I’m not quite sure why I’m all grumpy blah snarky, I’m going to blame the weather. It’s a good excuse, but anyhow, a grumpy day needs mindless knitting. I forgot the sock at home *gasp* Yes, I forgot the sock, but I have the dishcloth.

Mindless, in my world, apparently translates to in the round lace. Hey, it works for me. It’d work better for me if I had a fifth needle, I’m out of space on these four. Oh well, only 3 hrs ’til hometime.

The pi doily got cast off in a huff last night, after the edging choice ticked me off. I’ll get a photo tonight, ideally. Why yes, I was in a grumpy mood then too, how ever did you guess? 🙂 

Yep, I’ve been crocheting. Any who know me, knows that I declared ages ago that it had to be a damn fine crochet project to tempt me away from my knitting, as it generally bothers my wrist. Well apparently 5 or more years of rest does the wrist a world of good. So Stef tempted me by sending me a doily pattern. I’m a doily junkie, this is a well known fact and suddenly I find myself working out how to read a crochet chart again, with french explinations. Took me just about exactly 2 weeks to do, and if you can find where I fudged a pretty big error, I’ll give you a gold star. 🙂

You didn’t believe me Stef.. well proof is in the photo.

Yes, that is my monitor and desk in it’s messy glory. 🙂

Well in the interest of keeping the wrists happy and in yet another misguided attempt to finish some things, I’ve picked back up a cross-stitch project. Embroidery is a whole different motion than knitting, so it provides variety for my hands and wrists. All good in the ever vigilant crusaide agains carpel tunnel.

I started this project in probably late 1995, although the actual date is lost to the annals of time. As you can see from a page of my webpage, (http://www.uoguelph.ca/~hbogart/craft/stitch/medieval.html)
the words ‘I will finish this!’ has come up often. So here I am again. I will finish this, although as I commented to a friend today, perhaps not until 2010 at this rate!

I’ve started dragging it in to work to put a stitch or three in over my lunch hour, and you can see the current sparse progress.
In 2003 it looked like:

Now as of today:

Not much of a change, but it’s coming. More photos as I get more done. In theory.

.. turns to starting all sorts of things. This time of year seems to just breed the impulse to start start start and not so much the finish finish finish. I do, however, have incentive. The local Needlecraft Guild has its annual Open House in early May. If I want to sumbit things, I gotta finish them. So the race is on!

Anniversary Pi shawl

Started this in January, you saw it a few posts back. I’m on the last ball of yarn. *yay!* Finally. It feels like this sucker has gone on forever. I’ve done about 140 rows all told (I’m 40 rows into the section with 576 stitch section. In an ideal world, I’ll finish all 96 rows of this section with this ball of yarn. Yeah, I’m laughing too. It ain’t going to happen, but a girl can dream.

Mystery Pi doily

Well, alright, so it’s supposed to be another shawl, but how many shawls does someone who doesnt wear shawls need exactly? Ergo with the choice of skinny cotton and skinny needles, it’s become a pi doily. I’m not sure, exactly, how blocking will work out, so it’s got some experimentation coming on that front. We got 4 choices for clue 1, so I rolled a d4. Got a 2, so choice B it was. Even if left to my own devices, I’d of picked something different. I shall leave the choices with the fates.

This is how my mornings nearly always start. Open eyes and see Dalla at that sort of distance. Isnt it cunning how I managed to take the photo so blurry to reflect my own atrocious eyesight? *snicker* I didn’t capture the proper amount of licking that accompanies a calico at this range, or the tickle of whiskers on one’s nose pre-dawn. If I didnt know better, I’d think she was in cahoots with my office to get me up in the mornings. 🙂 

Someday, I really will have it all together and be wonderfully organized and scheduled and all the rest of it. I think that will also involve being composting in a pine box.. so irregular and sporadic updates will just have to do.

This is my pi shawl as of the end of March. Pi shawls, for the uninitated are an unvention of Elizabeth Zimmerman, the knitting guru of all knitting gurus. The shaping of the shawl is based on the fact that the circumference of a circle doubles as the radius doubles. Which in knitting terms means you’ve got chunks of no shaping and then a round of increases. In those chunks, it just begs for some lace.

I have since moved into the next increase section (576 stitches per round.. takes for damn ever), and a new lace pattern. It has to finish sooner rather than later, I only have about 70 grams of yarn left.. this is a finate thing! It will be done! Probably just in time to start another one. For a person who doesnt wear shawls, I seem to knit a lot of them.