I’m going to be so toasty in Boston.

I’m on the brink of drowning in WIPs.

I think I’m going to need to impose a rule for myself. I’m now officially only allowed to start one new project for every WIP I finish. As in off the needles, pinned to the ground, and waiting to dry.

Oh but look at this lovely squishy circle scarf I just found!

-headdesk-

Actually this might not be as difficult as it sounds, seeing as how in all reality most of my WIPs are only a few hours away from becoming FOs.

Take Aidez for example. I started this one only a few days ago and I’m already done with the back and nearly finished with one of the side panels. I could definitely finish the whole thing this weekend if it weren’t for the Super Secret Project. Although at the rate I’m going I’ll probably finish it anyway while the Super Secret Project weeps under my bed.

Aidez progress

Sidenote: I was so excited about knitting this that I took a picture so I could blog about it. Except I was so excited about knitting it that instead of blogging about it, I knitted more and now it’s more than double its current length and this photo is officially outdated.

Another sidenote: I have a huge box of awesome amazing looseleaf jasmine tea at home that I’ve started bringing to work in a small ziploc baggy. It pretty much looks like a bag of weed.

Going back to WIPS (my mind is kind of a disorganized arena of clutter today, can you tell?), I’m going through my current projects in my head and I mostly just have really stupid blocks on all of them.

-Beatnik: finished back and sleeves, 20% done with front piece but the fifteen different cable techniques requires constant checking of the pattern which means I can’t really be doing much else simultaneously.

-Peaks Island: I’m currently missing the motivation and brainless mood required to complete 9″ of pure seed stitch.

-Little Birds: I think I just have a mental block against fingering weight yarn right now seeing as how I’ve been primarily working on a bulky project and it would just feel so slow in comparison.

-Super Secret Project: It’s just the looming deadline that’s getting to me, so of course I keep procrastinating. Makes perfect sense, mm?

Anddd it’s time for another mug of tea because my eyelids are getting droopy.

3 Comments knitting - - - -

Pretty procrastinations

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Lately because I spend so much time at work I end up feeling icky if I don’t make inordinate amounts of progress on various projects on my days off. This usually results in my whipping out Peaks Island to squeeze out a couple of rows whenever Boyfriend says “Hang on, I just want to check my fantasy baseball league real quick*.”

That said, this weekend was kind of a huge wooly mountain of productivity.

It started with a Joann’s trip. I have yet to find** a nice local yarn store in my area so I always end up going to Joann’s. And also Joann’s (avec coupons) is way nicer to my bank account. And this time I had a 25% off entire purchase coupon that was about to expire.

I only meant to buy two more skeins of Wool-Ease in seaspray***, but somehow I ended up with an additional two skeins in blush heather (I decided to go with a pale heathered pink for the booties), and then two skeins of the Chunky Wool-Ease in wheat for a new project.

Yes, my instant gratification project of the weekend was a long cable-y sweater. You know what though? In about a cumulative day’s worth of knitting, I’ve finished the entire back piece and cast on the left front piece. I love this yarn. Except that it’s mostly acrylic.

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And yet, somehow I still feel that icky un-productive feeling.

You know that feeling when you have two papers to write and 200 pages to read and an exam to study for so all you want to do is clean the house even though normally you hate cleaning?

That’s kind of what happened with my knitting projects this weekend. I sort of have a Super Secret Side Project going on with a fast approaching deadline coming up**** and instead of working on it like I had originally planned to do this weekend, I kind of half-assedly finished one part of it Friday morning and then ignored it all weekend.

I even decided to attempt my first-ever crochet project from a pattern. Ignore the lumps please.
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The moral of the story is that my car is out of gas so after work I’m going to drive over to the gas station to fill it up and on the way I’m going to stop at Joann’s***** for more chunky yarn. It’ll be my way of bartering with myself. “For every panel of chunky sweater you finish, you HAVE to do one section of the Super Secret Project.” I don’t see any flaws with this plan. Not one.

Speaking of which, this Aidez sweater is absolutely delightful to knit. The cabling has enough variety to be interesting but it’s not so complicated that I have to check the pattern every row. In fact I even managed to memorize the pattern after several rows.

Lastly, want to hear something really stupid? Like, ridiculously stupid?

<shame>

I’ve been using markers incorrectly. Until this weekend. For some reason unbeknownst to me, I’ve mistakenly been under the impression that markers are hooked into your knitting and that there’s some technique of knitting through a loop that somehow transfers the marker to the next loop. In fact I’ve been meaning to look up that technique and have been either not using markers, or just moving them to the top every ten rows or so. Why I never thought to slide them directly onto the needle between stitches is completely beyond me.

</shame>

*Last time “real quick” consisted of a fifteen minute phone call with a friend in his league and then over an hour of poring over my laptop.

**Re: venture out and look for.

***I’ve been calling it seafoam but it’s actually called seaspray.

****More on this later.

*****These two places are not even remotely close to each other.

4 Comments knitting - - - -

Distractions.

It’s Thursday! Which is my Friday. Which means that while I’m physically still at work, my mind is already taking a day off.

I’m being torn in two by the prospect of free time. Part of me is relishing the idea of cozying up in bed with Beatnik, Little Birds, and Peaks Island (oh dear lord, I’ve started to refer to them as though they were people..). That part is imagining steaming mugs of hot chocolate and pajamas being worn all day.

The other half of me is imagining speeding off to Jo-anns with the coupon they just emailed me and attacking the yarn section with it. This is the same part of me that just bought two patterns from KnitPicks. Specifically, this one and this one. In my defense, I’ve been looking for a nice bootie/slipper pattern on Rav for ages and have only ever run into booties for babies, which, while they are adorable, could really only fit my big toe and are therefore useless. And the bag is really cute. -squee-

And technically the slippers are crocheted, which isn’t even knitting, so it doesn’t really count as cheating on my current projects.

I guess I’m going yarn shopping.

Hmmmmm now I just have to decide what color to do these in. I’m thinking of doing the bag in a baby blue/lime green combination but I can’t decide if that’s too cutesy/springy for my wardrobe. And I have absolutely no idea what color to do the booties in. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to make eight pairs in different colors. (I’m only half-joking.)

In other news, I went to Border’s last weekend determined to buy a knitting book but left empty-handed because I had no idea what to get. Any suggestions on must-have knitting books? I’m not really looking for anything specific, just anything with nice patterns or good tips.

2 Comments life - - -

Mysterious.

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I have no idea where these knitting needles came from.

I had been oggling Ysolda Teague’s Peaks Island Hood pattern for weeks (actually I’ve been oggling most of Ysolda’s patterns for weeks) and finally caved and bought it. Three of the projects I’ve been working on lately have been sweaters and I needed some instant gratification (well, not instant, but instant-er than a month).

After waiting impatiently for the file to download (three of the longest seconds of my life), I opened it up and read through what I needed. At first I was going to splurge and buy some of the Green Mountain Spinnery yarn that she used, but then I realized that I don’t really need a $52 scarf. I might buy some anyway though, that stuff looks delicious.

I dug around my stash and found some Lion Brand Wool-Ease that I had bought during a yarn sale (because it’s so expensive to begin with) because it was pretty. The color is called seafoam, and it just screamed at me to be made into this scarf/hood. I took another look at the pattern. US size 10 needles. I was positive I didn’t have any in that size. My knitting needle collection is pretty sparse. I hadn’t really started knitting until recently so I pretty much just have single pairs of needles that I grabbed off the shelf because they looked about right. I decided to take a look anyway so I could pick up a few other sizes I might need for the upcoming projects in my queue.

And somehow there, sticking out the side of my knitting basket, was a pair of size 10.5s.

I’M SO CONFUSED.

When it comes to sewing stuff I have so much it’s hard to keep track of and I’m always running into things I had forgotten I owned, but not so with the knitting stuffs.

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Anyway, I’m not really asking questions. I decided that 10.5 is close enough to 10 so I cast on and now I’m about five inches into the 27 inches of seed stitch. (The above photo was taken about 25 rows ago.) Yay for happy mindless knitting!

In other news, I posted some Jayne Cobb hats in my etsy store. Feel free to check them out and, you know, buy one. 🙂

4 Comments knitting - - - -
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