I've Run Out Of Row Counters

For those of you who have followed this blog for a bit, you may know that I rarely let my WIP (work in progress) pile go above three projects. That seems to be the magic number for me. Any more than that, and I find that progress gets slowed to a snails pace. The other reason, I have discovered, is because I don't have enough round counters to maintain more than that. Despite the lack of round counters, I have found myself with six projects going. Four of those projects are socks. The bottom two are for the same test knit that needed two socks to test properly. The top left was my usual stockinette sock I like to have for car knitting. The top right is the Haleakala sock that I stalled out on.

Starting in the top left and going clockwise: Opal's Little Prince in Die Rose, Malabrigo Sock in Pocion, Canon Hand Dyes in Etude 120 and Yoga For Elephants

Beyond the socks, I've continued on with my sweater, which is inching closer to completion. When I last posted about it, I had finished four repeats of the leaf pattern. Now I only need four more repeats before going to the next section.

The wide bit at the end was blocked. The rest of the sweater will match once I block it all out.

And finally, I have a hat. It's an important hat with a deadline. I bumped into a knit worthy friend I hadn't seen in a decade. He no longer has the last hat I made him, so I offered to make a new one. It's got some writing on the inside of the turned brim that required intarsia in the round. Turns out intarsia in the round is a bit fiddly, so it took me a couple goes to get it right. Luckily for him, he is an intarsia-in-the-round-worthy friend. Now it's just smooth sailing with nine out of ten rounds of the repeat being in stockinette.

However, there is a deadline to finish it up before he sails to the next city. It's rather hard to mail a hat to someone when they work on a ship.

Even though I am excited to make the hat, I really am itching to get back to my sweater... and maybe a sock as well.

Sock, Sock, Sweater

The weather has just turned warm, which means the two new pairs of socks I finished will have to wait to be enjoyed. Luckily I have my socks out on display, so I can enjoy looking at them while I wait to wear them. 

The first pair is my Hieroglyphic Socks. I started these in September and have been working on them on and off until now. They required quite a bit of attention when I started, but I found that once I got my rhythm, I could knit them at knit night or while semi-distracted. They never quite got to car-knitting level, though. I didn't like putting them down mid-round.

I did make some edits to the pattern. I didn't care for the recommended heel, so I put a heel flap in. And rather than leave it plain blue, I took a page from Stickfia's book and kept the stripes going. I did find that the golden stripe on either edge of the sock got a little gappy, so I sewed through the blue loops on the heel flap and anchored them with duplicate stitching to the blue stripes on the gusset. I was pleased to find that it worked just like I had hoped.

I'm also quite happy with my replacement rainbow socks. It sort of looks like a trick of the camera, but the sock on the left is the old, washed out sock. The one on the right is the new one.

I had hoped to finish while it was still raining, but wasn't quite able to make it. I thought it would be delightful to wear rainbows in the rain. Honestly, I would have been happy wearing rainbows in the sun, but I'm not so happy sweating in rainbows.

Now that both pairs of socks are entirely off my plate, I have been devoting all my knitting time to my Iceland sweater. I'm not quite done with the first sleeve, but I'm getting there. The recommended sizing would have the sweater fall off of my shoulders, so I am entirely ignoring the recommended sleeve/body width and am blocking my progress after every 20 rows or so to make it match my own measurements instead.

So far, so good. The pattern is pretty intuitive and has paired well with Netflix watching. Speaking of which, I have been watching Greenleaf. Or, I should say, Connor and I have been watching Greenleaf. After watching a few episodes by myself and talking about it, Connor thought he would watch an episode with me. We are both sucked in and now I need to find a different show to watch when he isn't around. 

Has anyone else got a show that has just sucked them in? I'd love to hear some recommendations.

Catching Up On Crafting

I've been pretty productive with my various projects as of late. After realizing that I was not quite starting or finishing anything, I knew that I needed to make a list of what was causing each project to stagnate. It seems silly, but every project just had one step that needed to be worked on before I could go full steam ahead. 

For the Iceland sweater, I needed to swatch, so swatch I did. The swatch wasn't very helpful though. Since the pattern doesn't have a very good schematic, it was difficult to know how to successfully make the adjustments I wanted to. Eventually I decided that maybe I should just cast on. If it goes badly, I'll just rip it out and try again.

Next up is this test knit on my to do list for a while. It doesn't have a solid deadline, so I've waited until I had some brain power to put to it. I did my swatch, got confused over the stitch pattern directions, got clarification from the designer, and cast on. Of course after I got past the cuff, I realized that I had another question. This project will sit for a little while longer, but I'm glad to have gotten it started.

I recently wove in the ends to two different pairs of socks, but they still weren't being added to my sock rotation. I've mentioned in the past that I like to re-fix the color in all my socks before wearing them. If I have several pairs of socks close to completion, I'll wait until they are all done so I can do them together. I wasn't getting around to re-fixing the color and I realized it was because the Hieroglyphic Socks were a little too long in the toes. I wanted to fix the toes before re-fixing all the color. I don't know about the rest of you, but I wasn't really motivated to unweave in the ends and rip back color work. I finally caved and am pleased to say that both the Hieroglyphic and Rainbow socks are now re-fixed and drying.

My lavender sachet project also had been languishing. I often thought about embroidering, but kept putting it off because I needed to set up the fabric. After having a good think, I worked out the spacing I needed between each sachet. (2.25 inches) And to prevent myself from putting it off again, I'm sewing all the bag boundaries before I keep embroidering. It's going pretty well.

The last project that I'd been putting off was catching up on my comics. After Hawai'i, I was nearly two weeks behind. I've been slowly catching up by doing two comics a day: the previous days' comic and one from when we were in Hawai'i. Eventually I'll be up to date.

How has everyone else dealt with stagnating projects? Do you find a list helps or do you have a different method?

Sweater, Sweater, Sock, Sock, Now I've Got The Knitting Shot

I have been dreaming of knitting sweaters, especially sweaters for me. The problem I've encountered is that my weight has been all over the place because of the mystery GI problems. In the last 8 months I've lost 20 pounds (9kg), but managed to gain back almost 5 (2kg). This has left me a little unsure as to where I'll ultimately land, so making an especially fitted sweater is out. I have, however, been eyeing the Iceland pattern from Rowan 42. I even started it once way back in 2010. (That yarn turned into the Fireside Sweater instead, which fit my wrong in the shoulders and now belongs to my Mum.) The only problem is that it either looks good on you or it doesn't. I checked out many different projects on ravelry, and I'm hoping that if I can make the waist hit higher, it will look flattering on me.

Meanwhile, since Connor is remaining the same size (and also I love him), I've also been wanting to make him a sweater. Wei Siew generously gifted me 5 balls of Mythral I needed when I was in New Zealand last. I wanted to do my best to honor her by not letting the yarn sit in stash for too long. I had envisioned a Walter Mitty style sweater, but something kept me from recreating it. I just didn't like how there were cables on the arms, but none on the body. It just seemed unbalanced. But recently Christina Danaee made a sweater that looked much more like what I wanted to make. And what do you know, she was also inspired by Walter Mitty.

I very conveniently own the same magazine that she used to make the sweater

As I agonize over sweater decisions, I have been plodding along on my socks. The Concrete and Tulip socks have gone pretty well so far, but still have some decisions attached to them. I got to the top of the cuff of the first sock and realized that I might want to make the ribbing a bit longer. Also, I've never done a tubular bind off, but that might be more appropriate for these socks since they are knee-high. I haven't quite worked out what I want to do, so I went ahead and started the second sock. I think I'll knit the second sock with the adjustments I want to make. If it doesn't work out, then I only have to rip out one sock to make them match... in theory.

The Hieroglyphic Socks are also being knit at a good pace. I find doing two handed color makes my hands sore after a certain number of rounds, so I just make sure to put a few rounds into them every day. They will get done slowly and steadily.