An update

Scads of knitting has been getting done, I just haven't been blogging about it. Likely because I've been too busy knitting. :)

DH's Durrow sweater has seen a lot of love:

DD3's Secret Garden cardigan is almost all done:

If there seem to be a lot of strands of yarn in that shot, it's because I have never actually broken any yarn on this project. Everything's attached to everything else. Why? Because I strongly suspected that I would be yardage-ly challenged and would have to frog some stuff. And indeed, I only have this much yarn left to do the collar and button bands:

Pretty sure I'm screwed.

I've been procrastinating on doing anything further because I'm kind of despondent about it. I don't actually want to discover that I'm right about not having enough yarn, even though I'm quite sure I don't have enough yarn. And if/when I do discover that I don't have enough yarn, I haven't come up with a decent plan about how to fix it. I still want to make this cardigan with this yarn in this size, doubled; and I don't want to have to knit it allllll over again. So I'm stalling.

I got all the knitting and weaving in of ends done on DD2's cardigan:

We also chose the buttons. I just have to sew them on and then I'm done!

I finished DD1's Pemberley Slippers.

top view:




side view:




pretend-there's-someone-in-'em view:

And I've been working like heck on a new design. This one is a labour of love, for a little boy who recently lost his sister. (He also has two baby brothers who died in infancy. I cannot begin to imagine the pain the parents carry around daily.) I can't bring her back, but I feel the need to do something, so naturally, I am knitting. The design involves a metric s**t-ton of math and I've been spending a lot of quality time with paper, pencils, a calculator and spreadsheets. But I've finally made good headway on The Final Product, and am really really pleased so far. I have a pretty idea of where I'm going to submit this, but I don't think the issue will open up for a while, so we'll see how it goes.

DD1, in the throes of a superhero obsession, and having designed her own superhero outfit for her "Whippy Woman" character, has discovered that putting pink socks on your hands doesn't really work very well and has asked me to knit her some pink gloves. I am actually considering doing it. I just need the yarn, since, me being me, I have almost nothing pink in the stash.

All of this, however, will shortly be put on hold because I have two sample items to knit. :) Can't wait to write more details about them, but that will have to wait!

Love/hate relationship

So the frilly scarf pattern with that mesh yarn I posted about last time is an incredible pain in the, er, neck. The knitting happens only in the mesh holes at one side of the yarn. Right off the bat, that means that I can't knit continentally, or in fact use any yarn-holding method which wends its way through or around your fingers, which slows things right down. Then you also need to be very precise about getting the right hole over the needle to pull through to make the next stitch, which slows things down even more. For someone like me, who takes less than a second to work a stitch, this snail-like slowness (three to five seconds per stitch) is very frustrating. True, each row is only six to ten stitches wide (depending on the size of scarf you want to make), so the scarf still gets done in fairly decent time, but the doing remains frustrating.

But I pushed through.

Yeah, it looks kind of ridiculous lying there like that - like a Shai-Hulud all dressed up for a snazzy night of disco.

But when you actually wear it?

ZOMG, it is faaaaabulous!!!

So much so that my husband has had to speak sternly to me about my habit of prancing around the house wearing it when it is destined to be someone else's present. Thus, when I finally made it back out to my LYS on Saturday, I fell down hard and bought three more balls.

For DD1:

For DD2:

For (probably) me:

(I actually wanted the same gorgeous red/purple colourway that DD2 said was her favourite, but there was only one ball of it left.)

I also fell down some more and got yarn to make (at her request) Pemberley Slippers for DD1: (pattern from Jane Austen Knits 2011)

And enough yarn to make DD3 a Parfait cardigan: (my own pattern; see left sidebar)

(You can't tell, but it's cream and peachy-pink and pale lavender.)

Already I have started DD2's scarf:

And DD1's slippers:

And DD1's morning teacher's gift:

It's going to be a felted mini-bag. I'm using some leftover New Zealand wool that I picked up years ago off of eBay and which I used to make an Elizabethan Jacket for my MIL; and some leftover Briggs & Little Regal that I used three years ago to make an anniversary scarf for my dad. The two colours are very similar but different enough that you can tell they're different. I think they look very handsome put together. I'd prefer to have them striping all the way down the bag, but I'm concerned that the two yarns might felt at different rates and create a weird-looking effect. Whereas if the two yarns are one on top of each other, it won't be so horrible and I can always do some spot-felting afterwards to even things up.