I suppose I should be grateful that unlike most of my work, the numbers are going down rather than up. Raglan shaping takes 8 stitches out on every frontside row and unlike my usual from the centre out lace, every other row is just a few less to work. I have no photos today, the sweater looks very much like the last photos of it. A big heavy blog of blue-green wool. Unless it’s green-blue wool. I never really have worked out what the difference is between the two. I think it is the never ending rows of sweater than has caused me to lose my mind.

Knit off 2007. Because somehow in getting slaughtered mercilessly in Sock Wars, I’ve decided that I should be a competative knitter. I knit slowly and I’m easily frustrated with the attention span of a ferret on pixie stix. This should be amusingly brief.

Or something like that. I do hate this time of year, there is something about Jan/Feb that is instant blah for me. Which means a lot of sitting around staring blankly and not doing anything. I have, however, momentarily shaken off the blah and dug out some photos of things I’ve been working on when I dredge up the attention span to do anything.

Finally I am making progress on Mariah. I’ve finished the bits in pieces and am now doing the join it all together on one big circular to do the shoulders and yoke. It has gotten unwieldy and distinctly not photogenic. See?

I’ll provide a little sleeve cable porn just to appease folks that there really is more to the sweater than greenyblue blob of yarn. Isn’t this just lovely? If I do say so myself?

Nothing like keeping track of sleeve shaping and cable patterns with distinct repeats that aren’t all the same all that same time. I did most of the sleeves in Scotland at my grandmother in law’s dining room table with papers spread out everywhere to keep notes. I expect every time I look at the sleeves I’ll remember the quiet, the smell of the coal fire and have a wee bit of Scotland along with me.

When I haven’t been working on the sweater, I’ve (of course) got a sock on the go. This sock yarn is to die for. Apple Laine fingering weight yarn, 50% merino, 20% silk, 20% kid mohair and 10% nylon. Yum. Yum. Yum. The silk and mohair takes the dye and makes the colours just glow. Honestly, I think I knit this just to pet the yarn. I’m knitting Apple Harvest sock pattern with the Sea Breeze colourway. Even better, the yarn company is based just outside of Ottawa, where I grew up. It might not be local to me anymore, but it still feels local. I’ve only just started the second sock. I should (thank you having little feet) have enough for a second pair of ankle socks. Maybe. Pretty darn close at least.

Apparently posting regularly is something I just can’t manage. So anyone who actually reads this is going to have to cope with my sporatic and erratic self. Granted, most people who read this already know this little tidbit about my personality quite well indeed.

Two weeks in the UK without internet was very good for knitting time. Two weeks home with net connection and right before Christmas is very bad for knitting time. The best laid plans of ‘no knitting for presents’ was shattered by a little Gosh wouldn’t new hand knit socks be nice, I wear the ones you made for me every night comment from my mother. A week before Christmas. *sigh* So I’m madly knitting socks. Which can’t be too tight, and must be plenty long enough (I am not grafting the toes until after I’ve given them and she tries them on). Thank goodness for worsted weight mohair blend that knits up on big needles. They should go fast if I ever sit down to actually work on them.

After the socks for Mom then I can return to my UK knitting. Mariah. Back is done, sleeves are done, one front is done. Well one front needs ripping back to where I want to put in short rows to let my fitted sweater fit my curves. Straight sweater + curvy figure = poorly fitting sweater.
I got on a roll and just knit right past where the short rows should be and I’ve been balking at ripping. I know I should, but really, I’m just being lazy. I’m good at lazy.

For anyone who’s local, we’re having a holiday open house on Saturday the 23rd. Email, comment, phone, whatever for details if you’re interested in stopping by. Low key I promise! Come for 5 mins to escape the family if you like. *grin*

I did promise a photo of my brand new sock yarn and I did warn it was dayglo orange. Alright, so it’s really orange and pink and red and yellow, but the overwhelming colour that most pull away from it is screaming ORANGE! A friend asked, after seeing all my socks on my blog, what it was with funny coloured socks. I like colour. I like bright zingy happy colours. I like stripes, I like varigated yarn. I like all the things that would make my ample self look like a circus tent designed by a colour blind lunatic if used in a garment. I’m a pretty confident fat person. Hell, I wear electric blue without blinking twice, but stripes are (nearly always) right out. I do not need to visually make my already wide self look twice as wide. I do, however, have these nice skinny little feet. Which get shoved into shoes. Hot diggety! Perfect spot for stripes and varigations with an added bonus of if the stripes are really ugly, well it was only a sock or two. Not a deep profound commitment of yarn and time. And you can just wear them in boots. Then no one has to see your shame but you.

The lace saga continued. The very next row after yesterday’s photo was, to put it mildly, fubarred. 26 stitches on the needle. 24 stitches required for the next row. I know my math can be a little creative without sufficient coffee, but even I can spot that 26 != 24. Well. Damn. So lunch hour looked like this.

The one on top with crayon is my original rechart. (Hey, I cross off rows as I knit them, and during the train game on Sunday, all I had was my crayon. I’m always blue in train games. Just like I’m always SpinBot in RoboRally.) The one underneath is yesterday’s rework of the last 6 pattern rows. I kept with what I figured was the original intent of the piece, but what the doily looked like and what the original char looked like had very little to do with each other. Yes, I did make sure that my original chart was correct from the website. Faithful copy. The little wee doily comes in at a mere 6.5″ across, as blocked with push pins on a mouse pad.

Next post (whenever that may be), the never ending green shawl. 10 repeats down of 13 (it still looks awfully short), and then edging. Edging generally goes on forever.

Hello, my name is Jazmin and I’m a lace junkie. Chorus of voices Hello Jazmin.

Shawl be damnned (why is it, exactly, that my lace shawl doesn’t feel in my own bones like real lace? I think it’s the purl rows.), I needed a doily. Just a little one.. take the edge off the lack of crisp cotton and teeny needles that has been my life. I’d say ‘I can quit anytime’, but I’d be lying and you all know it.

For scale because I stupidly left out the ruler, it’s only 3.25 inches across at the moment. Just a little wee hit of lace. It’s Bellflower, and I’m working it on 2 mm needles with size 20 cotton. A little smidge of my beloved six strand Coats and Clark vintage cotton that is long long since lost to this world. Crisp and sharp and lovely to work with. *Mournful sigh* That’s 28 rows into the 38 row pattern. It will be itty teeny. I recharted it (badly I will add) because the original chart made my eyes cross.

Before I caved to the lace side, I did finish my socks.

I am going to give these some walking time to see how I like the fit of the short row heel and toe with my foot. So far, not bad, but so far I’ve only walked from house to car, car to office. Not exactly much of a stress test on socks. It doesn’t help that I’m trying them in clogs, which equally isn’t much of a stress test. Stuff these suckers into running shoes or docs and see how they cope then. Ha!

I stopped by our newest yarn store on the weekend (finally!), to have a wee look around. High end stuff, which actually is a feature and sensible. We have a discount store that has as much red heart and patons and bernat yarn as you can stomach and the wall of slaughtered muppet yarn is more than most can stomach. Trying to compete with slashed discount prices is retail suicide. You cannot, however, get Koigu or Noro or Debbie Bliss yarn or Philosopher’s Wool (Yay local supplier!). I am glad to be able to have somewhere to go pick up high end yarns. It’s a good compliment to the staples. In honour of a new yarn store, I felt a little more sock yarn into my stash wouldnt go amiss. I mean how can you go wrong with an extra ball of Regia in dayglo orange? I forgot to note the colour number, I’ll take a picture of it tomorrow. Or just start it into socks. 🙂

I sat down at my desk this morning at work and thought ‘Well, that whole post a day thing didn’t last long, now did it’ followed shortly by ‘I meant to post about my killer socks’ and a little bit of ‘mmm, new to me boots’. So while mumbling to myself (It’s a good thing I’m the only morning person in the tech alcove) and flipping the page on my page a day quote calendar I read this:

“I have little feet because nothing grows in the shade.” – Dolly Parton

Well. My day is full of feet. Socks and boots and quotes, oh my! It’s a common refrain in my house that I have small feet. I don’t really, they’re a fairly standard north american women’s size 7 ish (like everything clothing for women, sizes are really only a vague guideline. But that’s a whole other post). This is hardly ancient foot binding small, but when put next to the snowshoes that my best beloved tromps around the world on (size 13 mega wide), well they look pretty little. Little and covered in killer socks. Yes, it is true, after over 2 weeks in the loving *cough* grasp of Canada Post, my Sock Wars socks finally arrived.

I am finally dead, but dead with warm feet. And I got the socks I knit (I know! No pictures. Bad Jazmin, no biscuit.) into the mail before I died. Life doesn’t get much better for a sock warrior than that. In honour of my death, I am working on my cotton socks. Because nothing says ‘you need cotton socks’ like snow waiting on the ground in the morning.

8 repeats of feather and fan down, 7 more to go. In theory, shouldn’t be too much longer. I might even manage to finish today depending on if I get a seat on the bus or not.

Yes bus. Home again to wait for a furnace repair guy to come and not be able to install the part that I do not think will arrive today as it sure didn’t arrive yesterday (as it was supposed to). At least we’re starting to get furnace people to arrive. That was a challenge earlier in the week, and we do have heat currently, even if the furnace drains into a bucket rather than condensation getting pumped to where it’s supposed to go. Heat is a Good Thing ™.

Perhaps a cute cat photo will serve as apology for 2 months of silence. Whoops. Dalla was positive that we folded up the blanket and put it on top of the rodent cage in the living room Especially For Her. Then again, she’s a cat. Everything in the world is Especially For Her.

I’ve been in a handwork slump of late, creativity slumps when I’m busy, and I’ve been busy doing.. not much of anything. Online game things, rattling around having my creativity in storytelling rather than handworking. I really need to find a way to have a second set of hands so I can type and knit simultaneously. Or spin, or embroider, or or or.

I did, teach a dye class at the Needlecraft Guild in late September. I totally forgot to get pictures of my sample skeins, hopefully tonight I can get some photos of my student’s work if they remember to bring them. Pictures later this week. I promise. Kick me in the shins if I forget!

I did participate in Sock Wars, although my socks are MIA and this is, as best I can tell, not entirely unusual. I’ve sent mine off (*cough* perhaps a touch late on the mailing *cough*), but of course, I forgot to take a photo. Whoops. This is the story of my life. I make a terrible blogger. No photos!

I did dig out a sock that had been languishing and got back in gear on it. Alright, so perhaps the morning frost has been enticing me away from bare feet, but that’s besides the point. A day of family reunion (my husband’s) with other knitters (who think it’s normal to dig out one’s knitting when sitting around after supper eating cake) got me this far on a toe up sock.

I need a few more family reunion days to actually get this sucker done so my toes stop freezing. Amusingly enough, my sister in law had on socks from the very same yarn as I did. Ahhh, nothing like a family of knitters.

We’re home from GenCon and a week later, I think we’re both finally not exhausted all the time. It was a blast, but damn it’s tiring. We worked our tushes off, shopped ’til we dropped and in the end, Malkie is quite convinced that the box our swag came in was clearly brought home just for him. Dalla could take boxes or leave them, but they are Malkie’s one true love. At least for the moment.

The handwork hasn’t done much while I’ve been away. The shawl is not getting far, I worked on a sock in the car.. of course somehow I decided to do a sock at 8.5 spi, so it’s slow going and will be bulletproof eventually. I finally went with the shortrowed feather and fan sock by Wendy. The toe was interesting enough, perhaps not ideal for working on in the back seat of a car moving at 80 mph on bumpy highways, but it seems to have survived. Photos when my knitting and the camera are in the same place at the same time. Tomorrow perhaps. 

I’ve even been working on my shawl. Still the 3/4 Fir Cone shawl, it’s coming along in that ‘looks just the same but bigger’ sort of way. I’m 7 and a half repeats through the 13 suggested. More than halfway by the numbers, but every row is longer than the last. Go back a few posts.. look at the shawl.. squint until there is more muted green yarn scrunched up and that’s what it looks like currently.

I have, however, continued on the ooh shiney side. I’ve forgotten the earrings I’ve done at home, but I do have yesterday’s necklace.

Alright.. I’m a knitter at heart, but as I’ve commented to any number of people.. I have all the ooh shiney factor of a ferret on pixie stix. I like sparkley, shiney, glittery and colourful. So I suppose it was somewhat inevitable that I ended up coming to the bead side. I mean compared to lace, this stuff works up in a blink of an eye! I’ve done some stringing already, and I put that on the ‘brain dead monkey’ skill level. Armed only with bits of wire and some needlenosed pliers, I decided to get all the way to the ‘raw beginner’ level and play with little wire loops. These were my first try (that left the bead bin that is).

Last night I decided to knuckle down and do some more experimenting and came out with these. Now, this is on the order of a garter stitch scarf or ‘hello world’ in the beading scale of the world, but I’m still pretty pleased with myself.

Thank you thank you to S. for taking the photos for me. My poor little camera just couldn’t cope at all.