Sigh.

So, I've decided I need to exercise some discipline and get some things finished before starting on a new beaded stole I have in mind and a bunch of other stuff.
Great - I'll finish Rolfe.
Front and back done, sewed the shoulder seams together, dang kid's too big for it.  Stupid vitamins, stupid growth spurt, stupid living down south with a short sweater season.
Nothing takes the snap out of ambition like something like this.  Darn.
Maybe I'll finish it anyway and give it to his cousin (he never wears sweaters anyway) just to get it out of my life and do it over next year.
I still have my roses pullover, wedding stole, Kinsale, October, Fassett stars, and Kauni cardigan on needles right now and about 5 more ideas pressing forward - a blue waves stole with beads, fun orange socks, bunny blanket/wall hanging, Suri Dream black pull over, white peacock shawl to dye out on the lawn this summer in the GA sun to set the dye . . .
Stupid job. 
Crap, gotta go, got a lot to do, don't I?????

Kauni jacket snaps

Funny, usually I feel like my pictures don't do the yarn justice in terms of intensity of color.  Not so with Kauni.  I started the edging with two balls, then swapped to the other 2 balls to get a nice divide of body/edging.  I plan to do the same on the cowl neck and sleeves, probably not the same placement though.
I hemmed and hawed forever about where to start the balls relative to one another.  Has anyone else worked with this stuff and have any smart ideas?  I'd love to hear if there's some collective wisdom on how to use this stuff.  First I thought of keeping the rainbows close, but then I feared that one-color-off matching would give long patches of yellow and orange, blue and green, which I knew I didn't want.  Muddy, you know?  But starting across-spectrum (red - green, yellow - purple) seemed scarily loud.  Obviously, "in for a penny" thinking won here and I went with cross spectrum patterning.  Here it is again.  It's, well, cheerful, as Elsie would say.

Ech.

Our house has a mild upper respiratory infection.  Coughing, itchy eyes, headache.  Tomorrow I have a conference, but can't really get excited about any of my knitting to bring along.  The Rolfe (below) or the pink.  I'm having this weird craving to knit socks.  I hate knitting socks, what's up?  Must be a low grade fever.

oh yeah

There w wnere 2 other things to do today.  The first was to redo the Camp Half Blood tshirt for the little's costume, much better this time.  The first time it got smeary and the tree was too big.  This time I cut the stencils apart and arranged them and taped them down being sure to wash them and dry them between each stenciling session.  I like this one.
And on a related note, I want to finish the Olympian and post the pattern.  Very simple and I'm in love with the colors.  For once in my life I want to make a rollneck that's not so long it looks like a dress.  Being 5'1" doesn't help with that - the urge to wear big clothes makes you look childlike in that bad, no one loved you enough to dress you right way or just dumpy and fat.  Hurtling towards 40, I aspire to look neither.

A day at home

Today I have a teacher conference with the little one's teacher so took the day off because a.) it's in the middle of the day b.) I needed to meet the Comcast tech at home c.) spouse and I could get our H1N1 mist and hopefully make ourselves somewhat illness resistant.
So I finished cleaning out and reinstalling the pump and filter in the pond, washed the columns of the porch, cleaned up the garage a bit and put up the Halloween decorations.  Now I'm poaching chicken for some chicken salad which is for tomorrow.  Tonight I'm going to make these.  Mmmm.  Of course it's in the low 60's here today and so I have the kitchen window open and the kitty has been pinned to it ever since. Below are some pictures of a.) the finished soccer mittens on and b.) the sweater I'm making for the small one in Cotlin. 
I also need to take a shower before I go to the conference.  :)

I got more mail

So, here we have some Cotlin for a rugby style sweater for the little one (Cedar and Planetarium) and some Comfy worsted in October for another take at the white sweater in something soft.

Problem with October - I look kind of hideous in orange.  I have blue and orange eyes (I even took a picture so you could see, but that disembodied eye is kind of freaky, sorry about that), light brown hair and skin that is just a little too sallow to work with most earth tones.  But I like them, more and more as I get older.  So, I will knit my d*mn sweater and either a.) give it to my sister who does look good in such colors or b.) stubbornly wear it myself and look like I'm about to vomit the whole time.

And here are some pictures of 5 minutes of fun with beads and earring hooks.  The big round beads are Moss Agate.  There's a lot of variation in the 16 inch strand, so you need to match them carefully.  Kitties love to help with that, in case you were wondering.

Fun weekend, knit some

The winter peacock is coming along. At first I thought I would do all the beading in grey and white, but I really didn't end up liking it, so the bead colors will end up being the same as the first one, the major change is that the eye centers are white, not gold.
And here we have Percy, take 2. This one is great for hours spent watching Infamous being played.

Back on track

It took 2 plus nights of ripping and sorting, but the Olympian Pullover is back to "knitting".
Kudos to the yarn, it held up to this sad state of affairs quite well.
So, give it a week or two and maybe I'll have something.
Happy weekend . . . .

Vacation

Took an overnight trip up north (this is the trail from Unicoi State Park to Helen, GA). It's a very pretty time of year. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of mushrooms; brown, purple, red, orange, white, sulfur yellow. I only posted a handful of the pictures I took (because I take cr@p pictures). Down at the bottom is a snap of some knitting.
Happy holiday weekend -

It's not quite as stripy as this makes it look

But it's all my favorite colors and it's SO SOFT.
So now I'm hoping for a very cold winter!

Oh look at that . . .

At what? you may ask.
Yeah, it's kinda like the Cheshire Cat appearing slowly on a branch, starting with the neck and working down.
Doubling the City Tweed DK gives a super bulky 3 sts./in fabric but it's really nice and soft. Since the color slubs are the same for all these colors, the fabric thus far is pretty nice.
It's a loose roll neck pattern, I'll post it when I finish.

Done, and weaving in ends

I'll take an action picture of this one once it's got all the ends woven in and is blocked. I really love this pattern, and it looks pretty good on. More soon.

I didn't fall off the earth

Between little league and work and other random stuff (like wanting to live in a house that doesn't smell) I've been doing lots of knitting, just nothing very new and exciting, so I haven't posted. This should change now, as I'm at the end of a lot of things. I kind of have a Soviet-era "storming" thing I do, don't I?
So, I'm nearly done with the second half of Bittersweet. This first picture gives a better representation of the color, and even though you can't see much of the beads, you get a better sense of how they glint out of the deeper pumpkin color. Indy thinks it's nice and warm on his rear end. This in a brownish green or dark red, any color combonation that works with the fall motifs I think would work.
This next thing is just a swatch so far, but it's going to be a peacock feather caplet. I spent weeks graphing, swatching, not getting it right, ripping out, re-graphing, re-swatching and once I got the lace and increases right, I had to decide how to work in all the colors of beads. I think the gold ones will move up more towards the tips of the feathers, to look more like a real eye. I can also see this working well in other color combinations - dark rose with sparkly silver and pink beads, like pinks or bachelor buttons, or you could do it in black with silver or iridescent beads for an evening wear sort of thing (or if you just go for drama). It's going to have 3 buttons at the top and the two sides will have a fine XO cable - I like using thin cable panels for buttonholes, but you can only get away with that if you are working at a fairly fine guage. And finally, this boring brown thing. Rosa Rugosa - the back is done, the fronts are halfway there and the sleeves are 3/4, so it shouldn't take much longer. But I need buttons, ones that can go through the wash. I'll have to look around and see what I can come up with.

It's that time of year

So once again, I'm working on too many things at the same time and it's spring - yes, mowing the yard starts in MARCH down here in the great southeast - and little league is in full swing again. However, Rosa Rugosa (from Knitting the New Classics) is perfect. I'm using Comfy, in Fedora, and it's lovely and soft (hopefully it will wash well, the linen stitch pullover has worked out so far) and I'm not going to do the colored flower intarsia on the fronts, so it is perfect for knitting while watching games and practices. Boring to photograph, tho' sorry.
I also started the second half of Bittersweet - it's going to be worked in 2 halves and then grafted together at the end. But it isn't worth taking a picture of right now, it just looks like all the other pictures.

That dyed yarn

Eh, I'm not happy with my sweater idea - I'm not sure those colors would work. Or maybe not all together. I think I want them to be more intense. Something else maybe. Fech.
Maybe mittens . . . . sigh, things that match. Grrr.
Not socks tho' -- silk and wool is too fragile for that.
In good news, the stars is coming along nicely. I'm playing with using GoogleDocs for storage of my patterns. I've added a gadget, let me know if you try to get to something there and it fails.

Washed 'n sniff

Clean, and it passes the sniff test.

Nanna is done

He looks like a model here, doesn't he? And, I don't mean that in a good way, I mean in that very posed way; he's making me think of one of those black and white shots from a sweater book from the 80's, one of the Rowan theme issues, perhaps.
Actually, he was watching the cat play and about to start laughing.
Once again, I highly recommend this pattern, it's fun and fast (just under 1 month this time).
Back to Frost Flowers - if Indy will let me.
Hope everyone's holiday plans are shaping up.

Nanna just keeps on going

I've sewn together the front and back, and am a third done with the sleeves and this little sweater seems to be taking FOREVER.
But everything seems to be taking forever lately. Maybe I'm just tired and can't wait for winter break. Oh, and here's Indy pretending he's a pirate's parrot. Argh, me hearties!

More slow progress

Indy, the cutest (farting-est, don't know if I've mentioned that - how can something so small and cute make such horrible smells? I suspect he'll grow out of it and doesn't seem to be in any kind of discomfort, but I'll ask the vet when he goes for his follow up shots), most human-centric kitten of all time continues to slow down my knitting to a crawl. I'm glad I wasn't working on a present list this year.
I have too many things on needles right now so any progress on anything is minuscule. I'm having a strong urge to start another Jack's Back - but here's my problem (aside from the fact there's no room in the knitting basket) I really want to do a red and brown version, but I have loads of blues and purples in the bins of yarn. I'm sort of teetering on the brink of starting another, very involved, knitting project but if I make myself do the right thing re: my stash, I might flame out and end up with another slumbering mess.
And spinning? I haven't had the guts to try it since Indy came to live with us. I've had a suggestion that I get a video of that.

Nanna

Man, kittens get big fast! Indy is probably doubled in size since coming home 9 days ago.
Here's Nanna - and here's Indy attacking it. And here's out Christmas tree, which he did NOT pull down on himself today while home alone with the tree. We're proud of that. Oh, and we have a pretty great tree stand.