The beat goes on

So, like any good obsessive Ravelry stalker, I've been checking my place on the waiting list over and over again since Sunday morning. By my calculations, they invited 145 people on Sunday and another 227 on Monday - not bad. However, in the same amount of time they received over 1,200 new invitation requests. At this rate they will have hit the 20,000 population mark (existing members and wannabe members) by Friday. I fully predict that Jess and Casey are going to make a mint on this thing...and there's no question they deserve it, it sounds like they've been working incredibly hard and with an unbelievable amount of dedication. Good on them. I only wish I'd thought of it first. :)

In other knitting-related items of interest, we were over at my parents' place last night, and also visiting was one of my father's first cousins from Australia and her husband. We had an absolutely lovely evening and I broke out the old photo album from my dad's mother's side of the family. In there was a picture of my grandmother's parents. My great-grandfather was watching my great-grandmother fondly, and my great-grandmother was...knitting! It's a small shot, but when I take my glasses off and peer really closely (I'm highly myopic and have excellent near vision until about two inches away from my eyes, when things start to get fuzzy) I can see that she is carrying the yarn in her left hand, but from there it strands back and loops around the pinky finger of her right hand. My dad assures me that she did knit continentally (which makes sense, as she was from Eastern Europe), but obviously, part of her tension came from her right hand. It was bizarre, I've never seen that before. I'll try to get a scan of the shot and post it here (my mom's scanner is unfortunately on the fritz right now).

As for my sock course, I've been doing run-throughs of class #2 in preparation for this coming Wednesday. I also seem to be scheduled to do the course again starting August 8 - I even have a student lined up for it already (she wanted to take it the first time around but was out of town for the first class). I was over at the shop on Sunday afternoon and also tried to convince another woman to take it. So we'll see what happens. While there, June very generously gave me a little giftie:



I've thumbed through it and there are several things in there that look interesting - my favourites are the Stripe Turtleneck and the Seashell Shawl. Thank you, June!

Another reason to thank June is that she recently gave my oldest daughter a crocheted sunhat. She was just making it for the sake of making it, apparently, and when I came along, she suddenly had someone she could give it to. So very sweet of her! DD1 looks lovely in it:

Cotton lace doily

DH came downstairs Sunday evening to see if I was ready to go up to bed. "How's it going?" he asked me. In response, I cut the yarn of this project, having just finished the crochet cast-off. Triumph! At the moment it is your usual noodly mess of unblocked lace:



But I will be blocking it, hopefully today. I did some preliminary stretching of the piece, which gives an idea of what it will look like after blocking:



I like it.

Baby jacket

I sat down with the CYC sizing standards and a whole bunch of baby patterns for reference, and worked out sleeve and neckline measurements for this thing. With that under my belt, I was able to work the body up to the division for the armholes, divide for the right front, and am now finishing off the first bit of neckline shaping.

Rainbow lace blanket

I thought an update photo might be nice. Usually variegated yarns aren't my bag, but I really like how this is flowing:

Tubey for moi

I brought this out at my parents' place last night, finished the sleeve and started the body cast-on. In the car on the way home, I finished the cast-on and am now working the ribbing of the body:



I'm very excited about how this is shaping up (pun intended). My cousin and her husband were interested in the construction of the sweater last night, and were very impressed with its ingeniousness when I showed them. I cannot deny that it impresses the crap out of me, too. That Cassie Rovitti sure is clever.