I did not get out to my computer to watch my next Skillshare lesson today. Instead, I stayed in and knitted a cowl with this stash yarn I ran across the other day. Its a black base with red and green sparkle threads, so naturally it screamed Christmas at me. I didn’t feel like working up my own pattern, and Spidey’s Spiral Cowl by Abi Gregorio was exactly what I wanted, so off I went.
It’s not often I start and finish a project the same day- this was a nice, low-pressure interlude.
[You guys! Remember how I could never use the WP app on my phone because it was constantly breaking my site??? Now, through the magic of Jetpack, I can upload media directly from my phone AND write posts!!! This is so exciting!!]
Back in November, one of my favorite crafters (I legit do not remember if it was Space Cadet or Kim Werker, but they’re both awesome so go check them out) included some information in a newsletter about a yarny advent calendar. I got all excited about doing it, but then realized that I have a ridiculous amount of yarn already. So, instead of buying a new one, I bought some little silk bags from Amazon and bagged up a bunch of little balls of yarn. I picked out a simple-but-not-boring shawl pattern (Fuss Free Festival Shawl) and eagerly awaited Dec. 1.
The idea was that I would pull a bag each day and knit up the yarn, just like a traditional advent calendar. Easy, right? Except…I’m really slow. Really good, but really slow. Plus, I have about 5 gajillion other projects crying out for my attention. Also plus, I don’t have a huge amount of time to commit to knitting every night these days. It pretty quickly became apparent that the advent thing was just not going to be feasible (not to worry — I also had a unicorn advent calendar that met my daily opening needs just fine). So I’ve decided that this is going to instead be a random draw shawl. I’ll finish one ball, then draw the next and continue. But no time pressure. I’ll get to it when I get to it. And it will be beautiful when it’s done.
Note: It is really hard to start blogging again when you’ve been on a hiatus, but I’m going to try. I’ve been meaning to post more for weeks now, but I keep getting stuck on what to post about. So I finally decided to just dive back in and post about whatever. That means at least the first few posts back will probably be all over the place, but I’m just going to go with it in the interest of getting back into the swing of adding content without getting bogged down in the details. ETA: Sigh. And then I forgot to give it a title
I realized the other day that I hadn’t actually finished anything in awhile. I don’t actually know how many projects I have in progress right now, but it’s a lot. Like, more than 10. Maybe more than 20. And that’s just the ones that I know where they are and occasionally pick them up and work on them. So, I knew I had this Protest is Patriotic shawl from Craftivist on the needles, and I decided to go ahead and finish it up for 4th of July because I only had a few rows left to go.
Except…I didn’t get it finished for the 4th, but that turned out to be okay because it was so stupid hot here that there’s no way I could have worn it, even though it is both tiny and cotton. I finished up the knitting a couple of days later, and then I left it on the couch to stare balefully at me until I wove the ends in. Which I finally did last night, and now I have an adorable shawlette, as seen above. Who doesn’t love a happy ending?!
Lion Brand recently released a series of long-repeat cakes called Mandala, and it’s pretty gorgeous (full disclosure: I work for Lion Brand, but they didn’t ask me to write this). It’s 100% acrylic, which is not always usually my favorite, but this one doesn’t have that plasticky feel that acrylic can have, and has a nice bounce to it, similar to what you’d expect from a wool or wool 
blend. I picked up a couple of colors to try out (working next door to the warehouse has its benefits), and decided to use Unicorn to make a new version of my old Sangria Swirl, which I was never super happy with.
The original was way too long and not nearly as wide as I wanted. The color was gorgeous, but was stash yarn I’d long ago lost the labels for. So. I’m trying it again with the Mandala, which is quite a bit thinner (the original was more like a bulky/category 5, while Mandala is a nice DK/category 3). It’s working up beautifully, if I do say so myself.
Okay, so I should blog something good and interesting, but it’s just not going to happen tonight. I *did* have a very productive evening…my new rowing machine came in and I got it all put together AND THEN I rowed for 20 minutes.
Oh! I know what I can tell you about! This Saturday I’m going to be marching in the Morristown St. Patty’s Day Parade with my derby team. The weat
her forecast is for cold with a side of extra cold, so I’m making myself a nice headband to wear (I already made a lovely ginormous woolly scarf, but no pics of that yet). Gotta go finish it up so my ears will be nice and toasty!
Super seekrit knitting project. I’m using Lion Brand’s new Shawl in a Ball yarn, and am really enjoying working with it. It’s a bit tough to rip out, though. I mean, not that I make mistakes. Not me. Nooooope.
Also, Red My Lips 2016 has kicked off.
On the one hand I kind of feel like I’m cheating because my default color these days is red (Stella from Elixery). But then I thought about it and decided that since I pretty actively support and espouse the ideals of Red My Lips even when it’s not April, it’s all good. #supportsurvivors #ibelieveyou #ok2share
Another twofer today, since I missed a couple. I’ve been really overwhelmed since last week and I’ve been doing a lot but not making a lot.
Tonight I attacked my mending pile and got everything done except one shirt that it’ll be easier to run through the machine.
Not only that, but I designed and swatched a sweater! It’s actually been on my to-do list for awhile now, but it got bumped to the top due to a seekrit (for now) thing at work. I’m super excited about it, and will do a longer post about it in the future. For now, here’s a little sneak peek:
Spring has begun sprunging here in the Northeast, so I’m back to flipflops for the duration. Which means I need more than basic red on my toes. It’s been awhile since I did a fun design, so hey, there it is. It’s really subtle, which I’m not sure if I’m pleased with or not. But I’m not changing it now!
ALSO, I re-did the two rows I ripped yesterday plus a few more, and have now completed the first mosaic section. YAY ME! (I’m actually writing this before it’s done. Let’s see if I’m prescient or just indulging in some wishful thinking.)
And in other, non-makey news, I have a big hole in my mouth (no, you don’t get a picture of it). This one tooth has been a problem for YEARS. I’ve gone from fillings to root canal to post & core with crown…and the other day the crown popped off and I swallowed it. Ulp. To make matters worse, my beloved dentist (who did all the recent work on the tooth) hurt his back a few months ago and hasn’t returned to dentistry. So I went to his associate, who tells me the reason the crown fell out is because the tooth broke, and now there’s not enough tooth to mount a crown on. My options are: gaping hole, bridge, implant. Oh, and by the way, the remainder of the tooth needs to come out and it’ll have to be a surgical extraction because the root has fused to the jawbone. GOOD TIMES. Good, very expensive times.
Now, my aforementioned beloved dentist would totally cut me a deal on the implant (or bridge, but I’ll probably eventually go implant b/c it’s lower maintenance and only a couple hundred bucks difference which at that point isn’t worth quibbling over), because he’s awesome like that and even though it’s not his fault he always took responsibility for when his dentistry didn’t stand the test of time (seriously, though, it’s not him — it’s this tooth). But the new guy has no reason to do that, which I totally understand — it’s just irksome because I’d be going to my guy if he was available.
On the plus side, though, it’s not at all painful, so it could definitely be worse. I mean, it’s going to be painful when I have the extraction, so I have that to looks forward to, but at least it’s not an emergency type situation. Small favors and all that.
No post for yesterday. I swallowed a crown and, well, dealing with that took up most of my free time.
Today I just did a couple of rows on my shawl and a rough re-work of part of the tattoo I’m getting started Saturday. You can see a bit of the full rough under the tracing paper — the tat is going to be quite a bit different from my sketch, but I’d planned for that going in so that’s fine. I met with the artist last week, and I’m really excited to see how he reworks my ideas. We’re doing the line work Saturday, then we’ll fill in the color in a few weeks (I have to make sure I schedule for when I’m going to have a couple weeks off derby — don’t want to risk falling on it fresh!).
On the shawl, I screwed up the last two rows I did. It’s in the mosaic section, which really doesn’t read strongly with the yarns I chose, so I’m not sure it’s worth it to rip back. OTOH, if it does end up being more obvious, like maybe in the light where the solid is more gray than pink, it will always annoy the hell out of me. Sigh. Time to do some un-making.
But I did get some knitting done. This is Emiliana by maliha designs. I’ve been working on it for awhile now, and I’m about halfway through. The slip stitch pattern is really simple but fun. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the mosaic pattern is getting lost because of the variegated yarn I’m using but we’ll see how it turns out. The best part is, I’m using two yarns from my stash! The variegated is Socks that Rock mediumweight in Tanzanite, and the “pink” is actually a color changing yarn that looks grey in some light. I got it at Rhinebeck a few years ago, and of course I can’t manage to put my hands on the label right now. Will update when I find it.