Speed Knitting

There’s nothing like the ghastly specter of running out of yarn to push me into knitting overdrive. As I progressed along on my impulse-buy-and-cast-on Monkey socks, the rather rapid implosion of the center-pull ball soon became an object of concern and then, of out-right panic. By the time I got to the heel turning, I was convinced that the sad little deflated ball of yarn could not possible contain enough yardage for me to finish the sock. So, what else could I do but knit like a house on fire? (As it is a universally acknowledged fact that if you only believe, the speed of knitting is directly proportional to the amount of yarn remaining.)
So in record time, I now possess one completed and perfectly fitting (Sea) Monkey sock



And, erm, plenty of left-over yarn (shown here relative to the skein destined for the other sock).


Which all just goes to show how true the relationship between knitting speed and yarn yardage is and says nothing whatsoever about my propensity to worry.
Ahem. Right.

Ah well...

One little fall (four skeins' worth) makes it awfully easy to take another tumble.



Merino and tussah silk roving in the very aptly named Desert Rose colorway and an oh-so-handy hemlock nøstepinne that makes the most adorable center pull balls. Both are from Hello Yarn, my favorite source of spinning fiber and home of Adrian, she of the amazing eye for color. Did I mention she also dyes beautiful sock yarns?
Hmm, methinks the wagon's driven off without me.

Falling

During a few days of frantic cleaning at the end of last year, I finally took full stock of the amount of fiber tucked away in every available nook and cranny of my apartment. It was enough to shock me into imposing a little buying freeze. For a few weeks, I felt absolutely no covetousness towards any yarn or roving. I passed my days thinking about the many projects waiting in the stash with fond anticipation. I was content. Happy even. And certainly firm in my no-buying resolve. Not even the glittering array of end-of-the-year project montages all over blogland could move me in the slightest to lust after new yarns. No, this was the new rational, prudent, stash-busting me.
And then, with no warning at all (there never is, is there?), I fell off the wagon.
The culprit for my lapse? The Loopy Ewe, or more specifically, their amazing selection of sock yarns.
How could one’s cursor not drift towards the purchase button when confronted with loveliness like this?


Or this?


Since both these yarns (Claudia Hand Painted and Sweet Georgia, respectively) in those specific colorways (Sea Dreams and the delightfully named Willow, à la Buffy, n.b. SG also dyes Slayer and Angel colorways…very charming, even though Angel is lame and his hair goes straight up and …ahem, where was I?) were unavailable ones I spotted a few months earlier and briefly obsessed over, I really had no chance in resisting. A few hazy minutes of clicking later, my buying freeze was no more.
But yarn doesn’t really count as stash if you cast on with it right away. Right?

Priceless

Numbers of mistakes made in intarsia along the way: 11
Number of times multiple rows were tinked back to correct mistakes in intarsia: 11
Number of pink stockinette stitches consecutively knitted on size 0 needles: 9,000
Number of ends woven in: 20

Getting to dance around the apartment in hand-knit bubblegum pink argyle socks?
You know the answer.




Specs:
Yarn: Dalegarn Baby Ull (MC 4516, CC 8523, 2908)
Needles: US 0/2mm
Gauge: Flat -- 8.5sts x 12 rows per inch; in the round --10sts x 14 rows per inch (in case you should ever need proof that knitting in the same yarn on the same size needles can still give you vastly different gauges depending on whether you knit flat or in the round)
Pattern: Moth Heaven and the Cybersock Argyle Tutorial

Happy, happy, joy, joy

Done, done, done! Can you guess what?

Shhh...

Dottie the Procrastination Elephant loves to sneak up on people going about minding their own business, getting work done…



And pouncing!



’Cause this is what Dottie think about being sticking to deadlines and finishing up long lingering WIPs.


Dottie can be very eloquent, if not always polite.

Twenty repeats at last!

A belated happy New Year to you all! I’m forgoing my usual blather about my absence (suffice it to say, holiday joy and family togetherness and lots of happy times) since constantly blogging about not blogging is getting a bit silly. Not only are my rather feeble expositions on my lack of posts starting to seem like a bad attempt at trying to attain meta-ness, I’m sure they are dull to no end to read. So, none of that this time. Instead, there’s knitting! Usually, I come back from breaks in blogging having spent the time being occupied with everything but knitting. This time, it was different. Not only was there waving about of sticks and yarn in the last few weeks, there was a lot of frantic waving about of said sticks and yarn. All in pursuit of a single goal, to convert this silk and alpaca yumminess (I don’t think I have ever touched anything that felt so heavenly)


into twenty of following repeat


so as to form a lovely and warm scarf comme ça


for my future mother-in-law in time for her birthday and visit here in the first week of January. Well, that week has come and gone, along with future MIL without her scarf. Alas, even my best intentions and a few days of panic-stricken knitting during every spare minute were no match for my ability to procrastinate. Have I ever mentioned that I live in perpetual denial of deadlines? I only made it to repeat 17 on the last day she was in town. It actually took me until that day to finally accept that I was not going to be able to knit the remaining three twenty-row repeats, block each half of the scarf (it’s knit in two halves for aesthetics), and graft the two halves together, all in less than four hours. Oh if one only had a switch to pause time. Or a magic wand to transform a pattern complex enough to require an eye on the chart but utterly boring after the third rendition into something absolutely simple but riveting. And while I'm wishing, I'd like a pony and world peace too.
Fortunately, the extremely mild winter so far this year on the East Coast where future MIL resides has bought me a bit more time in getting the scarf done before she would need it. (That is, if the current disturbing climate trend of warmth enough for cherry blossoms in January is not some permanent sigh of global warming, in which case she may never need a scarf again.) In any event, some devoted knitting time this weekend has finally brought me to the tail end of the knitting. I’m so happy to be finally done with these seemingly never ending repeats. Now there's naught but blocking and grafting ahead. Hurrah!