Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Startits

It's not the kind of startitis you think it is. I can't seem to finish a blog post. I've begun one every day since Friday!

I did have a lot of knitting time this weekend. On Friday night, I had an overnight-meeting and I worked on the pink sock during the down time. Just as the first session ended, and before any down time began, one of the women in charge at the meeting laughingly commented that she ought to keep a sock in her purse so that she could stuff it in her mouth to keep from saying something stupid. I thought it was rather amusing that I DO have a sock in my purse at all times--but not for my mouth!

On Saturday, there was a book fair here in Lexington. I had a great time. The Yarn Harlot was here!

It was fun. Stephanie is as much fun in person as she is in print (naturally). It's fun to read back through her side of the visit--I'm in the first crowd picture, right in the middle. And I met some of the people in the other pictures. Needless to say, I had lots of knitting time on Saturday: pretty much four hours straight from one to five. And then I went home and knit some more. My poor little brother who's a missionary in Hungary (not the same one who came home from a mission in Brazil last year) doesn't hear from me nearly as much as he ought to. This is probably not a healthy obsession!
I'm learning how to knit continental style. It's a long process--I'm not patient enough. I can knit quickly in the English Style, but the continental style seems so much more efficient. But it takes longer because I'm not good at it yet What I need is a project like a sweater with lots of stockinette that I can practice on.

I have one FO to report for this weekend: a hat. After Stephanie finished speaking, many of us sat around and knit. Jane and Diane of Magpie Yarns were collecting hats to be donated, so I brought some bulky-weight yarn out of my stash to use up and give away. I worked on it on Saturday and finished it yesterday. There was a generic pattern there but not for the weight of yarn I was using. I decided to just cast on and knit until it looked good--it will fit someone, right? I think it turned out kind of cute and I don't know how I did it.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

SOCKAPAL-WOOOOOO-HOOOOOO-ZA!

Sign ups started today for Sockapalooza 4. Yippee! I've been at my computer all evening stalking the Blue Blog watching a movie and knitting and I signed up as soon as I could. I've read as people posted about Sockapalooza before and I always thought it sounded like fun. I'm really excited to take part now.

I didn't realize that I hadn't posted for so long. I've been tinkering with the blog format quite a bit over the past couple of weeks, so I didn't really notice that I hadn't actually SAID anything. I've added a stat counter (I always wondered how people knew what Google searches had led to hits on their blogs!) and have been playing with buttons and so forth. I'm also trying to figure out to make those progress bars that show graphically how much you've got left of this project or that. The new blogger made it a bit easier to organize my sidebar, but it's not sophisticated enough to do what I want it to. I don't understand html code very well, but it looks like I'm going to have to learn it to get my blog to look the way I want it.

I went to the Spinning Guild meeting on Friday night. I didn't bring my wheel with me as I was coming pretty much straight from work, so I worked on my current purse socks: Elongated Corded Rib socks from the Sensational Knitted Socks book in cotton candy pink Cascade Fixation.
I'm about two inches farther than this picture shows. I've finished the gusset decreases and now it's just straight knitting in the pattern until I get to the toe decreases. I found the second ball of yarn (one of the cats had batted it under the couch and I hadn't seen it in days). I'm a little concerned that I won't have enough to finish the sock. I only bought two balls and I've got six inches or so left to go and only 15 grams of yarn. I'd rather not have to try to track down another ball in this same dye lot.

I came home from the guild meeting on Friday with this:
Over 100 grams of Alpaca roving in a fabulous colorway: Mostly lavender/lilac colored, but with occasional bright sections of a limey-green-yellow. Lovely! It's fun to spin up. The Romney I've been working on is currently on hold while I play with the softer stuff.

Like the rest of the country, we had a cold Easter weekend. It snowed here on Friday, although we only got about an inch. I'm glad that my plants are in containers that can be moved inside from the patio!