Grr

I have just finished paying a buttload of bills, including an escrow shortfall, and I am very cranky.  Very  cranky.  However, the knitting goes on.

First up, we have two socks, both plain mindless monkey knitting and suitable for commuting.

Please, please.  Try to contain your excitement.  You are disturbing the others.

Next up, a Bean Blanket for the Refried Bean, poorly represented here as safety cone orange:

It's lace, and it's pretty.  See?

It looks fancy, but it's not so hard as long as you don't poke a hole in your finger with the lace-tip circular needle.  And there are more socks, a nice brown patterned one that you can't really see at all,  and a blue lace patterned one that you can't really see at all.

But wait!  There's more.  I finally started the Azzurri WC scarf.  Tis beautiful, but there's a long way to go (the Azzurri had a friendly last week against the Indomitable Lions from Cameroon, and played like ass in a boring nil-nil draw).  And finalement, I have been working on the pink cabled cardigan for some months now and have yet to finish even one crappy piece.  *sigh*

If I ever finish it, it's going to be lovely.

Isn't "Indomitable Lions" a wonderful team name? 

It's not like I haven't been knitting, yknow

Cos I have been.  I just haven't felt much like writing about it, no one's listening, no one cares, and so forth.  Regardless, I feel the need to show the ether some photographs:

Number One

So this here be some red socks from nice Fleece Artist yarn.  They went to the Old Man.


Number Two

And this be a Baby Surprise Jacket made from leftover yarn that I used to make a Baby Surprise Jacket. 


Number Three

And this here be lace.  Better yet, black lace.  Since lace photographs badly, and black photographs badly, the ass-looking has layers.  This is the Birds Nest Shawl.  It has been on hiatus because I ran out of yarn and had to order more and it was back ordered.  The yardage requirements in the pattern lied.  And you would not believe how well the black shows off dog hair.  *sigh*


Number Four

And lookie!  More lace.  This is the Juno Regina scarf in fabulous aussie mohair blend laceweight.  This is going to be something when it's done and blocked PLUS the aussie laceweight is the oldest yarn in the stash, so that means a double sense of accomplishment.  I am well over half done wth this now, but I'm mired in the center section.  It's 42 inches of a simple vertical lace stripe.  Complicated enough to not be mindless monkey knitting, not complicated enough to be interesting, therefore, tedious as hell.

Giotto Woe and the Cure for Giotto Woe

"We have the technology. We can rebuild her."



But before we get to that, this is how The Man and I enjoyed the Peace Cup final, which the Bianconeri lost by trying to shoot penalty kicks with their heads up their butts. Even ADP. Especially ADP. We started out with a bottle of an Italian sparkling red wine and a July sock and when the wine made the July sock too hard, we switched to a Stitch and Pitch square. The sock and square are now done, and I don't remember what the wine was, which is fine because it was too sweet for us. We'll stick to Prosecco. Only 9 more days to the beginning of the Serie A season.

And that brings me to Giotto woe. Remember how one of the fronts was too long? I knew it was coming, but I decided to ignore it instead of fixing it while it would still be easy to fix it. Sometimes when you try to embrace the idea that not everything has to be perfect all the time, you get scrooed end up with something that the compulsive part of you cannot live with. So to fix the Giotto sweater, I had to disassemble the Giotto sweater:

Not fun. Not fun at all. But my new replacement front is one the needles and might be done this week if there's anything good on the toob I get around to it. I thought I was done and I almost put the pattern book in the recycle bin. I'm glad I'm such a fucking pack rat I didn't.

Instead, because I didn't use up all the Giotto yarn, I started a Giotto scarf, which I now can't finish until the Giotto sweater is repaired, because I'm worried that I'll run out of yarn. This is ridiculous, of course. I have ripped out something and am using the yarn to make something smaller which means it will use less yarn, even with what I'll need for the re-edging and re-seaming.

This means that the Giotto scarf is in limbo, even though it doesn't need to be. And how, you may ask, does Dirtbunny distract herself from all this needless mental suffering? Cmon. You know the answer.

She retreats to her boudoir for a long sulk, because she's a big baby.

WRONG! She gets a wicked case of startitis. And so, behold:

Haha! Just kidding. This is actually an old project, a lace mohair cowl, which is almost mindless monkey knitting, and it would be done already if I didn't hate working with mohair. This is the last of the ancient mohair from days of yore. I don't think we'll be getting any more of that at the LYS.

Psych again! This is the March sock club sock, which is another not quite new project. This is the kind of thing you do four or eight rows on right before you go to sleep (instead of reading which is what normal people do).

Let's get to some real startitis projects shall we?

Numero Uno:

Here we have a lace scarf in lavender with a butterfly motif. Really! Can't you see the butterflies? OK, well, I just started so it doesn't have butterflies yet. The hard part was gettting the provisional cast-on right. A provisional cast-on leaves you with live stitches that you can pick up and knit onto later, which makes it great for adding an edging to, say, a butterfly scarf, so the edging looks the same on both ends when the scarf is worn. And also, a nephew sock. What you see there is how much sock you can knit when mildly sedated and riding in the car around the Beltway to a futbol game while giving The Man directions (because Dirtbunny is presumed to know where everything is, even places she's never been to before.) I'll have to compare the newphew sock circumference to the nephew foot circumference I got in the email today to see if we have a match.

This is a Ziggy sock. It's a toe-up jobbie. I am using Noro Kureyon Sock. Everyone loves Noro Kureyon. I dunno. It seems pretty itchy to me. We'll see.

This is a SIL sock. She picked the yarn. (I think she picked this yarn.) I'm using the March pattern from last year. If I remember correctly, it was a fun knit, and this is good yarn, so yay.

Good gravy! There's more? Yes there is. This is a baby blanket from Pam yarn in a traditional feather and fan pattern, which mind end up being completely oscured by the yarn's chenille texture. What-ev. It's going to be stripey, and the stripes will show off the waviness of the pattern, if nothing else.

This is not the endof the Pam yarn. I still have three beautiful skeins of red merino in sock weight. I had intended to use the yarn to knit a seed-stitch scarf for Ray-Ray, because he loved Pam too and she was heavy into seed stitch and its variations, so I thought it might be nice for him to have something that was sort of hers. Problem is, I mentioned this to Ray-Ray (to see if he would be OK with it) before I realized that it was sock weight yarn and I don't have enough for a scarf. I could make him three red socks, but Pamie probably wouldn't have made him socks. I could make a pretty, girly lace scarf, but I don't think that's Ray-Ray's thang. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it now. Hat? Dunno. Red mittens? Maybe. I'll have to ask him.

Are you wondering about the kimono shawl? It's in the drawer. I'm at the point where I'm waiting for more yarn to arrive in the mail and when it gets here, I'm going to have to blend the new with the old to obscure any dye-lot variations.

And that's how Dirtbunny forgets about how incompetent she is her most recent major fuckup her little mishap with the Giotto sweater. And that brings us to Tiki Tinkle Time, so I have to go now. I'm going to hit "publish" without proofreading. What's the worst that can happen?

I hope you're sitting down

So I just finished the March socks whilst watching the exciting finale of the Tour de France. I've had my Lance Armstrong fix for the year, and now I'm just sad that's the end of my new secret Swiss boyfriend for a while. And so here are the March socks.



So, on to the May socks, right?







This is going to blow your mind.

I STARTED THE JULY SOCKS BEFORE THE MAY SOCKS.

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I STARTED THE JULY SOCKS BEFORE THE MARCH SOCKS WERE FINISHED.

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I AM WORKING SOCK CLUB SOCKS OUT OF ORDER!

The Earth is still rotating on its axis. I wanted to see what would happen, and all is well. Or I guess it would be more accurate to say all is normal.




So now my oldest project is boring old mindless monkey knitting socks. And my second oldest project is lace:

This is the kimono shawl, worked in sport weight sock yarn. I am not going to have enough, so I'm getting more, and working on a way to obscure any dye lot variation issues. I am pretty confident I'll figure it out. I really like this purple stuff. A buddy made a Baby Surprise Jacket for The Bean from this yarn, and I knew I had to have some.

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By the way, knitting lace with regular yarn is way easier than knitting lace with lace weight yarn. I highly recommend it.

Knitting Round-up

Lalala. So here's some stuff that's done or sortadone:



First, I have completed one of the March sock club socks. It is pictured here along with a mostly done Decimal cardi:


The Decimal cardi is now completely done. It lives in my office, where there is no good space for spreading it out for a full photo, but no matter:

And here's a detail:

Pretty? It isn't exactly what I pictured in my head, and I have to fuss with it to keep it on my shoulders when I'm walking around, but I like it.

By the way, this is my desk calendar from Uncle Sam, exhorting me not to be a bigot:

Because if I were inclined to be a bigot, a little message printed on my calendar would change my mind.

The Tatiana mittens are done. There are two pairs, one set of gloves with a cap that buttons over the fingers for when it's extra cold, and one set of fingerless mitts with cap:

They turned out kinda cute, but this pattern was not a keeper for reasons I've already mentioned.

And here are the Icehouse socks, finished a few weeks ago. They look better than I remembered. Good job Dirtbunny.

I have no photo of the plain blue Regia socks. They look like plain blue self-patterning socks. Use your imagination. I finished one this weekend. Because I have turned out some saggy socks in the past, I endeavored to make this one a little tighter. It was. The first one was so tight that my seven-year-old niece had trouble getting it on and off. I ripped it out and have started over on bigger needles. We'll see. If they suck, I'll never know, because The Man won't offer even constructive and useful and helpful criticism of the things I knit for him.

Aaaaaaand, I found an excellent pattern for a hat on Knitty.com, and I'm knitting a whole pile of Halfdome hats in leftover yarn. Hats are great because they are mindless monkey knitting (mostly, except for the occasional decreases) and because they are finished at about the same time I get sick of them. I have lotsandlots of leftover yarn that is going to become hats.

I have several sweaters planned in my head, but my next one is going to be a short-sleeved ribbed cardigan from Pam yarn. Pammie helped me get some work done today, and I want to do something beautiful with her beautiful Colinette ribbon yarn. We'll see how it turns out.

Tatiana

First: Koigu minis, crappily photographed.

Next, Tatiana mittens, in progress.

There are more pieces parts yet to do on these. I have decided that they are not fun, although they are kind of cute. And my colorwork is not very even or smooth. Those problems are my fault for not being a perfect knitter.

And the pattern turns out fairly big and loose hands, but tight and short fingers, and there isn't enough give on the cuff to allow for the rolling tendency of stockinette stitch, and this means the pattern on the cuff doesn't show properly. Those problems are the pattern's fault for not being a very good pattern.

I will, however, finish them as planned, because I am compulsive, because I want to get rid of the yarn, and because the hardest part is over already.

Third, the decimal sweater. I have moved on the the second sleeve. When I have about fourteen inches of sleeve, I join all three pieces together and start working a raglan shoulder. I am starting to think this will not be done in time for warm weather.

Four, odds and ends. The Noro scarf is half done and is going to be rather short. I have turned the heel on the second Icehouse sock, so that's in the homestretch. The Stitch and Pitch squares are great mindless monkey knitting, so they are great for TV, or would be, if there were anything on.

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.