Honest.. I do knit..

I've even been working on my shawl. Still the 3/4 Fir Cone shawl, it's coming along in that 'looks just the same but bigger' sort of way. I'm 7 and a half repeats through the 13 suggested. More than halfway by the numbers, but every row is longer than the last. Go back a few posts.. look at the shawl.. squint until there is more muted green yarn scrunched up and that's what it looks like currently.

I have, however, continued on the ooh shiney side. I've forgotten the earrings I've done at home, but I do have yesterday's necklace.

Ooh! Shiney!

Alright.. I'm a knitter at heart, but as I've commented to any number of people.. I have all the ooh shiney factor of a ferret on pixie stix. I like sparkley, shiney, glittery and colourful. So I suppose it was somewhat inevitable that I ended up coming to the bead side. I mean compared to lace, this stuff works up in a blink of an eye! I've done some stringing already, and I put that on the 'brain dead monkey' skill level. Armed only with bits of wire and some needlenosed pliers, I decided to get all the way to the 'raw beginner' level and play with little wire loops. These were my first try (that left the bead bin that is).


Last night I decided to knuckle down and do some more experimenting and came out with these. Now, this is on the order of a garter stitch scarf or 'hello world' in the beading scale of the world, but I'm still pretty pleased with myself.


Thank you thank you to S. for taking the photos for me. My poor little camera just couldn't cope at all.

Rambling into the breeze..

I realized as I was nattering heel and toe shapings to a (very patient) non-knitting friend, that I have this lovely blog that claims to be about knitting (nominally), and rambling there about potential projects would likely reach people who wouldn't necessarily need to draw upon reserves of patience to endure it.

I have projects coming out my ears. I was (briefly) a one at a time gal.. but that phase appears to have vanished as abruptly as it arrived. In the WIP queue currently is a green shawl for myself, and a pink (quit laughing all those who know me well) ladder yarn (yes, even out of novelty yarn. Go on, I'll wait for you to pull yourself off the floor.) top.

I pause here to reflect on a cruel cruel twist of fate. I am a large person. Big Girl. Ample Woman. Fat. Choose your phrase, they all fit as well as any. By extension, my clothes are large too. (Not too large though, big girls.. you listening? Sacks are for potatoes. Skim.. just skim.) To accomplish that skim principle, you need fine gauge knits. Bulky yarn skims much like a buffalo on ice skates. Ain't gonna happen. What happens when you combine a lot of square footage with a lot of stitches to an inch? That's a heck of a lot of knitting to get anywhere. Process knitters dance with glee, project knitters go back to socks.

So I decided to have a look through the sock patterns I've collected over the years to try out that cotton wool blend sock yarn I picked up on impulse in Ottawa. By a miracle, in spite of 3 days in my mother's house, the poor ball of yarn does not smell of smoke. Regia Cotton, Tip and Top Color for those keeping track at home. The two top contenders are Wendy's Toe Up Feather and Fan Sock or Lacy Scallops Socks. One is top down (Scallops), one is toe up (Duh. Did you /read/ the names?). One has a cute little picot top (Scallops), but Wendy's has short row toe and heel shaping which I've always wanted to try. I can also do feather and fan in my sleep. Which considering socks are usually my in car passenger knitting, is a feature, but having a look at the scallops, it's a simple simple repeat that I should have down pat in no time. Thoughts? Comments?

I did discover today that I can work on lace weight yarn while sporting an anime look at the eye Dr's office. Apparently I do work as much by feel as sight. The fir cone shawl comes along slowly, it would come along more quickly if I worked on it more. I've already got it memorized, and I'm on repeat 5 of 13 repeats before the edging. Like everything I seem to do, every repeat is long than the one before it, so to call me 1/3rd of the way through is laughable. Here's the obligatory photo for those of you who've skipped all the words up until now and just hunted for the pictures:


It's about 6.5 inches unblocked at the moment, and yes I sat it upon the side of a computer case to take the (blurry) photo.

What every office needs...

An office cat. This is Murphy. He's the cat of one of the deans (ex dean I suppose.. close enough) in our college who happens to live very very near campus. Murphy has claimed all of north end of campus as his own and today in the rain.. my office. He's chewed on my spider plant, investigated the fridge and made himself at home. I think we need an office cat all of the time. *grin*