Incentive

So I have struck a deal with the SO, that if I can lose 15 pounds, he will buy me a set of blocking wires as a reward, and if I lose 25, I get a blocking board. That is so the motivation I needed. ^_^ (for the record, he is not making me lose weight, I want to do that, but somehow weight loss in and of itself was not enough reward, so when I joked about reward-based motivation, he offered, and I am totally taking him up on it)

I finished Chart 5 this weekend, and I felt very accomplished to have gotten it done so quickly! I only did one row on chart 6, though. Sunday just turned out to be too busy for complicated knitting, so I cast on a scarf based on the Rustic Scarf in Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I say "based on" because I cast on the length of the scarf, but I used 175 stitches (171 seemed like such an odd number) and I am only using 2 colors, and alternating them every two rows so that I can just switch without having a trillion ends to weave in. Because, I have discovered, I loathe stripes, because I loathe both the counting of rows and the weaving of ends. I have also discovered that I am incapable of randomly striping things. Anyway, so there will be vertical black and green stripes. This scarf is for a friend who asked for one while the weather was cold. I made no promises, however, so I do not feel guilty for waiting. Well, I feel a little guilty, but not much. I'd have had it done sooner except that I was kind of on scarf overload and I couldn't settle on a pattern that wouldn't make me want to kill myself.

The yarn is Lamb's Pride bulky, and I have two concerns about it - one, it sheds, and two, it felts. I have decided to mitigate the second problem by offering lifetime maintenance. He can bring it back to me when it needs washing, and I shall wash it for him. The first problem, however, I'm a little worried about, and I don't know how to do anything about it. I am covered in fuzz when I work on this scarf.

But, I have been in need of a large, easy project, and this fits the bill nicely. I do not feel guilty about starting it since it is a gift.

I am finding that I have this problem with socks, that the easy parts do not go on for long enough, and I don't have enough needles to pull a Harlot and just cast on a new pair whenever I get to a part that is too hard for the moment's knitting. I am also considering going down a needle size for my socks. Right now I use a US 2, and while I do get guage - my socks are too big. I don't think I can cast on fewer stitches because then it won't go around my leg, so I am thinking that I can switch down a needle size and get a tighter fabric that will hold on to my foot a little better. I am a little annoyed that it has taken me three pairs of socks to come up with this solution.

I'm also annoyed with my color choices in socks to date. For one thing, my poetic soul is a complete sucker for a whimsical name/concept. I am a sucker for Yarn Market's impressionist yarns, for example. Only as I was two thirds of the way through my second Starry Night sock did I actually think to myself, "You know, I hate this yellow, and I always thought that was a pretty unattractive painting." The first pair of socks I made, with the Irises yarn, I refer to as "my clown barf socks."

The current pair in the Snowscapes yarn I actually like pretty well, but next up I have a skein of Casbah in Peacock and I am already wondering what on earth I was thinking (actually, I know what I was thinking, which was that the color I wanted was sold out and I picked another on the spur of the moment). I like most of the colors, but the gold part just freaks me right out. I'm planning on using Pink Lemon's Caledonian Mist pattern, because I think the little scallopy things could pass for the eyes on peacock feathers. Clearly, I need to stop making my pattern & yarn selections based on the whole poetic soul thing, and start opening my freaking eyes.

Now, I might be wrong, and once I get the Casbah knit up, I might really like it. But, either way - I'm going to try to be a little more careful in my color choices from now on, so that I do not feel like I am displaying my bad taste every time I knit a sock in public!