WIP Insanity

Not a good start to the new year.

As of Monday, DH is now between jobs. Also, DD came down with a horrible cold. Oh, and did I mention that our dishwasher went on the fritz? Sigh.

However, I did manage to fiddle with the scans of my knitting caricature (sp?) and post it - it's now there in all its glory on the right-hand side of the blog screen. You can see the light shadings where the paper isn't perfectly flat, but I'll worry about that later.

Knitting continues, as always. It's probably more important to my sanity now than ever.

Feitelson slipover for grandpa

My aunt called last night, and we talked a lot about my grandpa. It was a great conversation, during which I confessed to her that one of my biggest regrets was not being able to make this slipover for him. She mentioned that maybe I should go ahead with it anyway, since we don't know how much time he has...maybe it's worth a shot. So...I'm thinking about it, and maybe I will. What money I will be buying the yarn with, I'm not sure, now that we're penny-pinching due to the loss of DH's income, but what the hey. This is important to my soul.

Stacy's Sweater/Henry VII sweater for DH

The amount of flip-flopping I've done on these projects is absolutely incredible. First, I decided that I would, after all, do the Stacy's Sweater for DH out of the gift alpaca, because DH was so obviously very keen on that pattern. Okay, so decision made, right? Wrong. When I went to actually do the pattern, I discovered that it called for a worsted-weight yarn. The alpaca is sportweight. !!! I don't know what the lady at the LYS my MIL bought the pattern and the yarn from was thinking! Just out of sheer doggedness, I tried the alpaca on the pattern anyway, and surprise surprise, the sweater was so small it might not even have fitted me. (And I have about a 24" waist.) So! I went back to DH with this information, and he agreed that it would be better if I did the Henry VII pattern with the alpaca instead. Which is a great shame, because honestly, the Stacy's Sweater would look fantastic done in alpaca, and DH really likes it, and MIL wanted me to do it...so it's kind of sad that I can't. However, the Henry VII sweater is coming along nicely. I'm using the contrasting navy skein of alpaca to do the bobbles. This should give it some extra oomph. DH likes it a lot so far.

Stornaway sweater for BIL (cream)

Sleeve is really progressing. I estimate about 145 rows to go of sleeve shaping.

Self-designed cushion covers for living room

I am cancelling this project for the moment. This is kind of a weird story. We have been using a queen-sized duvet as a "fireplace bumper" for DD's safety so that if she falls and trips near the fireplace, she will fall on a soft duvet instead of cracking her head open on the brick fronting. The duvet is covered with a very beautiful fabric to match the decor of the room. Well, over the holidays, I decided to hell with all the complaining from DH about how cold he was at night, and destroyed the fireplace bumper so we could put the duvet on our bed. So, in order to still have a fireplace bumper, I covered all the cushions I've been saving for the living room with the decor-matching fabric and used that instead. So it is now pointless to make cushion covers for these cushions, as they are being put to a very important use elsewhere. End of bizarre story.

Hrm. This brings my WIP count down to fourteen. Wow - fewer than 15 WIPs! But a few of my planned projects are almost ready to be WIPs, so things will probably be back up to normal soon.