Closer she came

598! I need to start organizing and photographing!

I'm such a geek.

Patience

A MERE 1565 people in line ahead of me on Ravelry.

Closer, and closer, and closer she came. Inch. By inch. By terrible short-row inch.

I cast thee aside (not to be confused with casting on)

What am I knitting right now?
I'm working on the lovely, soothing, uneven rib scarf from some of Dee's chunky weight cashmere.

The project which shall not be named is still menacingly occupying the better part of my desk, but once I finish my first cup of coffee I am going upstairs and frogging that fucker.

A hateful thing of hatey hate

I hate this project.
No, I mean, I really hate this project.
I hate how it looks.
I hate the crimp it's putting in my neck.
I hate all the knitting it's keeping me from doing.
I hate tinking.
I hate ripping back to the lifeline.
I hate picking up from there and not having enough stitches on the needle.
I hate the thought of giving over so much of my free time to something which is filling me with rage.

Haaaaaaaaaaate.

Crafty fucktard: lace edition part 1 (because I have a feeling there will be many many parts)

If Gabby was Matilda's never-ending carnival of WHAT the SHIT is THIS, then Mystery Stole 3 will be my Waterloo. This will be the project by which all future projects are measured (I'd give that sweater in this season's Rowan Magazine a 1 MS3 for difficulty but 3 MS3s for sheer what the fuck value.). Unlike Gabby, which at least had the advantage of built in cameraderie and commiseration from myself and Angeltiger, MS3 has the built in cameraderie, commiseration, and sheer unending email onslaught of several thousand participants, all of whom save one (kiss kiss, Ana, and here's the gin and tonics) seem to:

1. Be doing this in a pale pretty sweet colorway
2. Knit at the speed of lightning
3. Channel the perky at any hour of the day or night.

Gentle readers, let us contrast this with the native knitting state of the wench:

1. Be doing this in the darkest colorway possible. In this case, Habu superfine merino in steel grey. Please note the hardcooooore use of the word 'steel' in the color, yo. This project also involves beading (upping the twee factor by approximately a factor of pi), and whereas others were debating the merits of swarvoski crystals or rose quartz, I opted for 2 different beads- one for edge beading, one for internal. The internal ones are Toho matte raku blue iris/grey triangles not cubes and the external ones are matte metallic dark blue hex nut shaped. That's right. I'm making a steel grey lace shall with grey and matte metallic hexagonal beads. It'll be goth industrial lace. Trent Reznor, Robert Smith, and Morrisey walk into a yarn shop for a stitch n bitch. The comedy just writes itself.
2. Has absolutely no familiarity with charts, and so is knitting at a snail's pace and cursing at a clip which would make Samuel L. Jackson reverentially wipe away a tear.
3. Never perky. Ever. I am the woman Matilda got an Oscar the Grouch magnet which states "Fuck y'all. Fuck alla y'all."

The first clue was released last Friday. I have already had to recast on six times, due to multiple fuckups, yarn breakage, a regrettable knitting-flying-right-off-the-needles incident, and finally a decision that the size needle I was working on- despite looking ok on the gauge swatch- really wasn't working with the pattern. Ana has mailed me a new lace needle in the right size.

Please note that the day after she mailed it, Royal Mail in the UK went on strike.

It's going to be a long, long summer.

The yarn sale debriefing.

My initial reconnaissance of the yarn sale indicated that there was little in the way of wool, or indeed, Rowan, on offer at the sweet, sweet price of 50% off. A few odd balls of Big Wool, 4 ply soft, and some remarkably ugly fruit-punch-plus-glitter Kidsilk Night did it for the animal fibres, and there was plenty of Cotton Rope and that squiggly-looking cotton tape stuff, neither of which appealed to me, so I turned from the Rowan shelves with mild regret. Not a good Rowan day.

It was, however, a good day for fans of Debbie Bliss. It was such a good day that it made me wonder if JL is ditching Bliss, but many of her books were still at full price, and it looks as if they just moved the non-sale Bliss off the shop floor for the duration of the sale, so probably not. Huge amounts of Pure Silk, Stella, Pure Cotton, Cathay, Cotton Cashmere, Denim Aran, Alpaca Silk, Cashmerino Superchunky (aka the Pilly-est Fucking Yarn in the World) and a fair amount of Cotton DK were available, plus some smaller amounts of stuff I can't remember right now. Debbie Bliss has terrible, shitty, chintzy yardage, and this pisses me off so much that I have to REALLY want the yarn to buy it at full retail. At 50% off, however, I am filled with wild glee, and totally lose my self-control.

The (uh, first, because I'm already wanting to go back for more silk and some Pure Cotton) haul: 14 balls of Stella in a rather lovely emerald, with faint hints of blue, 9 skeins of Pure Silk (chocolate brown, rose, black), 4 balls of Cotton DK in various colours (more washcloths, which, with bars of fancy soap picked up for a song at TK Maxx will be my 'oh, right, I need to give you an Xmas pressie, don't I, temporary girlfriend of random cousin?' gifts this year), the Stella/Pure Cotton pattern book, and some different beads for my Mystery Stole, in case I don't like the beads I've already got.

The Stella will be a 3/4 sleeve cardi for my mum's Xmas present, and the Pure Silk is going straight into my hoard, except for the rose, which, added to my already huge stash of it, is going to be something for MEEEEEE. I'm actually tempted to go back and get even more rose silk and made a twinset, instead of just a cardi, as I had planned, since it's all the same dyelot. Looking through the Pure Cotton section of the book, I'm thinking I might just go ahead and get enough for one of the projects, since I'll be able to make something pretty nice for less than £20, and my mum, blast her, will not be convinced that there is such a thing as completely non-scratchy wool. So I kill my hands knitting a lot of cotton and silk blends for her, although I am getting a lot better with the non-bouncy fibres than I used to be. I think I also need to get a couple more balls of Stella, since she'll whine if I don't lengthen the cardi enough to cover her ass. (I routinely lengthen things by, like, four to six inches for her, figuring the extra yarn and knitting time is nowhere near as irritating as the thought of her not wearing it because "it doesn't cover my butt!")

In all, a pretty good sale, and I wish to god I could control myself from going back, but dudes: 50% off!