Happy New Year!

I was going to try to come up with a cunning post for today, but I got nuthin'. I got three and a half mroe repeats done on Midwest and I'm sick of it. Not the pattern as I am just sick of looking at the color. I don't know what color I thought it was in the store, but I was wrong. It's not ugly, I'm just sick of it. I will probably go back to the hiking scarf awhile, but before then I need to have a little sewing party. Friends don't let friends knit drunk, but I don't see what's wrong with a little Cosmo and seeming/weaving in. I really need to do it tonight to get the mystery dry in time, so I'm going for it, even if it makes me crazy in the end. Not a long trip there, anyhow.
Well, the day is almost done, and I'm itching to get out of here. One trip to the grocery store for real grapes for the Cuban tradition and one trip to the liquor store for some fermented grapes because, well, I like it. I'm sure I'll be too hungover busy this weekend to blog, so until then have a Joyous New Year.

Happy New Year!!!!!!!

The less is more thing

For the most part, I'm a firm believer in simple elegance. Classic lines, small accents, that sort of thing. I do occaisionally believe in the more the better, especially when it involves things being warm in the winter. You know, like I love a nice, big, warm sweater, a fluffy coat, a thick scarf. Ofcourse, like all things, you can go too far. In my world, a 10" scarf is too far. Especially when it has the potential to be even bigger despite the best of blocking efforts.
Last night I was working on ye olde Midwest Moonlight and couldn't believe how huge it was. The only way it fit on my needle was by squishing it down, and then it had this huge ruffle in it. Everytime I turned my work and straightened it out, I had a doubt. All I could think is that I was spending all this time on this scarf, who's color I wasn't sure about, and who's width had gotten out of hand. Ofcourse, I didn't know what out of hand was, exactly, and couldn't stand to work on it any further without knowing for sure. 25 hours on a project is a committment, and you want it to have good results. To me, anything wider than 9" is bordering on a stole or wrap, and that's not what I was looking for. So, I took the thing and pinned the crap out of it to see what I could remove from the width by stretching it, and the results are what you see above. Too damn big. Even Sunshine agrees that it's too large. I mean look at her face, she's not pleased.
So I looked at the picture and I'm thinking it doesn't look this wide. But in reality it is, because in the picture, much of scarf is tucked under - you really only see 2 and little bit of the 3rd repeats. Wow, the picture is misleading. What a shocker. [end sarcasm] So I pulled the pins out of the scarf, grabbed the other skein of this color and some size US7s (a step larger from the US 6s I used on this) and started knitting again, but this time with only 2 repeats and this is what I got. Much smaller, much more reasonable, and hey! much faster. Thank goodness for that. As I figure, based on the speed I was doing the first one, it was taking me 1 hour a repeat - times that by the number required and you get 25 hours. This is taking me just under 40 mins. a repeat - times 26 repeats (I'm adding one to comepensate for the lesser amount of stretch I get out of it because it's not as wide) and we get just under 17.5 hours. This is so much better for me because:
a) I dont' know when this need to be done by and b) I still have half of another scarf and a whole other one to complete before this unkown deadline. As you can tell by the shock on the face of the great Jordini here, this little adventure is ill advised. However, with only 15 more hours on this project and 13 more hours on the other scarf and probably 15 to 20 hours on the last one, I'll be done in no time! Riiiiiight. If you're definition of "no time" is in fact either
a) done by sometime in the year 2050
b) a span of 48 non consecutive hours (or more)

Then yes, I'll be done in no time.
(You'd better stop making faces like that at me or it's going to stick that way!)

Thanks Mom!

Here is a shot of my beautiful new knitting bag. It was a gift from my Mom for Christmas. Thanks Mom! See that top pocket? It's completely full of needles now. Needles of almost all the sizes that I could use. Only a couple of sets of needles in there are old. The rest were also gifts =) I'm ecstatic. Here is a shot of the inside:

It's already full of many of my WIPs and some other skeins of yarn waiting to be attacked. See all the pockets? I loves pockets. As you can see, some of them have things in them already. Those things are below!:







Look at all those needles! I'm so excited. The dpns you see are size 1 and 2. I hope to get my first pair of socks knit in the New Year. I know this sounds crazy, but I really love knitting tiny yarn on tiny needles. I think it's because I can do it forever, and my hands and wrists don't ever hurt from it. I also got Last Minute Knitted Gifts and Yarn Harlot. Oh! and a wool winder. As you can see I got very lucky this year!
------------------------------------------------
And so onto the WIPs. I want to first say that the Mystery project is off the needles! I'm am sooo ecstatic. I worked my booty off on Friday, and set my Turbos free. It still needs some finishing (weaving in ends. ugh! Don't look at me like that, you don't like to do it either! Plus it's intarsia. Intarsia is a whole different breed of weaving. Think barber poll gone psycho.), it needs a bath, and it needs some extra prettiness. Then wrap it and we're all set. You should see a long in-progress and FO post all in one some time in the first week after New Years. I've also been diligently working on the last of the Christmas knitting. It's after Christmas, you say? Nonsense! Christmas won't hit my Grandmother's house until sometime in January - when their kitchen is done. We'll probably be stopping by there on Monday to give them cookies and a tiny sweater, but they won't get their gifts until we have our "official" dinner. Or until theiy're done. Whichever comes first. Having said that, I am making some progress. Here is the the Irish Hiking scarf. This is the entirety of one ball of slighty chewed Cascade 220. It is in the Heather's Lavender color. It's at about three feet which is good for me. I bought two skeins, so that should make a nice 60" scarf. It's only about 6" wide, which is a little narrow to me, but I still like it. Now for the opposite of this scarf we have Midwest Moonlight. She is knit on size US 6 in worsted weight yarn and is supposed to produce a 9" wide scarf. Do we see a problem here? Maybe not so obvious at first, but let me say that those are 9" long US 6 needles. Now, what do you think? See how scrunched up it is on the end of the needle? See how it has yarn overs and will stretch during blocking? Ruh roh. This isn't turning out to be a scarf so much as a stole. I mean, I like a slightly wider scarf, but sheesh! What's the deal? I'm sure I could put it on longer or circular needles and figure out what the damage is, but I refuse. I love my crystal palace needles and hate using anything longer than 9" unless completely necessary. I may not be able to make many decisions, but when I do, boy do I stick to it! I am in love with these needles and don't want to use any others.
Anyhow, that is 2 out of the 25 repeats that the pattern calls for. I'm going to figure how much one ball of yarn yields and go from there. Whatever that gives me is what I'm going to do, unless it's looking like it would be a ridiculously long scarf. Especially since I'm going to endeavor to block in longer in an attempt to thin it out a bit. I pulled it this way and that last night, and I like the look of the longer pull anyhow, so let's hope it works.

Grinchiness

Happy Holidaze!!!!

May the Grinch be with you. Enjoy your festivities. I'll be back later to show you my frantic after holiday knitting. =)

Devastation

So, last night was a little rough. I left work a half hour early because I was overcome by dizziness and nausea. I had already had such a feeling last Friday. It came on very quickly. I decided to leave work early lest it get worse.
When I got home I was greeted with a tree branch and pine needles all over one of the couch cushions. One small dog had decided that one of the branches on the tree needed to literally be gnawed off, taken to the couch, and chewed to bits. I find this astounding since I still have cuts on my hands from where I carried it and screwed it into the stand. I can't believe her mouth wasn't bleeding.
In my feeling of illness I had no desire to get near it. Boyfriend had left it there for me to prove that the dog could do something so bizarre, and I just let it go. This little demostration had already sealed the dogs fate to be contained in her crate while we are at work. We had felt a little bad about putting her in there as she is a usually fairly well behaved, apart from her propensity to eat bones on the couch and "bury" treats under my pillow. However, it is clear that for the dog's safety, she needs to be contained in the crate where her options for chewing are confined to what I deem dog safe.
Well, you can imagine that after seeing the branch on the couch and feeling as sick as a dog, that I was only in the mood to crawl into bed -which is where I headed off to. Yesterday morning in my rush to get ready, I accidentally left my cabled scarf on the bed. I had meant to bring it with me in the hopes I could stealth knit on it some more. This is what I came home to:

You can imagine my dismay as I came into the bedroom and saw nothing but the splinters of the needles that used to be in the yarn. She ate the entirety of the loose needle, and pretty much all she could of the one that had the scarf on it. She broke the yarn that was attached and destroyed most of the stitches the were live. I was destroyed. I was already sick and this just put me over. I was in tears as I literally picked splinters out of the bed and Boyfriend attempted to gather the dog up and show her that this was not a good idea. Eating Mommy's needles was a big mistake. We both had a long talk with her about how she is no longer allowed to even look at the yarn or the needles. From the look on her face, I think she got it. And I know she got it because this morning when I let her in, without me saying a word, she trotted straight down stairs and into her crate.
Now I don't know what to do. These were the last size 8s from Crystal Palace at my LYS and the other store that I know carries them is in Bethesda. Getting there during the week before Christmas would be no easy feat. Something that I just can't do. I could buy other needles, but I'd rather not. Crystal Palace needles make me soooo happy. I can't bear the thought of having to work on others, if I don't have to.
In the meantime the mystery project is nearing completion. I have 9 more rows of colorwork and 25 or so rows of solid. The last part is seed stitch, so it's going to take a while, but at least I don't have to change colors every four minutes.

So that's where life is right now. Sort of icky, but getting close to better. If I could just get this Christmas shopping done, I think life would be a lot better....

1 spi

In this case, that would be 1 snickerdoodle per inch. Damn! that's a lot of doodles! I've spent all morning in the kitchen baking. Three hour and a half hours straight this morning and I did a couple hours of cooking last night too. Phew!
Here is a shot of all the cookies taht I've been working on. Right now I've done 4 different kinds and I have one type left to go. I think we're looking at 120 + cookies so far! One more thing and then they get packed up. That is if I can keep boyfriend from eating them all!

Desperate times....

Call for desperate measures.....

So I may have been knitting at my desk today, and it may have not been my lunch break and I may have done it for so long that I finished two cable repeats. I may have even done more if a meeting hadn't let out. What? Don't look at me like that. You'd do the same thing if you thought you could get away with it. Just because you actually do work at your work and I don't doesn't mean that I shouldn't get in some knitting in the meantime. Okay, maybe it does, but if you don't get caught.... Besides, I never said I actually did any of those things. We're speaking in the hypothetical here.

So anyhow, despite the lack of pictures here I have been working like a fiend. The box for Asia family went out today (curtsies), and despite a miscommunication in which the woman attempted to set me up with overnight shipping to another continent, it went out well. I swear, though, that I sent out a bigger, heavier box in July for far less. I think they up the prices during the holidays. They can't do that, can they? Hmmmm.

Anyhow, that box ate up some of my time last night, but that didn't stop me from getting to and through the first few rows of another color change on the mystery. That means that once I finish with these colors I get to continue solidly until the end. Miracle of miracles. Ofcourse, I have to get through this part first. Have I mentioned I'm a little stressed?

However, despite having written out today how much I need to knit, and that list not including the cookies that are unbaked, the tree untrimmed and unpurchased, the gifts unwrapped, the clever and lovely tags unmade, and the cards unsent, I'm surprisingly calm today. I've figured that as long as I don't sleep or eat until Christmas, I may just get everything done. Maybe.

Officially out of control

I am amazed at the speed at which I can make things can go from stressful, but manageable, to completely out of control. It's like all of these things that I think of every year build up in my mind, like static electricity, and then they suddenly jump out as soon as it's almost too late to do them. When this happens, I'm usually in a place where I'm able to obtain the goods to make my visions a reality and run madly about the store grabbing things off the shelf and throwing them in my basket thinking that

"Oh it's 60% off, that means I can do it for 6 more people, or 6 times the amount of stuff that I planned to do. And "well if I do this then it should have a home made tag and that should have lovely details and, and, and....."

Well you can see how quickly this can get out of hand. Tack on the fact that if I'm making a bunch of the same thing for several people, I have to do the same thing for all of them. It's not like any of them see what I did for the other person, but in my mind they must all be treated equally. For example this little sweater is for the Asia family. No, the box is still not out the door, thanks for asking though. Last night the package from Amazon with the last of their presents finally came. So I wrapped them, and then I realized that I hadn't written a note to go in this box AND that I had been planning to send them a tiny sweater ornament. You know....the sweaters that I knitted flat, the ones that need to be seamed that I haven't touched yet? Yeah, those ones. THEN, I remembered that I wanted to put a little embellishment on it, so I did this little snowflake star on it with the floss I bought back when this brilliant idea came to me. Ofcourse I remembered that I bought the floss, but where was that bag? I do this a lot. I couldn't possibly make it easy on myself and put the bags on the huge desk that I specifically set up in my office for crafts. That would be too easy. So, there went at least 15 min. to find the damn floss. Standard operating procedure. Which is why what I want to do for everyone for Christmas seems reasonable to complete in the amount of time alotted, but will turn into a mad rush after I'm done embellishing everything to my liking.

Where are those ribbons I bought? What happened to those beads? Didn't I see some glue around here? WHERE DID I PUT THE DAMN SCISSORS!!!

Add to that a hectic work day and the feeling that I must feed the blog and you'll be able to understand what happened when you hear about the woman who's head exploded while doing holiday crafts.

Yours Truly,
The Grinch

My fear of patterns

What you see here is my new scarf. It's for my grandmother. Yes, I only have one grandmother left, and no, she's not getting two scarves. I'm setting the lacey scarf aside right now for two reasons. Those reasons being that 1. I don't think the yarn is soft enough to be a scarf. Really, I'm not sure what it's good for. What do you use scratchy fingering weight yarn for? Something I guess you're going to line. Seeing as how my sewing skills are sketchy at best right now, and I do not own a sewing machine, I'm not lining crap right now.
And 2. I don't think that the yarn is right for the pattern. I really, really love this pattern and I would rather see it out of something lovely and wearable and strong and durable, than out of some flimsy yarn. So now, I have 100g of that tan, sweet, soft alpaca yarn, and 100g of scratchy yellow stuff. I'm not sure what to do with it.
So, in a fit of being unhappy all around with the other scarf and finding this pattern online yesterday, I decided I could make nice scarves that would be usable in the forseeable future. As opposed to the openwork, scratchy wool in a color having nothing to do with winter.
This is the results of a few hours of knitting with Grumperina's tutorial in front of me. It was amazingly easy. I mean, before, I was so scared of cables that I wouldn't even read the pattern when I saw cables. Yeah, I had heard it was easy, but no one tells you why it's easy. It's easy because it's ribbing with one funky thing every few rows. Who knew? (okay everyone knew, but that's not the point)
Anyhow, I could have gotten even more done if I hadn't twisted the cables the wrong way the first time. I didn't think that it mattered that much, but I found that twisting the cables the correct way was easier because you pick the stitches back up in the front, as opposed to the back. The funny thing is that what I find the hardest about cabling is getting my needle back into the three stitches to cross them. Not the acrobatics or the memorization, just shoving the needle in the loops. I sit there for the longest time trying to get through that third loop. I think if I needed to cable 8 or more, I'd have to use a needle. Perhaps I will be singing a different tune after I finish this scarf.
The yarn is Cascade 220, which I really love. I wanted the cables to really pop and so I though it needed to be a good sturdy yarn, but it's a scarf and I wanted it to be soft too. I think this is the best of both worlds, especially when you consider that most of the world isn't allergic to wool, like me =) Even I think this is fairly soft. So I bought two skeins of this heathered purple for this and two skeins for Midwest Moonlight from Scarf Style. I normally wouldn't buy pink or consider this pattern, but Subway Knitter inspired me. Her scarf is really pretty, but I fell in love with a darker, heathered pink at the store (I think those little picture frames did something to my brain.....I hope it stops, because I look terrible in pink and purple). At least they're not for the same person, however they do live in the same house. I figure as long as they don't stand close together whilst wearing them they won't make too many people run crying into the streets.
One final thing...
These two knits are for my Aunt and my Grandmother, who dwell in the same house as my Grandfather. Do we see a problem here? Am I now signing myself up for another Christmas knit? I think I did (inserts string of obscenities worthy of a sailor here). Well, at least they have post-poned Christmas until their kitchen is done. Let's hope the contractor is real slow.

Is it girly in here, or is it just me?

So, they're done. The picture frame, letter thingies, that I don't have a name for are finished. Apologies for the darkness of the photos. It didn't look so bad on the camera, but when I saw it next to the other ones I took, I was a little disappointed.....and a little late. Which is why you have to see them like this. I just couldn't be any later to work than I was already on my way to being. So there you have it.
They're a little painful to look at. I think this is a good thing. Otherwise they wouldn't be girly enough. The plan was to make them bright and happy and all little girl. Sick to the stomach, girl, if you know what I mean. If you have a daughter, or little sister, I know you do. I think the classic-ish frames help tone them down enough for their mother to actually display them, though, so all in all, I'm pleased.

On the knitting front, again, nothing to show you. You who I can't trust not to click the link. You know who you are. I have, however, been flooring it on the mystery project. I decided to just shut up and knit and it's working well, I must say. After a little bit of pain on Friday, and working diligently over the weekend, I'm 9 or 10 rows to the second to last color change, which is awesome - especially since the last color change involves using a color that is already attached, thus, not nearly as painful as all the others have been. This is a good thing considering I have both looked forward to, and dreaded these changes. Yea! a change, I'm doing good, but oh man! I have to change. I don't think intarsia is my thing. I could do it at the center of a sweater or something, but as the whole project, count me out. Unless you have some miracle yarn to fix my stitches at the color change, I think I'm better sitting this one out. However I am now very intersted in enterlac. That scarf at knitty is really awesome. I'd link it, but I'm lazy. It's the only enterlac thing, c'mon, you can figure it out. =) But for now I'm settling on learning to cable. More on that tomorrow, cuz work is done and I'm fleeing. Cya!

Today's post brought to you by the letter M

And R, but I like the M better.

So here we are, another few steps closer to these things being done and out the door. Yeah, right, like finishing means I'm going to wrap them and pack them. Have you seen the pile of stuff I have to wrap?? Well, no, I guess you haven't. You'll just have to take my word for it, it's going to be awhile. That's a lot of wrapping.
Anyhow, last night I managed to sand, base coat (with gesso), paint two layers of color, polka-dot (now a verb as well as a noun), and put two layers of sparkly-ness on these puppies. Aren't you proud? Too bad I'm not done. The painting part is finished. I hope. I have to keep talking myself out of removing the polka dots. They're cute, but they are over the top a little. They kind of hurt my head. You know, the way it feels to walk into the girly dress up aisle in the toy store. Like,

Ack! I'm blinded by pink sequins and cheap feathers.

Well, maybe not that bad, but along those lines. The more I talk about it, the more I want to paint them over. The thing is, what you can't see is that I did the sides in the opposing colors and that was sort of a pain in the butt. Not only that, with that shiny stuff on them (it's a top coat sealer/finisher deal), I'd probably have to sand them to start over. That just sounds like waaay too much work right now. I think we'll be sticking with the initial plan.

That means that all I have left is to put the finishers on the background and on the letters. For that purpose I have these. You can see on the M up there that I put a piece of ribbon on the backer. It's not glued, but I wanted you to get an idea of what I was planning. One vertical, one horizontal and then where they meet these little rosette things will go. Then a few of these beads glued onto the letters for added interest - hopefully elegantly and not tack-ily (I'm making words up all over the place today. Sesame street would not be proud), and I'll be done. In theatre we have a phrase that the crew loves and the artists hate - done is good. As in, it doesn't matter whether or not it is right or wrong, if it's finished, it's perfect. Part of me loves this and part of me hates this. Tonight before I glue on the letters on, I'll be fighting myself tooth and nail about the polka dots. It will be interesting to see which side wins.

I've got $5 on the side that the artist hates...any takers?

She's crafty.....and she's just my style

Okay, so here's your FYI, no knitting pictures contained within:

So last night I came home to the first of three boxes to be delivered by Amazon. This is a good thing and an oh so bad thing. The good part is that it's always fun to open boxes of things you ordered, especially when they surprise you and come earlier than you expected. It's not so good when you have been using the fact that the boxes are not yet there as the excuse to not finish the craft that you're making as a gift. You know, the one that should have been done a month ago when you first bought the ingredients. The one that if it had been done, could have been wrapped and packed with the other things that came in the amazon order - the package that should have been shipped off last week. Okay, so I have a little problem with getting boxes, and myself for that matter, out of the house on time. So this thing is gonna' be a little late. The good news is that the longest and most difficult part of this project is done. See these? These are the backings to the picture projects I'm making. They are for my sisters. They are ultra girly, and I love it. I want for my two little ladies to never grow up.
These are the backs of picture frames each with a piece of scrapbook paper glued and then a piece of frosted paper glued onto them. The first step went really well. I use, and love, modge podge for all my gluing needs. It's great stuff. The first paper went on smoothly. Then I tried to do the second layer. I'm not sure what happened, whether it was the amount of glue, the type of glue, or the fussy paper, but it bubbled and wrinkled like crazy. You can really see it on the one on the left because the pattern on that frosted paper isn't so obvious. I was really hearbroken. I felt so stupid for not making a tester peice or something first - but I didn't really buy any extra paper because I didn't think I would have any problems. At least when I checked them this morning, the bubbling wasn't nearly as gross as it was last night. I guess the glue dried and it relaxed a little. Thankfully.
So here is roughly what they'll look like finished. It occurs to me now that the letters are backwards, as in the "R" goes in the left one and vice versa, but it's no biggie, they're not glued or anything. The letters still need to be painted and decorated. Somewhere in my disaster of a house there are cute little pink and purple flowery details with pearls in the center. At least I think there are. At this point I'm not entirely sure if I bought those little things at Joanns or not. I have to go there today to buy paint for the letters (not that I have any clue what color to paint them), and wood glue, and perhaps some more little details, because it is likely that I will never ever find them - unless I purchase new ones. You know how that is.
So this is what I did with most of my knitting time last night. You will be proud to hear that I did an extra three rows above the mandatory four that are required to get this done somewhere near d-day. My hands are, however, killing me. Things are starting to pop and fizz when I'm working on this project. I'm not sure if it's because insist on knitting so tight with a yarn that's not really interested, or if it's the weight of it, or the weight of the needles. It could be the fact that one row contains 140 stitches, thus I did 980 stitches in less than two hours last night. That might have something to do with it. Also, the yarn twisting for the intarsia isn't helping either. But at least the project is moving. I see on my list that I need to do 2 more tiny sweaters to finish those up so maybe I'll do one of those tonight instead. They can be rough on the hands, but in a different way. At this point, that's a good thing. I'll take what I can get.
The last issue I have is with the holiday wreaths I'm trying to make. They are just not working the way I want them to. The first one was pathetically small, so I decided to make a larger one. I did thirty stitches five rows in pattern (k1 k1tbl all rows), but it doesn't really seem interested in twisting. I don't really get it. I'm pretty close to giving up on this sucker. The only solution I can think of is to stitch it together lengthwise inside out and then right side it and tie the ends together. Then it would be a tube and stay put. Frankly, I just don't know if this is going to get done for this year or not. I'm a little busy, but any suggestions you have to make this damn thing work are welcome. =)

Damnit! Where's my magic wand?

Or Bippity-boppity-boo-hoo, but that's way too cheesy, even for me.

So today has been all about wishing for my very own magic wand to fix all that ails me. I just wanted to :zap: so many things to fix them.
:ZAP: Caffeinated coffee in the pantry so that I could be civilized this morning :ZAP: get rid of the splitting migraine from not getting the coffee that I didn't have in the pantry this morning. :ZAP: downsize all those holiday shoppers that have overtaken Target that are interefering with my ability to get coffee to spare myself another viscious coffee-less morning. :ZAP:.....well you get it.

I would have written earlier, but I was too busy trying to quell the demon in my head with diet coke. After having convinced my stomach to accept the drink and give it to the gremlin, things are better. As you can imagine, life without coffee in the Addictive household gets ugly. The fact that I forgot to purchase more on the last trip to the store is a sure sign that life is getting too hectic.
One good thing has come of being unable to see straight from the "there's a nail in the side of my head" feeling that I had today, and that is, Christmas presents. While they should have been in the mail, say, a week ago, sadly they are not. Some of them are still on their way from Amazon. Said gifts are for family that resides in Asia. A place that it takes about a month to ship things to, especially during this over commercialized giving season. There are members of this family that I am never able to think of cunning gifts for, and am constantly walking the store looking for presents for. Usually I get distracted and walk out with nothing. In my caffeine-free haze, I found that I didn't care anymore about the perfect gift and managed to just grab things off the shelf that they will hopefully like. I'll never find the perfect thing anyhow, but I think I got close enough.
What about some handknit gifts you say? To that I say, there are 6 of them, 2 are teen/pre-teen boys, and they live in a place where the only way they could feasibly wear a sweater/hat/mittens/any of the above is if they cranked the A/C (if they indeed have A/C over there) on extra full blast and wait a week - and then, only in their house. No, for people who can spend their Christmas pool-side, I just buy gifts from stores they don't have over there. Which in this case, is just about every store you can think of. They will, however, receive one tiny sweater to hang on their tree, or whatever it is that is standing in for their tree.

On to the knitting....
You might be saying to yourself that you don't see any pictures in this blog. Yeah, sorry about that. The thing is that I have, in fact, been knitting like a fiend and can't prove it. I spent Sat. and yesterday knitting up a storm, but you've seen it already. I could dazzle you with more pictures of tiny, non seemed, sweaters, but you can go back to the post yourself. Show you a slightly longer lace scarf, but again, same thing. I could show you absolutely lovely photos of the mystery project, but even if I said that if you were the recipient you shouldn't look here, I know that some people couldn't resist. No, no, don't try to sweet talk me, I'm too caffeinated to fall for any of that now. You must wait for the gift to be given, and then I will display it in all it's goodness. Don't worry, I'm taking progress shots. Currently that project is over half way (okay only three rows over half way, but it's still over the half way point, sheesh) complete and I couldn't be happier. I feared that there would be no way in hell that I would ever finish this project by Christmas, but it now appears possible. I just have to knit like a whirling dervish on uppers for the next however many days until Christmas. I'd figure that number out, but I think it might scare me. I will not be feared!
On other fronts, I'm currently looking for a pattern to use the other fingering weight yarn. I was planning on making another lace scarf out of it for another Christmas present but don't want to do the same pattern, and don't think that the airy nature of this yarn would be good for the one I'm doing currently. So the search is on, again, for another perfect lace scarf pattern. Surely there is one in the book I ordered, but it is the only thing left to ship on my enormous amazon order that I placed. They have already shipped me two separate boxes off the same order because they are waiting for things to come in. Ofcourse the one little thing I order for myself is the only thing left behind. Likely I won't get this until it's too late to use any of the patterns from it for Christmas. Classic.

Where's my wand again??

A real FO report on the Scarf

I just wanted to make a more formal FO post about the scarf. You know, something to build on for the future. A FO template, if you will.
Plus those pictures I posted are hideous and I want to pretend that never happened. So here you have it.


Yarn:3 full hanks of Manos de Uruguay, Cotton Stria. (That link is one of the few places you can buy this online. It calls the yarn heavy worsted, but that's utter crap. It may look that thick because of the loft, but it doesn't knit that way. I'd say worsted at most.)
Color: White (though I'd call it off-white at the very least)
Needles: Crystal Palace US 6 9"
Gauge: Couldn't tell ya'
Pattern: 2x2 ribbing forever
Notes: This yarn is positively wonderful. It's soft and cozy, easy to knit with, looks like boucle but doesn't pull that way. There is a nice firm strand around the kinky strand that keeps it from bunching or getting too difficult to control. It also blocked out pretty well considering my mistakes and the ribbing and that it's cotton. I was a little worried while it was drying that washing (handwashed in woolite in lukewarm water/soaked a half hour then soaked in clean water a half hour) or blocking was going to mess with the fluffy texture or loft of the yarn, but it didn't. It was pretty icky looking when it was about half dry, but when I upinned it, it went back to being cozy. Much to my relief. It also lost some of it's tendecy to stretch vertically, which is a relief. Maybe it's just that the yarn relaxed a little in it's bath and it's pulling so much anymore. I did pull it a little horizontally when I blocked it, but not length wise. I ran out of futon as it is.