Startitis?

Is that what this is? It doesn't feel like startitis. Perhaps that is because you only feel startitis when you fight it? Since I have given in to every whim, I have not noticed?

Hm. Anyway, I kind of feel like I have an awful lot OTN.

--Shedir
--Big Black Socks of neverending doom
--Bigfoot missionary shawl (the missionary I was planning to give it to? back already. dangit)
--Snug Harbor
--Starry Night Socks

I also started a scarf for a friend but I don't like the way it is coming out so I plan to rip it back, and therefore I do not count it in this list. Those are just the active projects. The "hibernating" projects, to borrow a ravelry term, are:
--Witterings hat
--garter stitch shawl
--chocolate waffle scarf

The last is so mind-numbingly dull that I only work on it when I don't have anything else at the "relatively thoughtless" stage. It's been getting a lot of play since out of the projects listed in the first list above, the only one that I really had at a thoughtless stage was the snug harbor one and that one is really too large to be as portable as I would like.

Last night I solved this problem by inserting a dental floss lifeline and ripping back part of the BBS. I misunderstood something in the pattern and knit about an inch and a half past where I was supposed to on the foot. So last night I fixed that, and now that sock only needs a toe and then I can cast on for the second one, which will have 12 utterly mindless inches of ribbing before I have to think again. I hope to finish the toe tonight.

But, I didn't do that until after choir practice last night, and since I really needed something to work on that wasn't the chocolate waffle scarf (please not the chocolate waffle scarf), I cast on the second starry night sock. This turned out to be perfect because I got almost exactly the right amount of ribbing done at the top of the sock, so now I am set to start the patterned section whenever I am ready.

I start to get fidgety when I have too many things going on, like I have some sort of guilt complex or whatever, so I'd really like to finish off some of these projects. Shedir is about a good day's work away from completion (and I am really concerned that it is way, way too big). I have a long way to go yet on the missionary shawl. I may try to put in the time tonight on the Snug Harbor, which really should be the fastest of all of these to finish, I would think. I am thinking I will try to finish the first BBS and the Snug Harbor by the weekend, and then spend Sunday afternoon finishing Shedir. Saturday we're having a board game party, so I will need something simple to do on that day - which will be perfect for the second BBS! I'll still have a lot on the needles, but at least I will feel like I have made progress, which has been a sensation severely lacking in the last couple of weeks.

I am itching to start Odessa and also a baby blanket for a high school friend pregnant with her first child, but I am doing my very best to hold back until I can finish a couple of things.

Minimal at best

This has not been a week of getting much done. I did a little work on my chocolate waffle scarf since my socks for soldiers sock is out of commission until I rip back a bit to fix whatever I did wrong on the gussets. A helpful list member suggested that I use dental floss to pick up the stitches before ripping, which I think is genius, so I am hoping I will be able to take care of that before tomorrow's D&D session.

I am kind of having to accept that I am not going to get the Bigfoot shawl done before the ladies I wanted to give the shawls to leave for their trip. I'm on the body now but I guess I did not realize how long it takes to do a whole row when your row is a couple hundred stitches long.

Yes, I realize I may be rather slow.

The good news is that I can finally start to see the pattern a little bit. I really couldn't before now, so that is a nice little bit of progress. Even so, I am only getting at most one and a half pattern repeats done each time I sit down.

UnRavelled

I spent Saturday obsessively checking my e-mail for a Ravelry invite (while knitting on my sock, of course). It finally showed up at around 2 and now I am ON as Craftninja!

First, knitting progress:

--I had a fight with the urban necessity glove, pulled back some stuff, and generally got frustrated. I have not touched it in several days, which I feel very guilty about since one concentrated session could probably finish it. Well, maybe two. :oP
--I have turned the heel and completed the gusset increase on my second garter rib sock. I feel accomplished, even though the foot stretches before me. Fortunately, my feet are small.
--I can't figure out what I did with the cape I was knitting. It is not in my project bag and I could not find it in the stash. I am a little puzzled. Needless to say, I have not worked on it.
--No progress on the Patons Shawl or the Witterings Hat. I have listed these in ravelry as "hibernating."
--Chocolate Waffle Scarf is cruising along. This has become my designated 'around town' project that I can knit when my eyes and mind must be busy with something else. It's about a foot long at this point - not lightening progress, but not bad.

I feel pressured to get some of these things off the needles because there are so many other things I want to work on. Being on Ravelry is definately inspiring - I wouldn't have given this
a second look if I had not seen pictures of it on Ravelry (actualy, I saw pictures for the Rogue design, but this seems like something I am much more likely to actually wear and it has the pretty cables that I loved so much on Rogue). I'm thinking about doing it in KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in Lake Ice Heather. I can see from the Ravelry pictures that the cables show up much better in lighter colors. I would like to look at and feel the yarn first, though, so I may order a ball and see if I like it. The only thing I worry a little bit about is what pants I could wear with that color; I'm sure it would look fine with jeans, and I guess that would be okay as it would likely be too warm to wear in the office.

I ordered a bunch of single balls of Swish Superwash a while back thinking I would use them for charity projects. I don't know what I was thinking as one ball is not really enough to make much of anything! However, I did find a pattern on Ravelry (is there nothing this site can not do?) that I think will work swimmingly - the Hand/Wrist Warmers from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. And I already have that book! On the page for a particular yarn you can click to see what people are knitting with that yarn, and I clicked through pages and pages of projects for ideas. I think these will be great for hospital patients. It is always freezing in hospitals. One of the ladies in my church is a nurse (well, many of the ladies in my church are nurses) and she provides items to patients in the cancer wards, so I think this would be really great. I will also make some hats for variety.

I was also able to see finished versions of the patterns in Sensational Knitted Socks, which is really great because everything looks different on a foot than it does in a little square picture in a book. I have favorited a number of patterns that I tripped over while browsing. I am favoriting anything I like enough to think I will want to knit it at some time, but only adding things to my queue that I have definate plans for. I'm having so much fun.

Facing the music

I have avoided blogging because I have not bothered to upload any of the pictures that I took, and I am ashamed. I know that text-only blogging is really boring for craft blogs. I guess I am just lazy, and I need to buckle down and put down the knitting long enough to get the pictures uploaded.

BUT for today, we will just have to muddle through.

This weekend was extremely productive. I finished the Paris Rain pedicure socks, and sock #2 went very quickly with no problems at all. Sock #1 still looks droopy and pathetic...I am hoping that it is just stretched out from all the reknitting and that if I wash it it will pull itself together. The two socks look pretty different in color too since the skeins were from different dye lots. The color itself is not that different, although the dark colors are a little deeper and more jewel-like on Sock #2. The real difference is in the width of the stripes. Sock #2 is much more heavily striped that Sock #1. I actually like Sock #2 much better than Sock #1, but don't tell #1 that. It might sulk even more and then I will never get it back into shape.

I also worked on the charity scarf that I have begun calling my chocolate waffle scarf. I cast on kind of an arbitrary number of stitches and have been working it in seed stitch, alternating short stripes of Nutmeg with wider stripes of Truffle, and it really looks like those ego waffles that are half chocolate. Working on it makes me hungry. Anyway, some friends and I went to Starbucks to hang out and chat and I worked on it the whole time we were there, so that was pretty good.

Lastly, Sunday night I cast on for the Urban Necessity tam...but about half an inch into it, I wasn't satisfied with my stitches. Ladders everywhere! Finally it hit me - I had picked up my KnitPicks Option needle without even thinking about it...and the shortest "Option" is 24"! I grabbed the pattern and sure enough...I was supposed to be working on a 16"!

I hemmed and hawed and tried to decide whether the problem was due to my very large cast-on (rather than get a size larger needle, I just held my two needles together and cast on over both, because I really wanted a loose cast-on...and I was too lazy to find the size 8). I really didn't know what to do. I tried to tell myself it would be fine and to keep working...but it wasn't fine and I didn't like it. Last night I got out my 20" Addi Turbo (the pattern calls for a 16" but I am knitting one of the larger sizes so I decided on the 20" instead) and cast on (again, over 2 needles, being too lazy to find the size 8) from a second skein of yarn, knit for a while and compared the two. The one on the 20" does look much better, except at the bottom, where the wide cast-on DOES stretch the stitches. I have decided I can live with this, since my cast-ons are often much too tight. I'd rather have it loose so it does not impede actual wearing of the hat.

One thing I didn't work on is the cape for me. It doesn't require a whole lot of concentration, but it does require some, and the weather is cooling significantly. I'd really like to get this one done.

I added a few projects to my 'future' queue...at my tabletop gaming group on Friday, a couple of the younger players requested knit items, and I happily agreed. This was probably not wise, but then, if I were wise, I would not have failed to check the needle length I needed for the tam. :oP

So many projects I want to do, and so little time. I am now dying to knit the Moonlight Sonata Shawl - I'm thinking in Kidsilk Haze in Nightly. I just think the halo would add a nice touch of romance to an already romantic shawl. At least, I think it is romantic. I am easily sucked in by pretty names.