Epidemic

I don't have any knitted things to show off today, but I have a few things that are almost as good.  One of my favourite webcomics, Girls with Slingshots, is currently featuring guest strips.  Yesterday's guest comic was created by a couple of people who do their own comic, which is called Worsted for Wear, which if you hadn't guessed already, is a comic about knitting.  That's right, knitting.  I strongly suggest you go to their site and read all of them.  There aren't that many yet so it doesn't take that long, but they are super funny.  One of my favourites is this one, as it combines my love of knitting as well as my love of Harry Potter.  I don't actually feel that way about crocheters and I have been known to crochet things from time to time, but it's still funny!

A pattern that seems to be sweeping the knitting world lately is the Color Affection Shawl.  Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the prolific knitter and writer of Yarn Harlot recently described the "virus" of the "Color Infection" shawl in this post.  I loved looking at all of the colour combinations that all these people have chosen to knit it.  I'd been wanting to knit this for awhile, as I wear my Daybreak/Sunset shawl quite often and obviously I can use another crescent shaped, striped, colourful shawl.  Obviously.  So then my LYS announced a knit-along for the Color Affection Shawl in May and I knew that it was time.

I had quite the time trying to pick out the right colours for this, as I knew I wanted to knit it with yarn that wasn't quite solid but wasn't quite variegated either.  The sample knit up in the store was knit with malabrigo Arroyo which is wonderful and I was pretty sure that was what I wanted to use as well.  I found two colours in Arroyo that I for sure knew I wanted, but couldn't find the right colour to tie it together and give it some life.

058 Borrajas

870 Candombe

Fortunately, a stray skein of madelinetosh pashmina was just lying there, neglected... on its own I would have never picked it, but with the other two colours it was just right.

glazed pecan

They look better all together than they do on their own...  Although the colours in Candombe are pretty incredible.  Candombe was the one I knew I wanted immediately and the other two yarns pull colours out of that one.  Now to decide what order they should go in...

While I was looking at the yarn for me, the Enabler was also looking at the same yarn for him.  I can't recall if I have mentioned his desire for Earth and Sky by Stephen West, but in about 5 minutes he had picked out these.  Can you see why I call him the Enabler?

It's too bad that he'll just have to wait for me to finish the Color Affection for myself.  The KAL does dictate that I do have to have it finished by the end of May which means I have no choice but to start it immediately, right?

Right.

Knit and bear it

Dear Blog,

I am sorry for neglecting you.  I could make up some excuses for my absence, like how work has been tiring and I haven't had time in the evenings or weekends lately, or I haven't been knitting much so there was nothing to blog about, or that it's been too gloomy outside to take decent pictures of anything, but the truth of the matter is that I just didn't feel like it.  The call of other activities (read: video games) during my limited free time was too strong.  I'm not going to promise to change, because as much as I'd like to give you the time and attention you deserve, I can't change who I am.  What I can do is I can promise to try harder, because I still care about you.  If you can see it in your heart to forgive me then perhaps we start back up where we left off.  I know it won't always be easy, but I want this to work and I know we can do it, together!

Yours truly,

Wooloholic

Whew, okay now that that's out of the way, back to business!  Truthfully, I haven't been knitting all that much lately (well, compared to usual).  Since my last post the lacy something is no bigger than it was which is bad, because we are now two weeks closer to my deadline.  And we're talking lace here.  Lace won't just knit itself.  I have lost a little love for the pattern after knitting a bit of it.  I picked it because I couldn't find what I was looking for and it was good enough, but it's been a pain in the ass to knit (hence the lack of growth since 2 weeks ago).  Yesterday I was looking for something I could do instead, and I still couldn't find quite what I was looking for but I settled on something that would be easy and would work fine.  Today however, I did find what I had been looking for (and wish I would have found 3 weeks ago) but now I'm not so sure.  I have to make a decision soon, and time is a-ticking!  I apologize for not being more clear, but I can't show you exactly what I'm talking about.  Actually I don't apologize.  It's my blog, deal with it.

Enough about what I didn't knit, here is what I did knit:

It is the 16 cable hat that I talked about in this post.  Yes I finally made it!  The yarn is Misti Alpaca Tonos Worsted which was quite lovely to knit.  There is a slight problem with the hat, however.  It is supposed to be a slouchy beret style hat, and I dunno if you can tell from the picture but it's more of a beanie at this point.  A head-sqeezingly tight beanie.  Oh I can get it on my abnormally large head but it's not comfortable.  Here's where I'm hoping the magic of blocking will work in my favour.  Last time I blocked a hat it almost got so large as to be unwearable.  I'm hoping this time blocking will make it the right size.  My hopes are high.  I will provide an update once I actually get around to blocking (this is not the only thing sitting in the "to block" pile).

When I was only about a third of the way into the hat (you know, when the project is all shiny and new and it's the only thing you want to work on?), the Enabler and I had a relaxing evening planned of watching the new episode of Game of Thrones and whatever else happened to strike our fancy.  Perfect knitting time.  I had brought the hat to work with me earlier in the day, and so I grabbed my project bag from the kitchen table (where my purse always ends up when I come home from work) and settled down in the chair in the living room.  I got myself comfortable, making sure I had all the necessary items close at hand for a seriously lazy evening (icy beverage, phone, snack, and of course knitting).  I pulled my knitting out of my bag and realized in dismay that I had grabbed the wrong bag!

Instead of my superhappyfunshiny 16 cable hat, I had grabbed the loathsome and finicky Persnickety socks.  Worst of all, I had knit all of the leg portion and the next thing to do was the heel.  Normally I don't mind heels, but I don't like the heel that was in the pattern for these.  I knit it as written for the first sock and realized afterwards that I should have just done my usual heel because it's better and easier than this one was.  This kind of short row heel involves this awkward wrap and turn thing, and 6 needles at one time (5 is complicated enough, thankyouverymuch), and once you start the heel, you're pretty much pot committed to finish that thing before you can put it down.  So not only did I have to knit a heel that I was uncomfortable with and was going to take all evening, I had to knit it knowing that it was the wrong thing to do.  But I couldn't really have a different heel for the second sock.  That would look weird, and feet already look weird enough.

I swore at myself a little bit for grabbing the wrong bag, and thought about getting back up to get the superhappyfunshiny hat, and thought about how far away the kitchen table was (so far! (not actually that far..)) and how comfortable I was already in my chair.  I thought about asking the Enabler to go get it for me but even I thought that might be crossing the line of reasonable requests as he was also comfortably ensconced on the couch at this point.  I pondered all of these things for a few minutes, and realized that if I wasn't going to do the heel now, I was probably going to do it never.  There was clearly no other option, so I gritted my teeth and started in on that oh so persnickety heel.

So, thanks to my extreme laziness, the heel is done.  Can I knit something else now?

Better late than never?

I know I know, it's Monday and I haven't posted in over a week, I'm a bad blogger, I admit it.  Let's just say I had a crappy and busy week at work, and my free time was mostly spent playing video games and not knitting.  Well I knit a little but I didn't have anything to blog about when Saturday rolled around.  I have almost no desire to work on the Persnickety socks so they are still stalled on the leg portion of the second sock.  I know they'll get done eventually but just not yet.  I started knitting a lace something which is going to take a long time, and I can't blog about it because the intended recipient is one of the readers of this very blog.  I wouldn't want to ruin any surprises!

What about the Appendisox, you ask?  Well, as of about 30 minutes ago they are finished!  So at least that's one thing I can cross off my WIP list.  The Enabler put them on right away and they fit perfectly.

I did knit one other thing in the last week.  Well, yesterday actually.  Since the Enabler got a new job in another part of the city and we can't carpool to work anymore, I've been taking the bus.  I don't like reading or knitting on the bus because my commute is only 15-20 minutes, I'm not always guaranteed a seat, sometimes it's awkward and cramped even when sitting, and I occasionally get motion sickness.

What this means is a lot more time to listen to audiobooks.  Last year I cashed in some air miles, and even though I have an iPhone, I opted to get an iPod nano.  The thought process was that it's smaller and easier to take with me if I want to go walking, and less valuable than my phone if it breaks/gets lots/gets stolen.  This is what I load the audiobooks onto because I only use it to listen to one thing at a time, so I never lose my place.  However, after a week or two of using it more I realized that I needed a better strategy than just dropping it, headphones and all, into my purse to get tangled and scratched up throughout the day.  So I thought a little bit, then grabbed some leftover Noro Silk Garden and started knitting.

Problem solved, and it took about an hour.  I'm trying to think of excuses to make more now because it's so cute.  Hmmm let's see.  Phone... tissues... bandaids... tampons...