blog slacker, but looky here!

Yes, I haven't blogged in almost a month. Wine trips, working lots, medical stuff, best friend visit, birthday party, 35th b-day retreat off in the scary woods. . .all that takes its toll on knitting time. Plus, when you have a project like this staring you down. . .I've been reading other people's knitting blogs because I'm forbidden to start another project until this monster is complete. Looks close, right?

Not so fast, buckaroo: all those fuzzy things hanging down are ENDS TO BE WOVEN IN. And there are more on the backside. Eek. The whole thing consists of 188 individual crocheted blocks stitched together (so technically, it's not on the "sticks"). Yes, Fiber Police, it's Red Heart acrylic, but lighten up--it's an on-the-floor, pull-on-the-faces, needs-to-be-durable BABY BLANKET. I'm still batting for the natural fibers team. It came from a Leisure Arts pattern book--the original was made in cute crayola brights but the baby-in-mind's room is pastels and safari animals. The tan faces are actually earless-for-now dogs--the ears have ends to be woven in, too! Though I'm really pleased with how it turned out, I would have to be certifiable to do it again, though I have enough yarn to do another one. Only if I can never afford another item for my yarn stash to make a new project. I'm having trouble loading closeups of the animal faces, probably because I had my camera settings wrong and these are jubungai pictures.

I thought giving myself three months 'til due date to finish it was plenty, but Sadie is now four months old! I've been having nightmares and denial about this thing, because I calculate that there are something like 4o0 ends (I figured out only halfway through making the blocks that I could stitch over the ends as I was starting a new color, duh). Despite my vows to not pick up another project until it was done, here's what I've been working on in the meantime:

These will always be the Leprosy Socks to me--I used Cascade 220 Quatro in 9434 Colorway (I am a bad impulse shopper in LYS's, this time The Yarn Garden in Gig Harbor--I don't even wear turquoise blue!). The pattern was Knitting Pure & Simple's Beginner Socks in worsted weight. Easy--too easy. Why do I listen to yarn shop owners who are used to working with the beginner novelty yarn crowd? I have never met a knit stitch I didn't like or couldn't learn from a book. So of course I got bored with the idea of endless stockinette stitch and decided to add my own pattern to the instep. If you can see it at all (not a good match with the colorway), you can tell that I should have started it a few rows earlier, when I separated the stitches into heel and instep. It was a boring waffle weave stitch from my old pattern dictionary (once, it seemed like it had a lot of stitches but now when I look at it compared to the Walker books, it's the two-moss-stitch-one-cable-stitch snack version).

And finally, here's the project that started it all:
Faina's in a delectable maroon (for Maroon Fridays at U of Puget Sound!) merino/cashmere blend from La Lana/Mondial? Not sure if I'm reading the label right. The pic is terrible at showing the lovely chevrons (I think this is about midway through the third repeat). Sadly in need of blocking--perhaps merino has too much stretch for this pattern--even with the seed stitch border, it wants to curl up on itself like a hug, and I'm now certain that the cast-on edge is too tight and will always be kinked up, making the fringe look all hurky.

So today, since I have a stupid summer cold and Buck is working, and I am trying hard not to dump it all and go visit the Seattle yarn shops (still have Acorn Street, So Much Yarn, and Tricoter to have seen them all this summer), and because I want to buy a little yarn at Needlepoint Joint when I get too tired of parents on the upcoming visit (it's Nancy Bush country, my dream is to get a signed copy of Folk Socks while I'm there and some Crystal Palace dpns), I will spend the day weaving in acrylic ends. It seems a good sick-day thing to do, and we are nearly ready for the annual Indonesian dinner with friends tonight, thanks to a lot of sous-chefing last night.