I'm still here!

There have been some pet related crises in the past week chez CraftNinja, so appologies for the lack of blog. I just haven't been in the mood. Also, you know, we are in that Christmas knitting period where it's difficult to talk about things because you become paranoid that the recipient might run across your blog. Like, they never read blogs, and barely even know what a blog is, but you know, you KNOW, that if you put a Christmas present for them up on the blog, somehow they will find it. So some of that is going on.

So the stuff I can tell you:

--I started a sock out of Schaeffer Ann, which I have never used before, and had to frog it because there was this funky twisted stitch thing on the top that looks really cool but made it too tight. Considering whether to try again or browse around for a different pattern.

--I am still working on Flamenco, in the hopes that I can finish it in time to wear at Christmas, since it is really, really red. However, since I have Christmas presents that also must be worked on, I feel this deadline is kind of tight. I'm on row 26 of 75, but the rows get progressively longer and then there is the ruffle. I don't know why I persist in knitting things with ruffles since ruffles invariably mean that either the cast-on or the cast-off is a nightmare, but I am apparently ruffle-addicted. (Yes, I know of the flirty ruffles shawl from Fiddlesticks, and also the Musetta shawl, and many other ruffled shawls I am trying desperately not to remember)

--I bought a skein of the mink/cashmere yarn that has been making the blog rounds that I intend to make into handwarmers for my mom to put in her stocking. I wish there were some way of verifying the claims about this yarn, but either my OOH YARN impulse or my general tendency to believe people are telling the truth led me to go ahead and purchase it. Angels did not sing and there was no light from heaven when I opened the bag, as I had been led to believe, but other blog readings have convinced me that in order to get the angel choir, you have to add water. So we will revisit this when the mitts are knit and washed, and I will let you know whether there is any angelic apearance. (My mom is the one person who I am dead certain would never find this blog nor read it if she did, so I can say this safely)

--I am working on <censored> from <censored> for <censored>, in <censored> as a Christmas present for <censored>. I also plan to make <censored> from <censored> but I haven't picked the yarn yet. (The great thing is, this bullet point can actually cover multiple projects depending on what you fill in for the censored spots. Saves me some typing!)

--The Rogue sweater is in time-out until I get over my bitterness at these cabled increases along the ragland seams. I really hate knitting them. It galls me that this sweater will fly by when I get through that mess, but that I have to get through it first.

--I finished the first sock in the raspberry black forest yarn and am on to the second. I still don't like the fiber blend very much, but the finished sock is absolutely lovely. I'm through the cuff and into the patterned part of the leg, and the nice thing about this pattern is that it is easy to look at the sock and count repeats, so I know how many I have to knit in order to get socks of the same length. (I know, I could count rows or weave a thread back and forth or whatever, but I'm comfortable with eyeballing it and accepting that there may be a row's difference in the length between my socks. I am pretty confident no one else is going to measure.)

--Veronique and the Featherweight cardigan are advancing a row at a time. This is a consequence of having too much stuff on the needles. I think I'm finished with the collar on the Featherweight collar - or, to be more accurate - I'm done with it. I'm totally done with this stupid collar. I can live with it being maybe a teeny bit shorter than it was designed to be. So when I get around to casting it off, I should be able to knit the sleeves which I desperately hope will go quickly, because I could really use a dose of 'finish-it' self-esteem.

--I can't show you pictures of any of this because Photoshop Elements 3 is not compatible with Vista and I am still waiting on my new copy of Photoshop to arrive. Woe.

Sound Off!

I have an extremely insecure relationship with my new computer so I have put off blogging a little bit. Now I can't remember what I have and haven't blogged about, so...Roll call!

1. Featherweight Cardigan. I thought I was done with the collar until I checked the instructions and saw that I have to knit 3.5 inches and not 2 inches. Woe. So I have 1.5 more inches of collar to do, and both sleeves. I'm finding this a little depressing and so the cardigan is not getting much play, which is...obviously not helping matters anyway.

2. Moody Blues Socks for the Man. These are done and delivered. Even when you have to rip out a heel and do it twice, a sock flies when you have been knitting a gargantuan garter stitch shawl for three months. Delivery was especially quick since he was sitting next to me on the couch as I wove in the ends.

3. Veronique. Still neglected, but at least getting a little play at night when I want something simple. I am definitely reacting to the weather as I speculated in my last post, because the laceweight mohair project is getting way more play than the silk blend laceweight. The only reason the featherweight one is getting any play at all is because it is so close to being done.

4. Eris. Living up to its name. It seems that raglan shaping is some kind of knitterly secret that you are not allowed to google. I got lots of hits of people talking about it and 0 about what it actually is and what I'm supposed to do when the pattern starts talking about it. I finally solved this problem (somewhat) by rereading the directions, which actually told me what to do, kind of, and by buying The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns on sale at Nature's Yarns. All hail Ann Budd, who finally provided a good explanation of what raglan shaping is and showed me pictures that made it all clear (and now that I know what it is, I can tell you the girl sitting in front of me in training today has a sweater with raglan sleeve shaping). I have finally reached the end of the short rows, which will make my life a little easier, but frankly I am finding these cable increases a little difficult to do. I have suspicions that they are difficult because I do not use a cable needle, making it tricky to increase while cabling because of enhanced risk of dropping the stitches involved. I think I've finally got the hang of it, but I'm not really sure I like the way it looks. Also, I dropped my knitting at one point (by which I mean, I tossed it down on the couch as I got up to go feed the dog) and when I came back my stitch marker was gone and a couple of stitches were hanging off the needles. No big deal, except I put the marker back in the wrong place so I ended up moving my decreases one stitch to the left for the next four rows or so. When I discovered the error, I contemplated ripping back (in fact, I contemplated ripping all the way back to the pickup stitches and doing different increases because I'm just not sure I like the way it looks anyway) but I decided that it continued that way for a short enough time that I could just move it back and go on. I'll let you guys know how that works out. So anyway, I'll be a little relieved when I get past the increases, because they are interfering with my hockey viewing, although this seems to be beneficial to the Caps because they always score when I look down to increase.

5. Hanami. Abandonned for now, but not unloved. I want to get some of the cold-weather projects done first.

6. Flamenco. I would still like to do this project but I have to find a way to manage the charts without losing my mind first. Instead of working the charts in sequence (row 1-50 of chart A followed by row 1-50 of chart B) these charts are all worked at once - you work row 1 of chart A and then row 1 of chart B and then row 1 of Chart C and then you turn and work your wrong side row and then work row 2 of Chart A, row 2 of chart B, row 2 of Chart C, etc. I can see at once that this will drive me TOTALLY BATTY so I have to somehow figure out how I can manage all that paper, especially since each chart spans two pages, and one spans three. I usually knit on the couch with my stuff on the back of the couch or on a TV tray (I'm not a very organized invidual). I feel like I would need to knit this at a table with all my charts spread out and sixteen pattern minders to keep my place.

Bag Lady

One thing I did before leaving on vacation was to splurge on a Jordana Paige Bella bag. I have maybe 3 knitting bags (including the new Bella) and all of them are lacking in one way or another.

The first one, I got at Michaels and carried loyally for many months. It's just a plain bag with two pockets on the outside, and some interior pockets. Zips across the top. Nothing wrong with it. Functional, but not spectacular. Great as long as you don't mind carrying two bags, because no one would ever mistake this for a purse.

Then there are my Goknit pouches, which I love, and they've served me well, but - let's face it, they look kind of dorky hanging off of you or your bag. I actually kind of like putting them inside a larger bag to hold my yarn and keep it from tangling, because of the little loopy things. Why do so few people make knitting bags without the loopy things? Do they worry it will no longer appeal to nonknitters if it has loopy things? Well, is it a knitting bag or isn't it??

I also have a Namaste messenger bag. I bought it because it was on sale, honestly, and I kind of lost my head for a minute. This one really works the least for me. It's biggest, so I use it when I want to carry multiple projects. But, I have just never cared for messanger bags in general - way too much work to get to the inside - and it doesn't sit on the floor. I take it to game nights where I can hang it on the back of my chair. I tuck a ball of yarn in one of the front pockets and work from that, and that seems to work okay since the front pockets button. When I run out of yarn or if I want a different project, I can dig for it on the inside of the bag, tuck it in the front pocket and be fine.

Of all my bags so far, the Bella is by far my favorite, but it's not perfect either (let's face it, nothing is perfect unless you design it yourself, right?). It has two features I love - one, it can double as a purse. Two, it has the snap loop to pull your yarn through.  (It's also really cute, does that count as a 'feature'?)

JP calls them 'circlets' and I cannot fathom why they are not included in every knitting bag ever. Worse, I cannot fathom why so many knitting bag designers use a gromet for this. You have to be one comitted knitter to put your yarn through a metal gromet, knowing that the only way to then remove it is to cut the yarn. Somebody must like it that way because bags keep selling like this, but I am not that committed either to project or to bag at any given time, nor am I so delighted with the weaving in of ends, that I am happy to snip my yarn all the time.

The biggest issue I have with Bella is that it doesn't have enough structure. On the one hand, the lack of structure is great for people like me who never carry a purse on a plane. I always put my necessities in my carryon and pack my purse in my check bags to pull out when I arrive. The outside of the bag seems to have plenty of structure; it slumps, as one would expect with a bag this style, but it does sit up when full and it's not really a big deal. I think the problem comes in that the lining is not really attached to the bottom and sides of the bag, only the top and along the center line, so instead of staying against the outside of the bag, the linings moves around on its own, bunches up, etc, causing the pockets to act smaller than they really are. Others have complained about the pockets being short so that tools fall out of them, but I really don't think the issue is that the pockets are too short, I just think that because the lining is not attached, the lining bunches up and pushes the tools out of the pockets. If the lining would, again, just lay down and play nice, the tools wouldn't fall out. My biggest peeve in this respect really comes from the divider pocket. I really want a purse that has a pocket for my knitting, and then a pocket for my non-knitting paraphernalia. I'm sorry, the stuff that goes in my purse is just not stuff that I want anywhere near my knitting, so I want separate territories. At first, the divider pocket was too floppy and stuff was constantly overflowing across it. But, I stuffed the divider pocket with paper towels so now it stands up much better. Also, too be fair, the project I was carrying really grew larger than this bag was intended to accomodate, so it's not JP's fault at all that my knitting kept overflowing. I was just too stubborn to switch bags (or too cheap to buy one of the larger sizes, you decide). 

So, I'm kind of giving some thought to some of the more structured-looking JP bags, like maybe the Knitter's Satchel. Problem is, that's not really my style...I like the styling of Bella or even Rio much better.

Anyway, all this is a long-winded way of saying that it got me thinking about what I would make if I were designing the perfect bag, and I actually decided that there is no perfect bag for every purpose. I would like two different bags.

1. Project bag for Serious Knitting. This would be most similar to the bag from Michaels.

2. Bag that could double as a purse for times I want to take my knitting along but don't want to be carrying a separate knitting bag. This would be most similar to the JP bag.

Bag 1 Specifications:
--1 small pocket with some type of circlet equivalent. I would like this pocket to mostly close, leaving an opening on one side through which the yarn can travel (it seems to me that this would be easiest to accomplish with a zipper, but it would need something on the end of the zipper to make sure it didn't catch the yarn
--1 pocket in which to store the knit-in-progress, right next to the yarn pocket. I am ambivalent about how big I want this to be since size preferences would vary depending on what I was working on. Big enough to store at least half a sweater. After all, this bag is for Serious Knitting Business.
--1 pocket big enough to store addtional yarn in case I run out.
--Maybe a thin pocket somewhere for pattern materials?
--1 pocket for me to store whatever notions I have. I don't really need pockets inside this pocket, since I usually keep my notions in a zipper pouch that I can take out and move from bag to bag as neeeded (as I said, I am not a very committed knitter, and while I try to have a couple of these pouches, let's face it - you can never find one when you need it anyway, and the one you do find won't have what you need in it even if you invested significant funds to make them all EXACTLY ALIKE, because at some point you were at home and you needed a tape measure or a pair of scissors which you took out, used, and then left somewhere while you danced around or threw things, depending on your result)
--Feet on the bottom & a fairly flat bottom, so that it sits nicely.

Bag 2 Specifications
--Cute enough that I would buy it even if knitting was the last thing on my mind
--Black or brown so I don't have to worry about it matching my outfit
--1 small pocket with some type of circlet equivalent. I would like this pocket to mostly close, leaving an opening on one side through which the yarn can travel
--1 pocket in which to store the knit-in-progress, right next to the yarn pocket. I would want this much smaller in this bag, big enough for maybe a scarf but not much bigger.
--1 small pocket (maybe on the outside) where I could tuck in my notions pouch.
--1 large pocket that takes up the rest of the bag, where I could dump all the stuff I usually carry in a purse. Again, I don't really need credit card slots or anything that specific (although a cell phone pocket is always nice) because I have a wallet for that and I would rather move my wallet from purse to purse than have to transfer all my individual credit cards and my driver's licenses and stuff like that.
--Feet on the bottom & a fairly flat bottom, so that it sits nicely.

(As a side note, I have checked out the Tom Bihn Swift bag, and while functionally it looks pretty good - I just can't get on board with the style - or the price tag!  If I'm going to spend that much money, I want it to be on a bag that I find both useful AND aesthetically pleasing, and it's just not cute to me.)

Restless

I intended to make a grand post about my vacation and all the places I knitted, with a grand finale of my finished Yellowstone shawl and - well. Circumstances maddeningly beyond my control have made it so that I won't be able to do that for a while.

So now we will simply say that vacation is wonderful, I love my shawl, and coming back to earth has been a process. I was fine the first couple of days, and then some kind of lag seemed to set in and I was tired all the time. Also, I have had really strange dreams ever since I got back.

But, the worst thing has been that I have had some kind of wierd knitting malaise going on. I'm satisfied with none of my projects. I thought I knew the answer to this problem - obviously, I need a new project. So I cast on for Hanami (since I found the charts for Flamenco, but not the actual directions).

It didn't work. I'm not interested in knitting any of it. I'm restless and annoyed because I want to be knitting, I just...don't want to be knitting any of the stuff I have. I worked on the Moody Blues sock some, and that was okay, except that when last I left it, I had either made some type of mistake or dropped stitches or something, and so my stitches were all wonky on the needles. I thought I fixed it and I worked merrily up the heel flap at a speed that was astonishing (when you have been working endless rows for months, anything shorter than 500 stitches feels like it flies) and then I went to turn the heel and - it didn't work. I was puzzled, because I really thought I had the heel turn formula memorized, but it totally wasn't working. I consulted More Sensational Knitted socks. Still didn't work. Decided there was something different about those directions and initiated a search for Sensational Knitted Socks, which was finally located under the couch. Directions still didn't work. Bitched and complained and fumed and finally realized - I'm an idiot. I had 32 stitches in my heel flap, which is correct - for MY socks. For the SO's socks, I use a 72-stitch cast-on which works out to a 36-stitch heel. When I tried to do the heel turn for the 36-stitch heel on my 32-stitch heel flap, it didn't work out too well. Apparently whatever mistake I had made before unbalanced the number of stitches on my two circulars so that I had 40 stitches on one needle and 32 on the other, instead of 36 stitches on both. Curses.

So I reknit the heel flap and turned the heel and got to the foot of the sock and complained because it was BORING. I, who have been happily knitting fifteen miles of garter stitch for the past two months, was bored with this plain stockinette sock. All my options seemed equally boring. I had the collar featherweight cardigan which would be a 1x1 rib, which wasn't much better than stockinette (I did knit some on it just to be sure) and I had Veronique which is plain stockinette and I had the three-scarf ruana which was plain stockinette and WHEN DID I BECOME SUCH A BORING KNITTER, Y'ALL?

I have finally come up with several reasons why I have not been able to get back into my knitting:

1. It's all stockinette or equivalent. While this did not bother me when work was a living hell or while my mind was being otherwise stimulated on vacation, it's become a problem now that work is slow and I am just sitting at home watching reruns of mythbusters or vacation-nostalgic shows such as "The Yellowstone Bison."

2. It's all lightweight yarn. While that was great for the summer, we're coming into autumn and there is a bit of a chill coming into the air now and then, and I think this is why the lightweight options are feeling so unsatisfactory to me right now. While I have knit lace in the wintertime before, it was wooly lace, and what I have now is mostly silk blends. The boring sock has been the most satisfactory thing to knit out of all my stockinette options because it is wool.
So, obviously, what I need to do is cast on a heavier-weight, more autumny project, right! So I went to ravelry and I poked and thought and hmmed and then thought of some patterns totally unrelated to what I was working on. I got out some of the VY Colrain* I bought before we left on vacation and I was ALL SET to cast on the braided pullover from Interweave Knits when I discovered that - I had no size 6 needles free. CURSES. On top of that, the shortest cable I had available was a 40". WHY DOST THOU MOCK ME SO, CRUEL FATE?

I ran to ravelry to check my projects and see what I could possibly have on my size 6 needles and - it's the collar to the Eris pullover. I had actually attempted to pick this project up already, but I couldn't figure out where I was in the cable chart, because I am an idiot who thinks she is smart, so I didn't mark my spot. I can only assume I didn't mark my spot because I had just knit one of the rows after which you are supposed to place a marker, so I must have thought I could just pick it back up with no problem. When I actually went to pick it up, though, my rows didn't match up and I was really confused, and I was afraid I had made a mistake and was going to have to tink back. I put it back down and went to the sock instead. When I couldn't cast on the braided pullover because the collar wasn't finished, I went and looked at it again, and I found that I had TWO markers on the collar instead of just one, meaning that I was at the second point at which I was supposed to place a marker, not the first. So I felt stupid all over again and went to do the next chart. I made really good progress and found that this project was exactly what I needed, just challenging enough and just seasonal enough - and then for some unknown reason, I went back and checked the instructions (I guess to see how many more charts I had to go through) and found that I had actually been knitting...the wrong chart, woe. Seeing that I was done with Chart C, I just went trucking right on through Chart D, when actually for the size of sweater I was knitting, I was supposed to go from Chart C to Chart F.

Ever hopeful, I compared chart D and chart F to see if maybe I didn't have to pull out EVERYTHING I had just done, but...to no avail. They are different from the very first row. I pulled the needles out and frogged back to the marker which indicated the end of Chart C. I was able to get far enough into F to use up all the yarn from the frogged section, and then some...which is mildly annoying, because given how much progress I made, I'm pretty sure I could have come close to finishing that side of the collar if I hadn't made the mistake. Oh well, such is life. The important thing is, I have found a project that will work for me and I am no longer down in the knitting dumps.

I do think I'm going to buy another set of no. 6 needle tips, though. One likes to be prepared.

*To follow up on an earlier post, I did go measure the guage of the actual sweater, and came up with 18 stitches and 27 rows per 4 inches. Clealry, my swatch was flawed.

Off and away

I leave on vacation tomorrow morning (at a time usually referred to me as 'squirelly early' or 'totally insane' depending how optimistic I'm feeling) and I have not yet decided on the trip knitting - at least, not totally.

Things I am definitely taking:

--Yellowstone shawl. duh.
--2nd Moody Blues sock.
--A sock that I may or may not have previously blogged about, but it is in the embossed stitch pattern from More Sensational Knitted Socks, in Serenity yarn with some delicious-sounding name like 'black forest raspberry' or something like that, a wool/seacell blend I have never used before
--Hamsa scarf, which I started a million years ago but made so little progress on, that I didn't even get around to logging it in Ravelry. This is in a yarn a friend got me at the Heritage Festival held in or near Waco, TX every year, 100% superwash merino fingering weight in a dark purple, and it's either hand spun or hand dyed or...something. It's unique.
--Enough of the leftover Valley Yarns Stockbridge to make me a pair of handwarmers. I'm just using the pattern from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. Quick, easy, and will match my scarf. I'm making the thumb hole a little wider this time, though, they always end up too short for me.

Things I might take:

--Yarn & beads for Flamenco, for evening knitting when I might possibly want something more interesting
--Eris collar, for same - harder chart, but no beads to keep track of
--The rest of the VY Stockbridge, to make legwarmers with. The SO doesn't think I will need them, though.

A puzzle.

As fall weather approaches I am thinking sweatery thoughts. I haven't given up on Eris, though other more time-sensitive projects have pushed it aside a bit. The cables are still very brain-intensive for me though - it hardly counts as sweater knitting to me until I get past that collar.

Looking at my project list, I can tell I am suffering from a massive case of startitis because it is taking all my might not to cast on everything that has been ruminating in the back of my mind for so long. The fact that I have not yet cast on for both Hanami and Flamenco is, I promise you, evidence of steel willpower and deadline knitting. Who knows where I would be if I didn't have this vacation coming up. Hopped up on laceweight and giggling like a lunatic at the very least - surrounded by newly cast on projects that seem under control now, but threaten to overwhelm me at any moment. Hanami is particularly insidious because it looks so darn easy. I'll totally knit Flamenco first though so that I can wear it at Christmas.

I'm looking at both Oblique from Knitty and the Diminishing Rib cardigan from Interweave Knits. The SO bought me some Valley Yarns Northampton as a present ages ago that I haven't figured out a project for that I think will be perfect for Oblique, and I loved the Valley Yarns Colrain I made my previous sweater out of so much that I bought more in two different colors. The original yarn called for in the Diminishing Rib cardigan is a wool-silk blend and I think the wool-tencel will be a perfect substitute. It has almost the same yardage per 50 grams so it should be perfect, right?

Well. I got out my swatch from the last sweater and checked the guage on it (I'm sure we all remember the guage issues I had previously with the thing turning out way bigger than what I had intended) and I measured the guage and...I had too many stitches to the inch. I couldn't believe it. Knit as loosely as it had been for that garment, how could I possibly end up with too MANY stitches to the inch? Seriously? There is no way I could possibly knit that yarn at the guage listed, and no way it would look good if I did. It doesn't look like it has a particularly loose guage in the magazine so I'm kind of stumped. In the immortal words of my ancestors, "It don't make no sense, y'all." I can only conclude that I had some type of measurement mishap. I will have to revisit the issue at a later date. Maybe I will go measure the guage on the actual sweater. The previous swatch was obviously flawed anyway. It was less than four inches wide, so I had to measure an inch and multiply to get the count for four inches, and that process is rife with peril. The Webs recommended guage for the yarn is 4" to the inch which is 16 stitches for 4 inches, so obviously 19 stitches to the inch called for in the pattern is not as crazy as I think it is. I must be the one who is a few jalapenos short of a zippy salsa.

Anyway, I'm trying to decide whether it is a good idea or a crazy idea to take Oblique along for plane knitting. Planes are boring so plain knitting doesn't work for plane knitting, so Oblique would be good. But, there is also airport knitting which usually has to be much plainer than plane knitting. I have a shawl that I work on pretty much exclusively on planes, so I might just take that. It's fine for airports, though it can be a little dull for planes. However, there's a snag in that plan. It seems I robbed that project of its needles some time back, and never put caps on the end of my cable. While it was lying carefully on the back of my couch this was probably fine, but as time passed I forgot it wasn't capped and moved it around, and while cleaning this weekend I found to my horror that it was about half off the cable. Fortunately, it is a sticky yarn and I don't think it's too badly damaged. I will have to spend some quality time with it, though, before we head to the airport. I'm not entirely sure everything that's wrong with it can be fixed with a crochet hook, I may have to tink back a row or two. The stitch markers all fell out and need to be replaced as well (they were the cheap rubber ones so I am not distraught, just inconvenianced, especially since I don't know where they all ended up).

Of course, the SO did buy me some laceweight recently, and I have been wanting to try out this whole circular shawl thing I see so much of...lace is much easier to carry on airplanes than sweater yarn, after all, even if it is just the beginning of a sweater and you get a lot more laceweight in a carry-on bag and ugh, can you imagine if I didn't put enough yarn in my carry on and I actually RAN OUT halfway into the flight??

Clearly this needs further consideration.

 

Of course, the other thing I could do, is use the plane time as 'finish it up' time.  I could take the featherweight cardigan along and probably finish it out before the trip is over with.  It's kind of mindless knitting, but still.  If I took that and the Eris collar maybe I could make some progress on stuff I've already started.

 

...but where's the fun in that?

Zero Sum Game

I did pretty well over this 3-day weekend. I got my house clean (at least on the main floor, we shall not speak of the state of my bedroom). I lounged around, I went out with friends, and I knit till my hands were sore. So, I guess I feel like I had a pretty balanced weekend overall. A little responsibility, a little lazyness, a little fun. However, my food intake was way out of balance and I paid for it last night. My stomach was bothering me and I couldn't sleep.  So, despite a pretty okay weekend, I'm not any more rested!

I finished the second half of Pfeiffer Falls and after many (many many) false starts, I managed to graft the two pieces together. Because I didn't do the pockets, I missed the directions that said to bind off one stitch on each side after finishing the pocket, and I just decided to ignore it and keep going the way I was. Well, this was fine, except that the directions for grafting in pattern were written for two less stitches than what I had on the needles. It took me a few attempts at the graft before I remembered this, and a couple more after I figured it out, but I did get it done and the seam doesn't really show unless you're looking at it, so I feel good about that.

Howevah.

I do not feel good about picking up the stitches from the hood. I started from the center and picked up half the number of stitches for the hood, intending to pick up the other half on the other side of the seam. But, when I measured the length of my picked up stitches, I was covering way more distance than I was supposed to. You're supposed to have 8.75 inches on each side of the center seam, and I was coming out with more like 10. Big difference. I pulled it out, picked up stitches again. Then I did what the directions actually told me to do and measured out the 8.75 inches and started picking up stitches, but when I hit the center seam I was about 10 stitches short of what I was supposed to have. So I had to put it away and think for a bit. Clearly, my row guage is not what it is supposed to be (no, I did not swatch, because it is a scarf and it shouldn't matter, right? This is the one place where guage, especially row guage, is not that important, right? That is the way it is supposed to be! I feel betrayed.) so I have a couple of options. I can:

1. Pick up the correct number of stitches, ignoring how wide it is.

2. Pick up the number of stitches it takes me to get the correct width, and wing it.

3. Pick up the number of stitches it takes me to get the correct width, and increase immediately to get the correct number of stitches.

The thing is, the scarf is, or at least will block to, the width that it is supposed to be. I believe that my stitch guage is close to correct. The hood is knit perpendicular to the scarf, so the width of the hood will be determined by my stitch guage and not my row guage. This means that the hood will be about as wide as the pattern says it should be. I think that this means that option 1 poses an unacceptable level of risk, because if I let it spread out that wide and then the width of the hood wants to be the width described in the pattern, the whole thing will pucker. I'm not really confident enough in my ability to wing it for option 2, and there is also the risk there that the hood will not be as wide as it needs to be, since my stitch guage is mostly correct and therefore fewer stitches will result in a narrower hood. So, I think I'm going with option 3. The risk there is that it will look wierd at the place where the hood attaches to the scarf, but even if it does, I think it won't show too much because the yarn is so dark. In any case, to my mind this risk is the least. The instructions are to pick up and knit, so I think what I will do is kfb in the picked up stitches as needed to get the correct number of stitches. So, that's the plan, now I just have to implement it.

I've been working on my triangular Yellowstone shawl as well, and I think some changes in my plan are necessary. I finished the first skein of Mineral and I'm probably nearing the halfway point on the skein of Earth. I had intended to knit a stripe of Mineral after the skein of Earth, but looking at the transition from Mineral to Earth so far, I don't think this is going to work. The transition between the two colors is much more subtle than I expected, so there is not the hard line I expected. I'm really kind of astonished, I thought the two skeins were so different that I was actually worried they wouldn't tie together enough. But, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I don't think I will need that second skein of mineral for size, I think the shawl will be plenty big even if I don't use it. So, I'm thinking I will just go straight to the Woodland stripe and hope for a similar effect. I'm not even going to try to predict whether this will work or not, but that's what you get when working with handpaint yarn. It's also possible that as I get more of the Earth skein knit in, the contrast between the two will be greater. I'm just not sure. I think I will have to put it on a longer cable so I can spread it out and take a better look at it.

As I was cleaning this weekend, I ran into a familiar frustration that I have never been able to really deal with effectively. I have SO MUCH STUFF. I have an obssessive nature; I get into stuff, and I think, wow, this is cool, and then I get WAY into stuff and then all of a sudden I am sitting here broke and surrounded by stuff. I love to make things, and I love to try new things, and I often can't tell what is going to be a long-term thing and what is going to be a flash in the pan. I'm like, "hey, you know what would be cool?" and then the voices in my head are lilke "doooooooo iiiiiiiiit" and the next thing you know I am, once again, sitting somewhere broke and surrounded by stuff that I probably spent a lot of money on and have no idea how to get rid of. My attempts to organize the Stuff have been temporary and mediocre at best and catastrophic at worst, leaving me sitting somewhere broke and surrounded by stuff that is further cluttered by an organizational system that does not actually work for me.

Paper crafts have been the worst for me, because it involves a lot material that is really difficult to store. Also, my crafting style is a major contributor to my frustrations in this area. I'm not a planner; I don't sit and come up with a sketch for a page and then sort things out and put everything I will need for that page in a box. I work on the fly, I use the stuff I can get to easily, and I throw stuff around in different combinations until I get something that works for me. My paper crafting is almost a mania, where I pull things out of boxes and spread them around and make a huge mess. As a result, my work area is a complete disaster when I'm done, and I always feel like I am using only a very small portion of the resources available to me because I forget what I have. I feel like I go over this problem again and again in my mind without finding any real solution. Should I just reduce the amount of stuff I keep at home, focus on the techniques I really like and try to let go of all the cool stuff? If I do decide to pare down, what do I do with all the stuff? How can I get back to a place where I can enjoy my paper crafts again without feeling like I am constantly spending money and creating a mess?