WIP Wednesday: Olympic Edition

I admit it: I’m a total Olympics junkie. I’ve been glued to the TV since the opening ceremonies, and I’ll probably be there until the closing ceremonies. This isn’t too good for the other things I need to accomplish in life, but it’s great for my knitting!

Ravelry has an event called the Ravellenic Games (formerly known as the Ravelympics until the USOC informed them that they had trademarked the -ympics suffix; I’m going to go trademark -ing and -es, so I should be set for life). I hadn’t planned to participate originally, since my summer schedule is so crazy. But then I got the bug, so I starting looking around for a project that I could cast-on and complete in the two-week Olympic period. I gave serious consideration (and massive swatching) for a cabled vest in some heavy-weight (i.e., quick-knitting) yarn, but then my Olympic fever came up against my other illness: Finishitis.

I have so many projects around the house, in varying stages of completion, that my husband mutters under his breath about “decorating with yarn.” (Really, isn’t that a brilliant idea?!) But fall weather is coming, bringing along a whole bunch of other projects I want to knit, and so I’ve been getting a bit anxious about all the unfinished projects that are still lurking about here. Hence, a bad case of Finishitis. It’s a Good Thing, though: In the past two weeks, I’ve finished up both my Linen Stitch Scarf and the Pinkerton Shawl (pictures to follow, as soon as I have time to photograph them properly).

But back to the Ravellenic Games: When I was talking with my friend Carla about them, she said she was considering entering the “Sock Put” (an event name that made us both giggle). So when they lit the torch on Friday night, I picked up my Lorna’s Laces Solemate socks and got to work. Since I’ve been making this pattern up as I’ve gone along, much ripping and re-knitting has ensued. But I’m more than halfway up the leg now (working from the toe-up) so I’m hoping to bind off tonight or tomorrow. The second sock shouldn’t involve nearly so much frogging, so I’m hoping that one will go faster!

In the off chance that I get the socks done before the end of the games, I’ve got a PolarKnit hat that I need to finish, and the Scalloped Lace Toddler Cardigan is still lacking arms.

Are you working on a project for the Olympics? Or the Ravellenic Games? I’d love to hear about it!

Thrashing About

In the computer world, the term “thrashing” is used when a computer is swapping information in and out of memory so much that it can’t make progress on the task at hand. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of knitting on a lot of projects but not finishing anything, so it feels like all I’ve been doing is thrashing.

I’m making progress on the Pinkerton Shawl. It’s a good tv-watching knit. (My husband and I finally got around to checking out the PBS series “Sherlock,” and we’re totally hooked. Gotta track down season 1 on DVD now.) Each row is shorter than the last, so (in theory at least, even though it doesn’t feel that way!) the pace is picking up.

I added the other side of the buttonband to the Scalloped Lace Toddler Sweater… and it was too long. I picked up exactly the same number of stitches as I did on the buttonhole side, but it looks longer. Pondering whether I need to frog it and pick up fewer stitches (and if so, should I redo the buttonhole side, which seems fine?), or do I try to block it out? Nothing is ever easy, especially where my knitting is concerned…

I even pulled out my Linen Stitch scarf the other day, which I haven’t touched in months. I had a lovely knitting playdate with a friend (our kids played, she and I sat and gabbed and knit; bliss!) last week. She was working on a lovely linen stitch scarf using multiple strands of lace weight cotton yarn. It’s worked lengthwise, and you swap one strand of yarn out at a time, so it slowly transitions from one color to the next. Inspired by her scarf, I pulled out my own linen stitch scarf. I had about 12g of yarn left, and each round uses about 1g of yarn, so I only had about 10 more rounds to go before I could bind off. But man, these rounds are slow. The ball of yarn doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller, and if it wasn’t for my yarn scale slowly counting down the grams, I’d feel like I was stuck in an endless loop, knitting the same row, over and over and over.

I do feel a strange compulsion to finish something (or several somethings!) right now, so I think a case of Finishitis might be in the works. With any luck, I’ll have at lesat one finished object soon!

Sick and tired of being sick and tired

Lace looks like yarn vomit while it's still all mushed-up on the needles, doesn't it?

Sigh. I’m sick. Again. For variety, this time it’s a stomach bug instead of a head cold. I’m not any more thrilled about it.

I pulled out a long-languishing project from my WIP basket the other day, a beaded Haruni Shawlette. I am, of course, modifying the pattern all over the place (adding beads, using a plain Ishbel-esque body, and re-working the petals at the end to make the most of the limited yarn I have to work with, some yummy Sundara Sock Yarn in the limited-edition Lunar Landing colorway). But it’s gotten to the tricky bits near the end, and once again, I am just feeling too stupid to tackle them right now.

Look! Yarn vomit with beads!

I tried to take some pictures of the beads, but it’s pretty hard to get them to show up. And the colors look rather horrid, despite my best efforts to futz with my camera settings. Believe it or not, this is the same yarn you see in the blog header.

Fortunately, the Lanesplitter skirt is much simpler, so I am going to keep going with that for now. It looks pretty much the same as last time, so I didn’t try to photograph it again. And I’m still plugging away at the linen stitch scarf. The ball of yarn doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller. I think it’s taunting me!

Hopefully next time, I’ll have more progress to show.

SuperBowl Knitting

Thanks to The Horrible Head Cold, we didn’t make any big plans for the game last night. We stayed home, cooked steaks on the grill (which beats wings any day IMO!), and watched the game by a snuggly fire. Wow, what a game! Sometimes the SuperBowl is a bit of a let-down after the drama of the conference championships, but not this year. Yay, Giants! (I’m an Eagles fan by birth and by marriage, but hey, if we can’t get there, at least our conference rivals can!)

And, yes, there was knitting. (There is always knitting, right?) I finished up the second skein of yarn on the linen stitch scarf. It looks pretty much the same as the last post, just ever so slightly wider. Looking at the current width, I suspect that I’m going to wish I’d made it slightly longer and less wide, but I’m not about to rip it out now.

Because of the game, I didn’t get to catch up on my current crack tv addiction, Downton Abbey, but thanks to the miracle of DVR, I’ll watch that tonight, while I DVR House, which I’ll watch tomorrow night. Yes, I am watching everything on a different night, and yes, it’s probably just because I can. (We’re new to the DVR world, and the novelty hasn’t worn off yet.)

So…. what shows are you addicted to?

Trudging Along

Well, the head cold is slowly going away. Emphasis on slow. I’m feeling better, kinda. Head is a little bit less stuffy. I feel better in the morning, but run out of steam about mid-afternoon. It’s been a few years since a bug has laid me this low, though, so I guess I was due. Sigh.

In good news, however, I am now feeling smart enough to purl. Or work on a sock. I sketched out a design last fall, using some yummy yarn from MDSW (Miss Babs Northumbria Fingering – BFL), but had to set it aside to concentrate on the Christmas knitting. I tried to work on last week, but just wasn’t up to it.  I love the pattern and the yarn… not entirely sure they’re placing nicely together, but it is an intriguing combination.

I am still plugging away on the linen stitch scarf.  The colors are pooling every so slightly in random areas, and I love it.  So even though the knitting of it isn’t that challenging, the colors are keeping me going.  I’m about halfway through the second skein, so I’m about halfway through the scarf.  I still have House episodes on the DVR, so I should keep making progress.  And there’s some football on this weekend, which always provides a good excuse to sit on the sofa and knit…

Too Stupid to Purl

Hello, blog. How’ve you been? I know, I’ve been AWOL. Lots of reasons, but most recently, I’ve been sick. Nothing serious, just the worst head cold I’ve had in years. I know it was bad because I was too sick to knit.  I recently pulled out a vest that I had started designing for myself last year.  I’d worked out the whole design but got distracted before I actually finished knitting it.  So I was working merrily along on it (changing a few things here and there, as I’ve learned more about garment sizing and construction in the intervening months) when– whammo!– this head cold hit.  Suddenly, I was too stupid to follow a simple lace chart.  I was even too stupid to purl.

Of course, I had to pick up and put down the vest, a sock, and a pair of mittens before I figured out that I was too stupid to knit.  But what’s a girl to do when she’s laying on the sofa, watching 30 DVR’d re-runs of House? 

Enter the No-Purl, No-Curl, Self-Fringing Linen Stitch Scarf.  You just cast on a busload of stitches, join in the round, and work in linen stitch for all but about 16 stitches, which you work in plain knit stitches.  When you’re done you cut (yes, I said cut; it’s okay, really!) down the center of the knit stitches, resulting in a linen-stitch scarf knit length-wise, with fringe at both ends.  Easy-peasy!  (Yes, I will write up the pattern, once my sinuses shrink back to normal size.)

Mine is worked in some luxurious Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend that I stashed a couple of years ago.

Pictures of the actual scarf will be along just as soon as I’m smart enough to plug my camera in again.  🙂

And now it’s been at least ten minutes since my last cup of tea with honey, so clearly I’m due for another…