Special Delivery

So I have a big math test next week. I did rather (well, rather excruciatingly) badly on the last one, so I should probably study a lot.

There's also a football game this weekend, and I, as always, am in charge of making sure that the band has lots of new music to play.

Also, I have some reading & transcriptions to do for my other classes.

The upshot of all this, then, is the following rule: I am Not Allowed to Knit, not a Single Thing, until next Tuesday when my test is over. This should be easy enough--it's only a week, right? Right. Except...

Look what came in the mail today.

A package!


Now, where is it from, I wonder?

(aka KnitPicks)

Oh, look, it appears to have ripped open. I don't know how THAT happened.

And look!

Oooohhhh...

This is the yarn, you see, that I ordered for the Anniversary Vests, a big project that has been percolating for quite some time. I was interested in KnitPicks yarn primarily because of, to be honest, the cost (attending a private college and working occasionally as a concert usher does not exactly rake in the big bucks, as it turns out), but I wanted to see what the yarn was like first. The colors I have in mind for the vests are purple and green, so I got a couple of shades of each to try them out.

And some others, just because, well, they're pretty and they're freaking $1.99 a ball!

But what about that math test, you say?

Yes. Well. If you'll excuse me...

Projects Past and Present, Plus Procrastination

...all alliterative, all the time.

But I'm not just being goofy-I really do have something exciting to show off--a real FO!



Noro Iro hat, finally finished on the third incarnation, after about ten months. The first version had fancy cables running up the earflaps and onto the hat-I spent a long time charting and fiddling to get the cables to get bigger as the flaps got bigger, and then knit half of it and realized it didn't work-the yarn colors and slubs obscured the cabling. I got bored and put it away, until last week when I finally fished it out, frogged, and did it for real.

But I really think it turned out pretty OK! The yarn is so gorgeous that the simple design shows it off well, I think.

Yarn: Noro Iro, 50% wool, 50% silk

Needles: Addi Turbo size 9 (love! so smooth, and I love the weight of the cable) and Brittany birch DPNs

Pattern: my own

While I was at it, I also frogged a sweater (well, "sweater"--does anyone remember the "Anthropologie Shrug" from Craftster?) that I never wore because it didn't fit. I'd sort of screwed up the YO increases (I made it last fall, when I was a much newer knitter) and then blocked it bizarrely so it was way too wide, and also too short because I'd run out of yarn.

Better yarn that I will use than a shrug I won't, I decided it, so I ripped it and ripped it good.

(taken when I'd already skeined half of it--there's actually about twice as much yarn).

For a skeining device, inspiration struck. My roommate was gone, and I didn't think she'd be too keen on holding still with her hands three feet apart for an extended period of time, so I devised a solution:

Stacking metal shelf by day, poor man's skein winder by night.

Next project: Bulldogs headband (made in my school colors), out of Debbie Bliss Cotton Angora and Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, my own pattern, ripped off from inspired by the famous Jaywalkers

...meh. I knit the two halves separately and then grafted them together in the middle, and it shows. I'm not thrilled, but I'm hoping a good blocking and especially adding a border will help neaten it all up a little.

There's more on the needles, and in my head, but for now, I'm going to bed-besides, look what I've been knitting instead of doing:

Sigh.

bad dreams

Last night I had a little bit of a nightmare. In my dream, I was looking through my yarn drawer when I came upon the yarn that Leslie dyed for me, the beautiful turquoise and green sock yarn (the yarn that is currently about three feet from me, and my camera is sitting right here, but I'm lazy so no picture right now). As I looked at it, I realized that one of the skeins wasn't sock yarn after all, but fuzzy mohair boucle--AWFUL for socks. I was very upset, and then I wondered whether I had enough of the other skein (which was sock yarn) to make ankle socks.

Very weird. I can't be the only person who's had dreams about yarn, though.

Anyway, more later (after the @#$&! Midterm of Doom later today), that will probably feature pictures of projects past (Iro hat, finally finished on the third incarnation), present (stupid headband, made negative progress last night after realizing that I'm a moron and having to rip a bunch), and future (mittens-to-be).

Later.