Blue star

Yesterday my feedback rating on eBay changed from 49 to the big 5-0 as the seller of my new digital answering machine left me positive feedback. (The answering machine was bought because after about four months of not having to pay $7 plus tax for a voicemail service, it will more than pay for itself and then we can start saving almost a hundred bucks a year on our phone bills.) This is significant because it means that the star icon indicating my level of feedback changed from yellow to blue. This doesn't, unfortunately, get me anything special (which kinda blows - wouldn't it be nice if eBay gave you, say, free gift certificates once you went up another feedback level?), but it certainly does make me feel happy, and it makes me look better to potential buyers if I ever want to sell anything. So I'd like to thank all the wool vendors and knitting booksellers which made my new feedback status possible. :) I couldn't've done it without 'em.

My good mood about this was slightly shattered, however, when I looked at my stats this afternoon and found that someone had found my blog via Google UK by searching for 'knitting mistakes'. Sigh.

Hat/mitts/booties for baby MacPherson-Henderson

So I sat down last night and worked out what I want the pattern to look like. It looks great. However, actually achieving it in real-life knitting is another question. Many rows in the pattern use four or five different colours throughout. Eep. I've charted it all out and it looks like the most efficient way to pull it off (without going completely crazy trying to figure out where to anchor eighty-gazillion floats) is a combination of intarsia and stranding. Aiee. If I can pull it off, though, it's going to look really damn good. I am loving the pattern, although I suspect I will love it much less when I start knitting it. I particularly suspect I will lose my sanity when I start trying to figure out how to knit a bootie without ripping off someone else's instructions (I don't seem to be able to visualise something three-dimensional like that very well).

Lacy shawl for baby Muth

Flushed with the success of having begun the armscye division on the Stornaway sweater, I decided to take this project to work this morning instead. I've done a few rows so far today, and hope to surge ahead even more by the time I go to bed. I'm getting a tiny bit more confident that I won't run out of yarn. I've got three cones in all, and it doesn't look like I've used up even half of the first cone, yet I've completed over one-sixth of the project. On the other hand, I don't know for sure whether all three cones have the same amount of yarn on them, so I might still be screwed. Plus, my visual assessment of how much of the cone I've used up could be for crap. And I'm too chicken to break out the postage scale to see for sure whether or not I'm doomed. Stay tuned for the continuing drama.