it was inevitable

Four things happened all at the same time:

1) I art quilted myself to death. I sat down the other day to work on something and was so disinterested in it I knew I'd hit tilt. Luckily I have overcommited myself in the hobby department so there is always something to turn to when I get sick of one thing.

2) Winter has arrived in Michigan. It is wet and cold and dreary...and I love it. (Quit giving me dirty looks, I can't help it that I like it.)

3) I'm seriously stressing out. I have my appointment to see the surgeon on friday and at this point I'd rather walk naked through a rainstorm of falling cockroaches then hear what he has to say.

4) I finished knitting Rivolo. There is nothing like the end of a knitting project to turn me into a raving lunatic to start more.

So I did.

But first I blocked the scarf. What an adventure that was. Thank goodness I had the foresight to buy blocking wires. I shudder to think at the cussing that would have ensued had I attempted to try to create straight edges with pins.

This was my first time doing any kind of serious blocking. (I think I will be asking Santa for blocking boards, my bass ackwards system seriously left something to be desired.) I give you lace blocking in photos:

Straight off the needles. Looks like a blob of ick.

Drowning in the sink. (I'll never get over the smell of wet wool. Blech.)

Stretched and pinned (after much cussing).




All pretty and lovely.

I seriously love this pattern. There are a few screw ups in my execution but it was my first lace attempt so I'm okay with it. There wasn't any serious mangling going on. The only thing I didn't do was add on more repeats like I originally said I was going to. I needed to, mostly because I went down one needle size since my yarn was on the thinner side. Its so light weight, I totally dig it.

In fact, I like it so much I started a second one:


This baby will be whisking its way to Colorado when its finished to a pink loving chick. (You didn't really think it was for me, did you? Tsk, tsk.)

But I didn't stop there. Oh no, there was serious knitting binging to be done. (Its also a great procrastinating tool when you are a NaNoWriMo chick.)

I cast on and boogied through a couple repeats of Stonewall:

You'll notice that this is not the lovely laceweight I was thinking of using. Since the thing I love most about this pattern its its monstrous size, it seemed counterproductive to knit it in yarn that is the equivalent width of eyelashes. I apparently can be taught.

Instead its Silk Garden Noro sock yarn, which actually works out in my favor since I need 800 yards of it to make the size on the guy modeling it. (I figure it will come down to my knees since I'm so stumpy. But I'll be a warm short person so I won't care.)

This yarn is different for me, its 25% silk and 25% nylon and doesn't have the regular boing-boing stretchy factor that straight up wool does. There were tension issues and frogging at the beginning. But we are in a good stride now. I still figure I can make a career out of knitting this thing. There are nearly 100 stitches in each row. So that means there are 1600 stitches per repeat. I hate math...

I felt a little disconcerted when I realized that I was going to be trapped in this project forever (even though I think its gorgeous and do totally love it) so I dug out some other yarn and started a brainless 2x2 rib scarf:



This bugger is for when I'm laying on the sofa resting my back and can't concentrate on a chart. I'm going to randomly stripe it. This yarn is bulky and huge and in the time that it takes me to knit three rows of Stonewall, I had this much done. Brainless knitting rocks...can I get a whoop whoop?

So its all about the yarn for a while until my nerves have calmed down a bit and my hands have cramped into claws from knitting too much. But they will be happy claws so I won't complain.

We lost power this morning at 3am and DTE didn't manage to get us up and running until around 12:30. Since I get up around 7:30 every morning, it left me a whole lot of time without TV or computer. (Shut up, I know I have a laptop and it doesn't need to be plugged in. I didn't want to drain the battery by writing, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.)

So this was a total knitting day. I don't think I'm done yet either, yarn binge yarn binge yarn binge.

Although I'm thinking Dooley has an even better idea then that:


Knitting and wesites. Life doesn't get much better.