Sorting

Today has been a sorting & thinking day. Now that one big project is done, I am looking at what to concentrate on next. I keep all sorts of knitting-related lists on my Palm Treo, and as I went through the yarn & projects stored in little hidey-holes and some out in the open (trying to excavate the coffee table), I added things that I had forgotten to add to my inventory as they arrived, and deleted some things from my Works in Progress list (rrrriiiippppp!).

I have been asked to teach socks at our guild meeting this coming Thursday, so I have pulled out my sock books and the 3 pair I have currently in progress. And I swatched for another pair, so I can demonstrate casting on for two socks at once, toe-up on Magic Loop, using Queen Kahuna's Aloha Cast-On. One of the in-progress pairs could be finished by Thursday if I just sit down and work on it, but then again, it would give me something to show them for Magic Loop once you get to the sock legs. I think I'm just going to take enough needles & yarn that I can show them whatever method they want to learn, including dpns and 2 circs, toe-up, cuff-down, whatever. It's a small enough group that I could do all of the above.

The stole has passed its quality inspection:

I pinned it to 27" wide, but I just could not get it 83" long -- it's about a foot short, and I don't care! It more than covers my wingspan, and Mom & I are the same height, so it will be fine.

She is DONE!

Leda's Dream is finally finished. While she is bathing in Soak, I have made preparations for her blocking. Loaded the woodstove, carried in more wood to feed the stove for the next several hours, as the most direct route from the wood pile to the stove would take me directly over the living room rug where the stole will be blocking, and we wouldn't want to try to step over the stole balancing a huge chunk of wood and dropping wood debris on the floor. Sent the dogs outside, vacuumed & Febreze'd the rug. I'll lay a sheet on the rug before I put the stole down.

The smell of woodsmoke in the cold air outside reminds me of the little town in the Italian Alps where I learned to ski in 6th grade (um, 33 years ago -- yikes!). Just one of the perks of growing up as an Army brat. We lived in Italy for 3 years, a couple of blocks from the beaches on the Mediterranean Sea, in a little town named Tirrenia.

Finally got the College Girl back to school last week. They had an extended semester break because of the ice storm that came through on the 12th. There was so much damage and power outages were so widespread that the University, which had originally scheduled Spring semester classes to begin on the 16th, closed for an extra week. Classes started last Monday (1/22) instead.

Here she is, modeling the scarf I mentioned in the last post:

A closeup of the scarf:

Pattern: My So-called Scarf
Yarn: Handpaintedyarn.com I'm not sure which yarn -- possibly the handspun bulky. The color is "shells", which doesn't appear to exist anymore. I was quite pleased with the patterning -- it just happened, and even continued when I joined the second skein. You can see in the photo above, however, that there was a segment (below her left hand) that didn't pattern like that. C'est la vie.

Making progress

I have managed to keep up with my decision to do 10 rows a day on Mom's stole, and have just finished the 4th of 5 chart repeats. Each repeat is 84 rows, so I'll be done in something over a week! There are about 20 rows after I complete the charts, plus some edging, so it'll be several extra days, but the end is in sight!

I have been working on other things, as well. I thought my daughter would like the Calorimetry headband from Knitty.com, so on a recent trip to St. Louis, I investigated a yarn shop called Kirkwood Knittery (no website), and found some lovely yarn made by Malabrigo. But since I was too lazy to check the yarn requirements for the pattern, I bought the wrong weight of yarn. No problem -- I'm a smart girl; I can do math. I did my calculations and started the headband. Didn't take too long, and I had plenty of yarn. When it was done, I had the Princess try it on, and we decided it needed to be narrower and shorter. I frogged it and started over -- 64 sts on size 13 needles for the Malabrigo gruesa, a chunky weight yarn with a gauge of 2.25 sts/inch. I modified the short rows, too, because the turning holes were way too big with this yarn, so I left one as the pattern says to do it, which is now the buttonhole, and I wrapped & turned the rest of them. I repeated the short rows until there were 14 stitches on each end and 36 in the middle, then short-rowed back up to 64 and bound off. It's still pretty wide, but she seems to like it.

I made one for me out of Malabrigo aquarella, but decided I'd rather make some fingerless mitts out of it. I made these up as I went -- they're very quick & easy.

I also made a scarf for the Princess, but haven't gotten any pictures of it yet, so maybe that will give me a reason to blog tomorrow, hmm?