o v e r b r e w e d

My shoulders are killing me. I guess that’s what I get for casting on for Wicked and refusing to stop until I finished the increases. Sheesh. I know I should probably give myself a break today, but I really want to finish this ASAP. I don’t know why…maybe it’s just the thought of finally having a sweater done and not leaving it to marinate in the WIP basket for half a year. I finished up the increases at around 11 last night night, pulled it off the needles and tried it on, and thanks to my mammoth chest, the freaking sleeves are about 4 inches too big. Lovely. I could rip back, do some math and fiddling and fix it, but no. No, No, No. I’ll worry about fiddling when I get to actually finishing the sleeves. I can already tell though, that i’m going to need to make the body a couple of inches longer…I hate short sweaters, and don’t want to spend all my time yanking on the hem trying to get it to sit right. Good thing I bought extra yarn!

Pattern: Wicked by Zephyr Style
Yarn: Cascade 220 in Cordovan (The most perfect heathery brown ever.)
Size: Ha. See above; re: fiddling.

Also! FOs!

Pattern: Two-Toned Ribbed Shrug from Fitted Knits
Yarn: Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Chocolate Brown and Gold (Woo! Stashbuster) 1 skein of each, no idea how I managed but I think the yardage is mislabeled…need to weigh the remaining skeins to see.
Size: 17″ with modifications…shorter sleeves, less ribbing.
Meh. It’s cute-ish. And functional. But. The yarn is, quite obviously, crap. I’ll make it again, but with better yarn and no mods. And probably all one color, so it will be a smidge more versatile.

Pattern: Cotton Baby Hat from Last Minute Knitted Gifts
Yarn: Bernat Cotton Tots in Berry, not even half a skein. (And another stashbuster, yay!)
Size: Toddler
Oh my gravy. This is one of the cutest, easiest baby hats ever. I love the nubbly, homemade appearance the cotton yarn gives the hat. I will definitely be making this again, once I find a source of mini-humans in need of cotton hats. And i’ll use the recommended yarn next time, because the colors are to die for and the hat is even cuter in solids.

When I ordered my Wicked yarn from Webs, a skein of Malabrigo in Brown Berries just accidentally fell into my cart. Oh. Oh. I see what the fuss is about. I’m currently alternating between wanting to find a project for the single skein and wanting to just unwind it and roll around in it. I don’t care that it’s a smidge pricey…for this level of soft i’m willing to fork out the dough for a sweater I will never, ever want to take off. Chris even wants a sweater made out of it, and he’s not a sweater person. I know what i’m doing for Christmas!

On the spinning front: UGH. How, how, how do you people make such smooth, squishy, wonderful yarns? I spun up 90-ish yards of the Texas Peach merino the other day to see how the colors spun up, plied it, and ended up with around 45 yards of nicely colored fingering-DK weight crap. I know it takes time. I know it takes practice. BUT. But. While i’m getting better at spinning finer yarns, the nubs, slubs, and fuzz continue to haunt me. I’m being ridiculously careful with my pre-drafting, and nothing seems to help. Honestly, the slubs don’t bother me quite as much as the fuzz, although I wish they would go away too. I can’t figure out if it’s something i’m doing when i’m drafting, or what. It’s driving me bonkers and I do not like it, no Sir. This is yet another one of those times when I really really hate living in the ass-end of nowhere, and can’t find anyone to show me what i’m doing wrong. Sigh. I wish (ha. wish in one hand…) I could find somewhere to rent a wheel, and see if the spindle itself is part of my problem, but well…ass-end of nowhere. I’m beginning to think mastering the squishy smooth yarn is not in my future. Hmph. (And sorry about the crap picture…camera batteries went pffft on me.)

So, things have been ridiculously hectic, which has led to the whole no updates since January thing.  Urgh.

In order to keep this blog from stagnating any more than it already is, I present a list.  Aren’t you excited?

Things that Suck.

1.) Work, for many reasons that I won’t go into just in case. But one thing I can say is that 5am is the most unholy hour in the entire world.

2.) Being all excited about an antiques show, only to drive the hour and a half to get there and having it totally blow, and NOT finding a single sock machine.  Boo, Kiwanis, Boo.

3.) Camera batteries being dead, which means no pictures of new yarn.  Angst.

4.) Not having time to knit anymore.  I haven’t touched a project in weeks.
Things that do not Suck.

1.) Getting enough yarn from Good Yarn Karma  for a good size project.  If  you haven’t already checked this awesome project out, what are you waiting for?

2. My first STR order! Medium weight Scottish Highlands colorway, along with the Rock and Weave Pattern.  I can’t wait to get started with it, when I find the time.

3.) Having the hour and a half drive for the antique show not be a complete and total bust, because it was close-ish to my LYS, and therefore I now have new sportweight Lorna’s Laces in Glenwood.  Huzzah.

4.) Buying the softest blanket known to man.  I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning, it’s that soft and wonderful.

There are many more things I could add to both lists, but sadly I now have to go fix dinner, then finish washing clothes and getting ready for work tomorrow.  I am going to attempt to start budgeting my time a bit better soon (ha, ha) so I can spend a bit of time updating here and actually getting some knitting done.  We’ll see how that works out.

Of course because I posted yesterday that our temperatures were still in the 80s, I wake up to a high of 37. Oh, Texas, your weather never fails to drive me completely batshit. I suppose now I really should get those knucks finished.* Good thing I organised my stash a little bit last night, so I can actually find what I need.

Giftmas knitting is still going…slowly. Very slowly. I just can’t seem to concentrate, which is the reason I was organising my stash at midnight. If I actually could get my act together and stick with one thing, I would actually be able to finish in a reasonable amount of time. I only have 4 stripes left on the ghetto scarf, which I could easily knock out today and still have time to get started on the matching mittens. But no, i’ll probably knit a few rows, maybe half a stripe, then get distracted by something shiny. Someone needs to invent a pill for the KADD afflicted. Although, tonight is a new episode of Jim and Pam dancing around each other and driving me bananas, so maybe there is still hope for a decent amount of work being done. We’ll see.
*I’m sure once I do get them finished, we’ll have another spell of stupidly warm weather.

I should have known it was going to be one of those weeks when I woke up Monday morning and thought it was Thursday.  I’ve been out of sorts all week, nothing seems to be going as it should.

Case in point: Christmas knitting.  I actually got started on it last, oh, Friday I think.  At first, things were going fairly well.  I wasn’t knitting consistently time-wise, but I was making progress in between cleaning house, checking on the build progress of the new room, shopping, etc.  I started with one of the two baby cardigans, a simple top down raglan hoodie.  I got the bulk done in probably 6-8 hours or so, all together.  All I have left now is the right sleeve.  I picked it up again on Monday and had a mild panic attack that it’s not going to fit, because what do I know about the size of a baby?  This one is for a newborn that’s due in the next week or so, so i’m hoping actual real life babies are as small as I seem to think they are in my head.  I’ll probably finish the last sleeve tonight during The Office, unless this weeks knitting purgatory continues.

As for the other Christmas knits…ugh.  I swatched for the Spartan sweater for Chris, and my gauge is way, way off.  So I frogged, and swatched again.  Repeat 4 times, with 3 different needles.  No go.  Fiddled around with the math, and discovered that at my current gauge, not even going from the second smallest to the  largest size sweater would be big enough, and that’s knitting loosely.  So now i’m just going to have to suck it up and order some bulkier yarn. This isn’t the end of the world I suppose, as i’m also sneaking in some undyed superwash so I can dye up some stripey yarn for a pair of Jaywalkers and i’ll have 10 skeins of light worsted in a pretty green that i can use for myself later.

The bath sets are…pretty much non-existant at the moment.  I just can’t seem to settle on a stitch pattern.  I’ve frogged my pattern swatch I don’t know how many times.   The socks for my grandfather aren’t moving along any faster either…it’s impossible to find a decent sock pattern for a man.  I’d rather these socks not be a generic stockinette, but at the moment that seems like my only option unless I want to abuse my poor addled brain even more trying to come up with a pattern on my own.  The only gift knit that is coming along nicely with no hair-pulling is the Ravenclaw scarf.  I sat outside one day last week and knitted while watching the men work on the new room and made quite a bit of progress.  I think I only have around 9 stripes to go, which I could easily tackle in a day or two if I could make myself sit still long enough.

Anyway.  Last night I said to myself that I desperately needed something quick to knit up, as hopefully a FO would break me out of my slump.  I settled on a wide headband (how happy am I that headbands are back in style?), and started knitting.  After frogging at least 5 times because I wasn’t happy with the stitch patterns, I gave up and very nearly threw a fit.   Then, because I picked up SnB: The Happy Hooker at the library the other day, I figured maybe I just needed to step away from knitting and do something else.  That didn’t help either.  Basically all I ended up with last night was a bunch of kinky yarn and a bed that looked like a tornado had hit a yarn shop.

I’m also in the process of working up a pattern for a felted Hobo, so far there are no issues with it, but we’ll see.  And the Ultra Alpaca I bought to make a new pair of Fetching is begging to be knitted up into something much nicer, so I might have a pattern for some long, cabled, fingerless gloves soon as well.  I’m not making any promises though, considering my recent luck.

I would say that today was going to be better if I hadn’t woken up at 7am thinking it was afternoon because i’d spent the last 2 hours throwing whatever I could reach at the feline bitch fight taking place at the foot of the bed.  Feh.

And in non-knitting tantrum news: If I have to hear about Anna Nicole Smith one more time I will scream my head off.  Seriously, this is ridiculous.  Yeah, it’s sad about her son, but the woman is an absolute moron.  There’s only so much bleached-brain stupidity a person can handle, you know?  And this new story ET is running about their reporter in a fat suit?  Ugh.  Since when is a size 12 grotesquely fat?  The last I heard, the real average size for a woman was a size 14.  Morons.  I’ll be glad when the current trend of weighing more than 100lbs = lard ass is over.  Bones poking out all over is not attractive, people.  This post is long enough, so i’ll stop here before I go into another tl:dr size rant.