Blog Silence… Must Mean Something is Going On
The funny thing about blogging, at least for me, is that I blog when I have time. I don’t have a schedule, I tried that and failed miserably. Then, whenever there’s a blog silence, I think to myself every week or so that “I should really put something up” but then the silence continues because somethingelse comes up. Because as it turns out I blog when I have time. I’m writing this on the train, on my way into work. (Now, it’s a few days later now, and I’m just getting back to add photos and edit.)
But the catch is I almost never seem to have free time, but I don’t have free time because I’m busy (at least part of the time) doing the things that I would be blogging about. Of course a lot of the time is spent doing boring non-blog related or blog worthy stuff (laundry anyone?). But some of that time is spent knitting and designing, and making or doing cool stuff, like decorating my new apartment. (Yep, I moved. Again. For the third time this summer.)
So if I were blogging in my limited amounts of free time this last month, there would have been nothing to blog about. I’m mean my last post was just a picture of a lot of boxes and a “sorry, can’t blog, I’ll do it later.” But now it’s been a month and a half and I haven’t blogged, and I feel terrible. So I’m sorry my poor neglected little blog.
But on the plus side I did get a whole heck of a lot done.
I moved. Again.
I finished a bunch of stuff.
From bottom to top. Kora. Asymmetrical Bluebells. Eirwen. Ghosts & Mirrors. and Very Berry. I’ve written about all of these before mostly under different names, or under no name. Except for Very Berry (which seriously needs a new name), it was done so quickly that I never got a chance to blog about it.
I started some stuff.
Another sample for my Arrowhead Stole in Tosh Lace colorway lapis.
A new hat that I’m working on, probably with some sort of cable design.
And I (sort of) made a smidge of progress on one WIP.
Only a few more rows to go on the shawl with a thousand beads.
I bought also some stuff.
Melissa Leapman’s book Continuous Cables, which I mostly got for the stitch dictionary at the end of the book. I think I’m going to play with some of these cables for the hat that I’m working on.
A skein of Manos Lace in “L2435 Aivina Aqua.” For another geometric lace stole with a garter stitch border along the same lines as Ghosts & Mirrors.
Two skeins of Wool Candy in “Gothic.” For an asymmetrical (not so) little something of a shawl.
And a skein of Scrumptious Lace in “Cherry.” Just because it was pretty.
So, so long and until next time my little corner of the Internet. I’ll try to get back to you soon. And I’ll try for a bit more balance between creating and writing about it.
Olympic Knitting
While I’m not actually participating in the Ravellinic Games (I want to get my WIPs under control not add to them) I do need something to knit while watching the Olympics. With 5 shawls and 1 sweater already on the needles I’ve got plenty of options. But my goal is to finish two of the shawls (plus 1).
The plus 1 is this shawl (Kora).
The knitting was down a couple weeks ago, but then it sat around until the first day of the games when I finally got around to blocking it. Which is why it’s the plus one. But in those couple of weeks I started writing the pattern in an attempt to get better at not letting pattern writing sit around waiting. That said I’ll be having this test knit soon, and if you’d be interested in test knitting let me know.
Over the past week of games I’ve been focusing on 3 of the shawls on the needles, in hopes of finishing 2 and getting 1 more very close to finished.
This new shawls without a name (I find naming patterns and projects one of the hardest aspects of designing), has been my primary travel knitting because it’s got a lot of garter, and very small, easy to memorize stitch patterns. I have about 750 yards of this handspun, and I’ll probably keep knitting ’till I’m out of yarn, partly because I love long shawls and scarves that you can wrap around multiple times, and partly because the yarn is handspun that has been sitting around for years and I want to use it all up.
Ghosts & Mirrors has grown a couple rows at a time. The key to working on this has been to knit like the wind while the commentators are commenting and the advertisers are advertising, and then to just stop knitting on it while the athletes are competing, otherwise I make far too many mistakes. But I’m still happy with how it’s going.
This shawl has gone on far too long. I’ve got 10 rows to go and I just want to get through it. This is what I get for knitting the same pattern twice so close together (this and Ponycorns actually overlapped for a bit). The beads are also slowing me down a lot! But hopefully I’ll get it done soon.
Neither Zodiac le Plume
or Lyda (maybe a name?)
have seen any progress. But once I get some of these other shawls off the needles I’ll get back to these two projects. I’m just trying to simplify my works in progress at the moment, and I’m moving in that direction but these are all big works in progress.
Lots of Travel Time
Means lots of knitting time.
I finally bound off this shawl. That tiny ball of yarn lasted, but the tail you can see is all that is left. It certainly got a little nerve wracking towards the end. I’m going to try and get it blocked this week, and start writing up the pattern.
And because decreasing the total number of works in progress I have on the needles would just be silly, I cast on another shawl. This pattern is part of this project, I’m still working on getting the written portion worked out, but the overall idea is beginning to take shape.
The project getting the most of my attention has been this one (I’m thinking of calling it Lyla or Lylia but haven’t decided yet). Lots of hours in the car, a bunch of hours on airplanes, and a couple hours sitting in airports turned into a few inches on this shawl. Progress really slowed down after the last increase round, but I’m still plugging away at it.
That being said, my second Zodiac le Plume is also steadily growing (that snow looks really appealing right now, it’s supposed to be 99F tomorrow). It’s sits on my desk to the right of my computer and gets a couple stitches added while I’m reading, or something is uploading. The legal pad was a failed attempt to make the lace patterning easier to see, maybe next time I’ll pin it out on something. Now that the pattern is available again, I thought it might be fun to do a knit-a-long of sorts. If anyone wants to join me, just let me know and we can figure something out.
I’m going to try not casting anything on until I finish up a couple of these works in progress (there are three more that I didn’t even bother photographing because they haven’t moved at all). At the moment I sort of feel like I’m drowning in WIPs, but we’ll see how well this attempt at WIP reduction goes.
