for 500g of grey alpaca (which is exactly the same kind of yarn as the blue alpaca, just in a different colour) says the lot contains approximately 1800 yards of yarn.
- The alpaca therefore gets about 180 yards per 50g.
- There are therefore about 1062 yards (295 divided by 50 times 180) of blue alpaca yarn left.
- The pattern calls for Alice Starmore's (now discontinued, of course) Dunedin yarn - 7 skeins of one colour and 6 skeins of another colour.
- According to the Internet (on pages such as this one), Dunedin comes in 50g skeins which contain about 170 yards of yarn.
- I therefore need 1190 yards (7 x 170) of one colour - the grey, which is no problem - and 1020 yards of the other colour - the blue.
- If I need 1020 yards of blue and I have 1062 yards of blue, I probably have enough blue.
- Yes, this is cutting it very finely, but the pattern also calls for a fringe made out of both colours. I can make the fringe out of just the grey to save yardage on the blue.

I think I'm okay. I realise this is the height of arrogance and the knitting gods will probably exact fierce, desperate revenge upon me, but I've got logic and math behind me on this one. Yes.

Keeping on keeping on

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

Last week's goal was to finish half of the back by Sunday night, and amazingly, I almost pulled it off. I expect to reach the halfway point before the end of the day. This means I am definitely catching up to The Schedule. This week's goal is to complete the back, and if I keep going at about the same pace as I've been doing recently, I'll make it with room to spare. Hoo freakin' ray.

Fafner blanket for baby Muth

Yesterday I went on a hunt for every scrap of the cream yarn I'm using for this project. This was a tricky task, because the original one-pound ball I bought has been sliced up into numerous smaller balls (used in two aborted attempts at making an afghan for our bedroom). So there's a lot of it in bits and pieces around the house. Once I had gathered up all the balls I could, I got DH's digital scale and started weighing what I had, including the in-progress blanket. Total: about 350g. This is interesting, since the original ball was supposed to weigh 454g. So, somewhere I've lost 100g of cream-coloured acrylic worsted, and I have no idea where. I don't think I've used it in a project. I don't think I've given it away. It must just be hiding somewhere.

Unfortunately, based on how much the work-in-progress weighed at this point vs. how much work I'd done on it, I calculated that I will need about 430g for the whole blanket. So I was unwilling to keep going with only the cream in the hopes that the missing 100g would magically show up in the next two weeks. I therefore decided to conserve the cream yarn by doing the dragon cables and part of the border in a turquoise acrylic worsted which I think goes very well with the cream. Thus:

I'm not sure why the cables look so wonky in this picture but they look better in person, honest. For the border (which also has cables), the turquoise will be the background and the cables will be in the cream. I think it'll look really nice.

Hopefully this plan of action will conserve the cream yarn enough to let me finish the whole blanket. The agony of this plan is that I won't know for sure until the blanket is mostly done.

Onesie for baby Lounsbury

I think it looks terrific:

Just two more decreases to go and then I can start the neck and shoulder shaping. (Okay, the decreases are 8 rows apart, but still.)

Last night this was sitting on the kitchen table while DD was eating supper, and she asked about it.

Her: "Is that a onesie?"
Me: "Yes, it is."
Her: "Is is for a baby?"
Me: "Yes, it is!"
Her: "Is the baby going to wear it?"
Me: "Yes!"
Her: "It's too small for me."
Me: "You're right!!!"
Etc.

No, the child is not psychic - I had mentioned what that knitting was all about earlier in the weekend. I was just astounded that she remembered it all. (The exclamation points from me are not meant to indicate escalating annoyance at all the questions, but rather my enthusiasm about her recall abilities.)

Progress is my middle name

Cape Cod for MIL

This is really shaping up (pun sort of intended). I've divided for the armscyes (last week's goal) and am now working on the back yoke (this week's goal):

This is such a terrific pattern. I'm still four days behind schedule, but then again, last week I was five days behind schedule, so there is still a faint glimmer of hope. I have Remembrance Day off next week, so I will probably use that to try and catch up.

Fafner blanket for baby Muth

I worked some more on this last night, and I'm about halfway to starting the dragon cable motif in the middle.


Sure, it doesn't look like much now, but wait until you see the dragon cable. :)

Onesie for baby Lounsbury

I spent a lot of thought on this yesterday. I had decided to make the all-in-one from Zoe Mellor's Double Knits. It's a very cute little pattern - nothing stand-out, but very sweet and appealing. My problem was deciding upon what colours to use. The instructions call for a two-colour stripe pattern - one thick stripe, one thin - with an edging the colour of the thin stripe around areas like the neckline.

I considered ignoring the stripe instructions and doing the onesie in a solid colour, with a second colour to contrast at the edgings. This would certainly speed the project up, which is highly desireable since I really don't have the time to do it in the first place. On the other hand, the stripes really do make the whole thing quite charming.

I also had a few colour scheme possibilities in mind. What I wanted originally was to do the thick stripe in lavender and the thin stripe in cream. However, I don't have nearly enough lavender in the stash to be able to do this, and no faith at all that my local Zellers will have any more. So I had to come up with a different colour combination. I was thinking of green and yellow, but I didn't think they would look very nice together in this particular pattern, plus we all know that I knit too much green stuff anyway.

So what did I do? Typical me - I made things more difficult by deciding to do the thin stripes in cream, and the thick stripes in, alternatingly, mint and lavender. I know, green and purple sounds like an odd combination, but I think it works extremely well:

The only question is, will I have enough lavender? Naturally I went ahead without figuring it out or taking a trip to Zellers to see if I could get more before casting on. What can I say, I live on the edge.

For those that are curious, the rumour mill says that the baby is a girl. However, I have trouble believing this. First of all, ultrasounds are only right about 80% of the time. And second of all, this department saw the birth of ten girls in a row, and then the next two babies were boys. By my reckoning, that means that this next baby (and the next seven departmental babies after that) will all be boys. It's Fate. So no girlie and/or pink stuff for this baby. However, since there is always the slight possibility that I am wrong, I would be wise not to make the gift too boyish, either. Hence the gender-neutral colours.

Light and imagery

And so, daylight savings has come to an end for another year. What this means for me and my knitting is that it is too dark to knit in the car on the drive home. Curses.

Do you suppose it is just coincidence that the time of year in which knitters need every possible moment to knit (i.e. the approach of Christmas) is also the time of year in which there is the least amount of daylight? (Daylight of course being very important for knitting in the car, since it impairs the ability of the driver to see the road if you turn the lights on in the car.)

(Admittedly, this is not a problem for people in the southern hemisphere, so perhaps it isn't a universal punishment from the knitting gods. That certainly bolsters the argument for packing up and moving to Australia, though. Heck, I'm a citizen, my father's whole family lives there, why not? Aside from the part where I leave my friends and family forever, of course.)

This problem is why I have asked for this handy-looking gadget on my Christmas wish list. Of course, even if I do receive it, it will not arrive in time to help me this year. So I shall have to come up with another plan. Because between the ridiculously crowded subway and the darkness outside, I got zero knitting done on my commute home tonight. And that's just wrong.

In other news, I have turned to flickr.com for the hosting of my knitting photos. Since I was quickly running out of webspace on my Yahoo! Geocities account, this was necessary sooner or later. So I'm now in the process of uploading all the knitting photos to Flickr and redoing all the image code on the blog. Fun.

One result of all this is that I found a photo I hadn't actually posted yet - a back view of the poncho I did for DD. The new photo shows off the textures and variegation of the hood a lot better than the front view, even though you can't see the adorableness of my kid's face. :)

NEW - ? for baby Lounsbury

Today at lunch, one of my co-workers happened to mention in passing that another of my co-workers and his wife were expecting their first child in January.

January.

Does nobody think to tell me this stuff?!? How am I supposed to knit baby gifts if I don't find out about the existence of the baby until seven months into gestation? Sheesh.

I sure as heck don't have time to design, test drive and knit a pattern, so I will be picking something from one of my baby pattern sources. Probably my new Zoe Mellor book.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

Coming along - although I've been hit by a few pretty bad tangles lately. However, the division for the yokes draws ever nearer and the design on the underarm gusset is developing very nicely indeed. I like.