Table IV: Swatchy Socky Jinxey Pammie

As you may recall, I went stash diving and yarn shopping recently, and I am trying to make sense of what is on the table so I can actually choose something to work on. I am a little worried that the end result of all this is going to be lace, but we'll see.


First, Swatchy:




Can't knit a sweater unless you know the gauge, and can't know gauge unless you are a savant with major social problems-----I mean unless you knit a swatch. So swatch ahoy.



Next, Socky:




The May sock club sock came the other day, so I was inspired to cast on the March sock club sock, which you can see here on the top. It does not involve embroidery, as I had feared, but every sixth row requires me to make a rosebud, which isn't all that hard, but my rosebuds don't look very much like the rosebuds in the photo. Also, the pattern was designed by the Yarn Harlot, and she is shall we say a little OCD in the best possible way and that means that the winding twining rose pattern goes in different directions on the left and right sock. Sigh. She's right. It should be this way. But the end result is a few ticks in difficulty away from mindless monkey knitting. Speaking of which, I needed some no-look mindless monkey knitting to do at Stitch and Pitch last weekend, so I cast on a plain self-patterning sock, which you see here on the bottom.




Three, Jinxey:













That's right. No photo. I have been stocking up on some nice Cascade 220 in appropriate team colors for various national futbol teams in anticipation of World Cup 2010. (It's like "Magna Carta." The snobs--I mean cognoscenti speak it without the definite article.) Qualifiers are ongoing, so I have probably cast a jinx on certain teams that shall remain nameless. This stuff is all going into opaque bags and into the closet where we will not mention them---Nay!----think of them until qualifiers are over. La la la. Moving on.






D, Pammie:


Let's say you have a friend whom you love very much. She's a knitter, but she doesn't knit anything for herself. She knits a little for people she knows, but mostly, she knits for charity. She has taken a good look around this crappy world and decided that she is one lucky girl and there but for the grace of God, etc. she could succumb to her mental illness and be destitute and unsafe and on the street. Let's say you and everyone else who knows her admire her for her compassion for the less fortunate. Let's say you feel selfish by comparison. Then let's say your friend enters a dark time and decides she can't see any way back into the light so she kills herself. After the dust settles from this horrible shock and pain, let's say you end up with some of her yarn. What on earth do you do with her yarn?

Those are some odds and ends of a pretty decent quality acrylic from Pammie, plus a ball of yellow I got at Stitch and Pitch. Given the amounts I have, the Stitch and Pitch charity project is perfect for Pammie's yarn, and I think she would approve. I really miss her.

Table III: Just getting started

We have finished up with the old, stale photos and are now moving on to the actual crap on the actual table.



So



Tatiana mittens from two weeks ago:

Tatiana mittens now:

I know! They're actually gloves! Imagine!





And here is the baby surprise jacket:

I have enough yarn left to make another.

Table II: Dirtbunny is slow

More old photos.


So this is the Decimal cardigan, back when it was a sleeve and the cast-on edge of the body. As you can see, it is pink. When I work on it in public, people assume it's for a baby, because of the color. Sigh No, it's for Dirtbunny. Pink is not just for babies. It is also for pale girls with light brown hair.

And this is the baby surprise jacket, back before the surprise (haha, right Mel?)

And here is the Decimal cardigan when there were about 30 rows done on the body, plus a little more of the baby surprise jacket.

And here is the Yarn Bandit who, coincidentally, is not peeing in the house in this particular photo, although how I managed to capture a non-leaky moment I cannot explain.

He doesn't look naughty, but he is.

The Dining Room Table is a Disaster

It is. By now, you all know how oddly compulsive Dirtbunny is. I can't clear off the table to get to the good stuff until I put the finished stuff (and the stuff I'm not going to work on imminently) away. And I can't put it away until I write about it to my loyal four readers (plus occasional other non-loyal readers). And there's no sense in taking photos of what's there until I deal with the old photos that I haven't shown you yet. So, catching up:





That is a pair of completed January sock club socks (complete with bead work!) and one half-done Icehouse sock in the ubiquitous Jaywalker pattern. I did not want to mess with the beads, so it took a while to get started. Then there's the tedious stringing of hundreds of beads on the yarn before you can even start knitting. I will not be doing lots and lots of beadwork in the future, but these turned out to be a fun and beautiful project, so yay for me. Icehouse started out fun, but is fun no more. I may not finish them for a while.

And this may look familiar, because it is a larger version of the purple lace scarf I made last summer. I'm better at lace now, so this one is turning out better. It's an easy knit, but it is not a no-look knit, which means it requires more concentration than it deserves, so it isn't getting much attention. The idea was to make a wrap out of leftover yarn, and just keep going until the yarn is gone, since the pattern lends itself to that, but there is A LOT of leftover yarn.

LOTS of leftover yarn + concentration + boring = probably not going to finish this year.

Oh well.

Things I finished recently-ish

The wireless connection is fixed! Me so happy. I have a lot of catching up to do.

While I'm ogling that which I ogle, you may ogle--

November sock club socks:

Purple scarf thingy:

Yarn Bandit making use of felted dog bed: