FO #13 & #14

This will probably be my last post for a while. I'm starting on three pretty intense weeks at work. I leave tomorrow for Pittsburgh, and won't be back until Wednesday. Thursday I have in the office, and then I leave Friday for a week in Seattle, which includes two campus visits and two conferences. Then I get back and there are three days in the office, and then I leave for a conference in Tennessee. If I live through that, I'm taking a well-earned couple of days off.



Anyway, these two little accessories were made during my funk brought on by the endless knitting on that baby sweater. I just wanted a break from that cotton yarn, and I've been dying to make something with the one skein of Regal Ram that I have had in my stash for about three years or so. Once I reorganized the stash, it got moved into my single-skeins bag, which is next to the couch, so I would see it from where I was sitting, and finally I took it out. I got out all my 'one skein' books, and decided on a hat, since I wasn't sure how many yards the skein held.



I also decided that something lacy would help the yarn stretch farther also. Thus, this pattern.

Pattern: lavender lace beanie by Lorna Miser from 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders. I think the lace is supposed to look like lavender or thistles or something. I don't see it, and I thought it was a pretty tough lace pattern to learn, but it turned out really cute. I like the garter stitch band at the bottom, and I like the stockinette portion at the top. My hat had a little point at the top before I blocked it out, and you can kind of see it in some of the FOs on Ravelry, but I kind of liked the point, and I think it's going to be back, eventually, as the blocking fades.

Lorna Miser seems to be a very prolific designer, of the 'realistic knitwear' variety. Her designs in Ravelry seem to be stuff normal people can wear, as opposed to real arty stuff or stuff you have to be stick thin to fit into. Also, family-oriented. Check her stuff out here and you'll see what I mean.

Yarn: Regal Ram Knitting Worsted Deluxe--this came from an old lady's stash, which I stupidly bought on e-bay. I say stupidly, because she stashed everything from the 1970s and 1980s, and I ended up with a lot of vintage Red Heart. I donated most of it, but way down at the bottom of the box was this lone skein of Regal Ram.



Just look at that ball band! Lovely. The color is a very weird one called "Charcoal Green", which amounts to a very dark teal. It was only 2 oz., so I couldn't hope to do a whole lot with it, and I wanted to showcase it in a special project.

Needles: Size 9 circular from my Boye set for both.



When I finished the beanie, I had so much yarn left over, I decided to make a matching scarflet with the remainder. I thought I had more than I actually ended up with, but it goes around my neck once, and is enough to keep the air conditioning off of it. Keeping it on are two vintage buttons from Grandma's button box, which I've just buttoned through the lace. The piece is about 5" x 20" laid flat, but the way it is buttoned, it is a little off center.



This past week, Stella was in the hospital again. She's fine now, but I couldn't work on anything really complicated because I didn't have the time or the brain power. So I started a pair of socks for Spanky. I've turned the heel on the first one, and I'm taking it with me on my trips. I'm also taking the cabled aran vest that I started from the Paton's Cables booklet I picked up on my last trip to Florida. Maybe I'll have finished the socks and one side of the vest by the end of the three weeks. You think?

FO #12

Wow, so it's been a while. I'm finally finished with that damn baby sweater, and it took one less skein of yarn than I thought it would, leaving me extra yarn that I have no idea what to do with. I guess I'll put it with the Cotton-Ease that I'll be using to crochet little creatures with soon.

But before I turn to that (will be in another post), I used the rest of the Malabrigo look-alike yarn that I used on my cowl to knit a pair of wrist warmers.



They are cute, but even though I knit a few extra rows on each before the thumb, they don't keep my hands very warm. They're just good for keeping the wind from going up your coat. I guess now that it is 'spring', they may work better.

I just wanted to use up that special yarn I got in New Orleans, and I wanted at least one matching set of something. I remember reading on the Yarn Harlot's blog that her daughter pointed out that you could always tell a knitter because their accessories didn't match and that's always stuck with me. So now, I have a nice matching cowl and wristlets. And that little ball up there in the picture is all the yarn I have left. One thing I really hate is when you have a lot of yarn left over from a project. Because by the time I'm done with a particular project, I don't want to see or use that same yarn for a really long time. There are other problems with yarn sticking around, but that's my main one. I feel like it is optimal to use up all the yarn for every project, or you're left with myriad single and partial skeins that don't add up to much.



I didn't have enough yarn left to do more rows on the hand part anyway, but normally I like my fingerless mitts to come up at least to my second knuckle. Oh well. They are really cute!

OMG Y'ALL

I can't believe I finished all these pieces. This sweater took FOR. EVER.

I'll blog about this more later, plus the other 3 FOs I've finished since the last post. I'm sorry, but I've just lost my mojo. I feel like I'm running in place, on a very slow-moving treadmill, and perhaps it is the never ending winter, or the calm before the storm at work (3 trips in 3 weeks, yo). Perhaps it is the unbelievably ginormous pile of yarn in my house that I want to work with so badly, yet this sweater will never end. This sweater will never end, and I'll never send it off, and I'll never be able to move on. That's what it feels like.

Oh, I also finished a freaking never-ending book too. Apparently I really don't like memoirs, no matter how good they are. There's just something so indulgent about writing about your own life in such a bald fashion that I can't get behind it. Anyway, more on that later. At least I feel now that there's a little progress, things should start to pick up. UGH. This has all been so TEDIOUS. I'm bored with myself. Seriously.