On the other other hand...

I'm rethinking the CTH laceweight. Again. Here is my thinking.

It's loud. It's busy. It would do battle with a lacy pattern. And given that I'm also planning to start Magickal Earth sometime this summer, perhaps it would be prudent to keep this one simple. That is my vague but firm decision and it is valid for the next ten minutes, subject to change without notice.

The young'uns have discovered that winding mom's yarn is way fun! Please don't anyone tell them otherwise. We should be finished winding tomorrow. And speaking of my offsprint, at this point I will refrain from mentioning that between them they pulled in a grand total of 28 A's (and three B+'s) on their report cards. To mention such a thing would be boastful and tasteless.

the race is on

I leave on Saturday for a two week vacation. There are two things I really want done and that I really, really don't want to take with me.

1. The Cherry Tree Hill merino, 2400 yards of it, still needs to be wound. I'm maybe half done. Boy, is this ever fun.



The chair was dragged up from the basement to serve this very purpose. It is not good for anything else. It occurs to me now, too late, that it is probably saturated with mouse droppings.

I've never wound this much yarn before and I have no idea whether I'm doing an adequate job, but we'll find out, won't we? I think I've finally settled on a pattern: the feather and fan shawl from A Gathering of Lace. It'll be a little busy but I can live with it.

2. The crocheted small blanket. There are two rows of edging to go, of which I have barely started the first.



Look very closely and you can see the hook at the bottom left. I've done the short side on the left. Most importantly, look! I vacuumed!

in search of a crochet magazine

Until this weekend it had been ages since I had bought a crochet magazine. This is in large part because it is not always easy to find crochet magazines, unless of course one is searching for knitting magazines. In that case crochet magazines will pop up everywhere one looks. And then when one returns to the very establishments where one had spotted a crochet magazine a few days ago, the place is suddenly overrun with knitting, quilting, beading, scrapbooking, woodworking, dirt bikes and naked young women but no crochet anywhere.

I did find a couple of crochet magazines in a local grocery store but they failed to float my boat. One of them, I think it was Interweave, featured only clothes. I am not a fan of crocheted clothes. Admittedly these were a cut above the dreaded granny square vest, but in my little world knitting is for clothes and crochet is for house stuff -- doilies, afghans, fancy-pants edgings, that sort of thing. The other crochet magazine I found that day was entitled, I believe, Crochet World, an rather inappropriate title given that almost the entire issue was devoted to American patriotic items. Perhaps they should consider changing the title to Crochet Nation. But this one looked to be generally less fashion-oriented and I think I will probably check out another issue.

A few days later I visited Chapters and found a couple of little digest-sized magazines that looked more promising: Annie's Favorite Crochet and Hooked on Crochet. I bought one issue of each (for some glorious reason they had back issues still on display), and whipped up this little doily from the August issue of Annie's Favorite.



I don't know what its future will be but it was a quick fun project. And I keep holding it up for the sole purpose of eliciting fawning compliments from my well-trained family.

Official Hiatus

It would appear that I am taking another break from my knitting. I don't plan these things; I simply notice that I haven't knit for a few days and thusly does it become an Official Hiatus.

The trouble is that I have trouble managing two obsessions at once. Summer is almost here and I am not in what I would consider to be bathing suit condition. A new gym has just opened in my neighbourhood. And there went my knitting time. Sadly, starting a frantic workout program on June 12 does not really give one an adequate time frame to prepare for early-summer beaching. Speaking of which, I have not yet selected a project for my vacation. I might start a shawl with the Cherry Tree Hill I babbled about some time ago. Or perhaps I should do a variety of smaller, portable projects.

I did cast on the second flippin' ribbed lace sock and I am loving it as much as ever.

sock one complete

The first of the evil, evil ribbed lace socks is done. I do not know why I dislike these socks so much. It probably has something to do with the 24-row repeat that will never become even slightly predictable to me no matter how many times I slog through it. But there were no real problems, no errors in the pattern or my knitting, not even any tinking that I can recall. I shouldn't complain.

No, hold everything, I would like to complain about the grafting. I split a stitch while kitchenering and did not discover it until I had finished all the stitches and was snugging up the tension one stitch at a time. I ended up having to snip one little bugger of a strand and it left an unsightly bulge on the tip of the toe. It's not pretty but it's going to stay there.

As I see it I have to make a choice. I can make another sock like this or I can amputate one foot. It's a close call.

Oh crap. Bird crap, to be specific.

I have just spent a lovely afternoon knitting on the deck. I had brought my crocheted blanket along in case I felt like doing something mindless, but I decided it was time to get serious about the lacy ribbed sock. It's going quite well and if I feel motivated to pick it up tomorrow I might -- might -- actually finish the thing. The first thing. Of course there will still be one thing to go.

Once the family had come home, though, it became more difficult to keep track of the lacy stuff. They have a tendency to talk. So I picked up the crocheted blanket and found it liberally splattered with bird droppings. As far as I could see I had no choice but to cut the yarn, temporarily tie it off and throw it in the washer. I am trying to type with fingers crossed but I'm sure it will be fine. It's Red Heart. It will outlive the cockroaches.

In happier news, the Magickal Earth shawl from A Gathering of Lace has long been calling to me, and today I finally ordered some royal blue Jaggerspun Zephyr in hopes of some day getting it started. At this point I am not even contemplating the possibility of some day getting it finished. I have, after all, spent a month knitting a single sock.

Due to a complusion to actually finish something...

...I have taken a break from blankets to do some preemie hats.



The four on the right are quite teeny. The one on the left is a bit bigger. I plan to do a few more in the bigger size and then perhaps another batch one size up from that. With all the bigger projects I've started it's a relief to cast on and bind off in one day. Heck, the way I've been going lately it would have been a relief to finish something in a single month.

In that spirit, I continue to plod along on the blankets. I must reiterate that the pink yarn I'm using for the round knit blankie is really grotesquely unpleasant stuff. It's actually a relief to get back to the dirt-cheap Red Heart in the crocheted blanket.

Fair warning: I have rediscovered the crocheter within. Steel yourselves (please excuse the plural - I don't actually flatter myself that I boast Yarn Harlot readership stats but it pleases me to write as though I do) for some hookin' tales.

blankies and more blankies

Having finally finished the husband's sweater I have cast on a new charity project, and I'll be darned if it isn't another blanket. I don't know why I seem to have this preoccupation with blankets lately. This one is the basic round/spiral pattern, though my daughter thinks it currently looks more like a hat.



Check out the yarn label. I don't remember when White Rose stopped selling yarn but I suspect this stuff has been ripening for quite a while. It is quite unpleasant, stiff and scratchy, so I'm hoping a wash will soften it up. And in other stiff, scratchy news...



...here's the blanket I've been crocheting out of a large heap of Red Heart that I didn't know what to do with. This guy has been with me through countless swimming lessons and gymnastics meets, and he'll be keeping me company at another meet tomorrow.

And the Opal sock is still sitting around somewhere. I've decided to finish one sock before I post a picture. Of course cessation of respiration is not recommended.