Tomfoolery

Tomfoolery is the fourth pattern to appear in Lit Knits. The scarf is inspired by a particularly infamous scene in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which was published in 1876.

After Tom gets into a bit of trouble, his aunt has him whitewash a large fence. Tom, being Tom, tricks his friends into painting the fence for him.

While we were trying to get the "friend painting the fence" shot, I had a little trouble getting everything lined up well. Some of you might have noticed that the apple isn't placed very well in this shot. I had to yell out, "The apple looks like it is going up his butt."

Apparently we are all five-years-old because everyone laughed.

It was brutally hot that day: 108°F/ 42°C. The reflector became more of a fan. Not in the picture (but located to the right) were a bunch of guys playing beer pong. We looked at them funny, they looked at us like we were insane. Honestly, we were all crazy for being outside on such a hot day.

This scarf went through a couple of incarnations. The intention always was to have a color block scarf that looked like a partially painted fence. Originally the ribbed portion was a bit wider. But I had some trouble with keeping the scarf from curling, even after blocking. So a week before the shoot, I knitted a new scarf as fast as I could. I promptly ran out of yarn, bought new yarn, got the wrong dye lot, and ripped out this scarf to make the replacement.

But it was worth it.

Trading The Old (Sleeve) For The New (Sleeve)

On Saturday I finished all my deadline knitting. That means The Book knitting is completely over. Even the one extra thing I had to knit up to make sure the charts were right. From February 15th to April 28th I'd been knitting a ridiculous amount in order to be done. So now I have time to revisit my Grace cardi. When we last saw it I had decided that I needed to take both sleeves back out. They were way too tight. 

I donated my hair for the 5th time. I'm loving the new haircut.

I tore only one sleeve out so I'd have a comparison sleeve.  The last few evenings were dedicated towards putting the right sleeve back in. Can you tell the difference? 

After this picture was taken, I went ahead and took out the left sleeve. 

Of course I missed the perfect weather to wear the sweater. Today was 90°F (32°C). Poor Scooter was panting, so we brought out the fan. 

So now I have a new conundrum. I've been such a monogamous knitter for so long that I don't know what to knit now! The Grace cardi should only take a few more days, which means I need something new. Every day I have a new idea of what my next project could be. Right now I have these skeins out. The blue could be a Bigger On The Inside. I've decided that I don't care if it isn't TARDIS colored. I wouldn't wear a TARDIS colored shawl anyways. (That's ok, right? There isn't some secret Order of Who that will judge me harshly, is there?)
The green could be Sleepy Hollow Socks. And the orange striped could be No Purl Monkey Socks.

The real problem is that I keep changing my mind on what project and what yarn I should use almost every hour. And while normally I would just wait to figure it out after Grace was done, I am going to be leaving the country in a week. (More details later) So these decisions have to be made and soon! No pressure...

Sweating In The Sweater

I have officially finished my very first sweater! The pattern is The Fireside Sweater by Amber Allison. The pattern is written fairly well. But what I like about it best is how easy it was to modify it to fit me better. If you want super specific details about what modifications I made, check out my Fireside Project Page on ravelry.

I used Tui by Zealana. 70% NZ Merino, 15% Cashmere, 15% Possum. I asked kiwipurler to send me an extra skein because half-way through, it looked like I was going to need 11 skeins. I only had ten and I don't live in NZ. Of course I ended up using only 9 skeins. But I don't think I would have even bothered finishing the sweater if I hadn't had the extra skein. It was like a security skein.

The buttons are dark wood. I chose them because I wanted them to blend in with the sweater. All in all, I'm fairly pleased with the sweater.

Of course, in an entirely predictable turn of events, it is too hot to wear the sweater.