Say what?

Kelly has tagged me for a meme. It was one I was hoping I wouldn't get tagged for, because I thought it would be too hard to come up with the answers, but I fiddled around with it and it turns out, I can answer them...except that I'm still stuck on the 'things I say' category. As soon as I come up with six more things that I say (I'm trying to think of them...and I've got my husband trying to think of them, too) I'll get onside.

In the meantime, let's talk about the fact that I will soon be stalking this book.

The release date for this book is listed as March, 2006. You may have noticed that it has been March, 2006 for some time now. The book is still not available in stores. However, I have been through this twice before now with Yarn Harlot book releases, and this time I was absolutely not expecting to have the book in my hands by this point. Let's examine the trends:

• Book 1: Projected release March 2005. Pre-ordered online. Mistake. They shipped it out at least a week after their stores started carrying it. I didn't get it until April 5. Elapsed time: 36 days.
  
  
• Book 2: Projected release September 2005. Hounded Indigo's online 'book availability' tool (so cool) until I found an outlet near my work that had it, and snapped it up. I got it on March 22. Elapsed time: 22 days.

It is therefore my guess that I will be able to get the new book in about two weeks. Two. Weeks.

What's with that, eh? I bet it's already available in American bookstores. #$*@#$*&.

Heraldic tabard for moi

A call last week? the week before? to the TTC Lost and Found department sadly yielded the result I was expecting - no one had turned in my pattern. However, on the bright side, my dear, darling husband went through reams of our recycling and found me the rough notes I had tossed. These, combined with my memory, were enough information to help me recreate the pattern. I still have to recreate the decrease instructions for the sleeves, but that can come later. I haven't saved the recreated pattern anywhere yet, but at least I do have two copies of it, which are not going to be in the same place until I save the damn instructions to my computer.

Yesterday morning I got back into the project and just finished the front:

(sorry about the weirdness at the bottom of the shot - I wasn't paying attention and got some of my shirt and the camera strap)

This is good, since I was supposed to finish the front last Sunday. I'm behind on The Schedule, so I need to start hustling.

Fafner blanket for baby Whyte

Briefly did some work on this in the last few days. Last night I ran out of the ball of turquoise one pattern repeat short.

I'm not done yet. My plan is to cannibalize the turquoise cable motif in the middle of the blanket. I don't mind doing this because I don't actually like the way the dragon head looks - it's too big, it makes the cables look like they've got a weird, huge lump on top of them. Rather than rip out over half of the body of the blanket and re-knit it exclusively in the cream, I'm going to instead cut the blanket body right above the cable motif, put the top on needles to prevent unravelling, frog down to the beginning of the cable motif, save the turquoise, knit the body back up in cream to where the cable motif used to end, and then graft the top back on. (Hopefully that description made some sense.)

The big question is, is there enough turquoise in the cable motif to do one pattern repeat on the edging?

Your guess is as good as mine. Sigh.

Basic Sweater for DD

I've been working on this a lot this week and I'm coming to the conclusion that, amazingly, I will probably have enough yarn. I did the entire yoke and worked about two inches down the body all with the first ball. So far with the second ball, I've completed one sleeve and am so far down the body that the beginning of the rolled bottom edge is about an inch away.


(although I think this was taken a little bit earlier in the history of the body knitting)

There is still a fair bit of yarn in the ball, and I can cut back on sleeve length because the completed sleeve looks a bit long. I know I'm tempting Murphy really badly with this, but I think I have a good chance of making it.