the socks will not be denied

I'm still down for the count on this end of the world. Can't really say if its getting better since one day it seems to be and the next its cranky as hell. The MRI on friday ought to set things straight. So enough of that, moving on to the interesting things...

I'm still amusing myself with all things yarn. I can knit and crochet laying down pretty well and finished up this cute little crocheted scarf in no time:

In a fit of boredom, I tortured Dooley with modeling it. He did not appreciate it as you can tell from his refusal to even look at me when I was taking the picture. But I think it shows off the scarf pretty well.

I also messed around more with spinning during my vertical moments of the day.

I'm not super crazy about the color of this roving I found in my studio. I had bought it for felting but it mostly just looks white when its felted (don't like that either) so I thought it would make good practice roving for spinning.

This still isn't stellar but its not too bad. I need to take more time to draft the yarn better and I put waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy too much twist into it. (I was totally enthralled by the fact that the roving was looking like yarn and just kept putting more twist into it. I need someone to stand beside me and scream "STOP!" when I get overzealous...) I still have about half of the roving left in this color so I will try again when I'm feeling up to it. I'm totally hooked, can't stop thinking about it....must...spin...more...yarn.......

So I figured since things were going pretty smoothly in the yarn department that I would take this time to knit a couple things that I've been wanting to start for a while.

The first being this extremely pretty lace scarf called Rivolo from Anne Hanson of knitspot. She is my idol when it comes to lace knitting and really, I want to be like Anne when I grow up. So I got the Rivolo pattern and pulled out some pretty fingering weight yarn that is just perfect for this. I tried knitting it with my regular bamboo needles...um...yeah. Now I understand why they make needles specifically for lace knitting.

My mom even went out to the local yarn shop and picked up the correct needles for me. That's how badly I wanted to knit this thing.

Here's how its going:

As I cast on for it, I thought to myself, "I should really work on finishing mom's socks..." I've heard tell that lace requires a lot of concentration and I swear I was paying attention to the pattern but no matter how many times I tried it, it wouldn't cooperate. I ripped it back three times before giving up. (I think lace also prefers for its creator to be sitting up when its knitted so I'll have to give that a go later.)

So then I decided to try this scarf from the latest spin-off magazine I picked up when all this started:

Pretty huh? And its a simple pattern. Here's how that one is going:



I again had the guilty feeling that I should really be working on mom's socks since I figure I have approximately 1,345,65,711 stitches left to go on them (the bright pink and lime green color is beginning to wear, next time she gets black socks) but still, I cast on for the scarf and....ripped that one back three times as well.

Fine.

I can take a hint.

So I've been knitting on the socks.


How much do you think I need to do before they let me wander off to another project? Yeah, that's what I thought too...*sigh* pink and lime green...lime green and pink...knit around and around and around...pink...pink...lime...pink...uuuuugggghhhhhh...