There Are About 50 Other Things...

Quail hanging out in the back yard

Dear Blog-

I think you can assume that there are about 50 other things that I should be doing right now. Such as laundry, finishing up giving the kitchen a good deep clean and finding where that smell is coming from, paying bills, writing up patterns, spending time feeling guilty about all of the above. Of course, having just typed that out, I had to get up and go throw a load of laundry in, knowing that if I didn't I'd have to go to work naked today. And really, that isn't one of my better options right now. Just take my word for it.

And damn that Ravelry! I finally got my invite in the middle of August while I was wading through hell, and just really didn't have time to do anything with it after signing up and getting my Ravelry name. Til one night this week while DH was sleeping peacefully on the couch, I came over to the computer and decided to start putting my stuff up on Ravelry. So I started entering my WIPs, then put in some of my projects in queue, then started looking at all the various groups and joining them, then started looking for people I know and adding them to my friend's list. Then I had to start reading the posts so far on my many groups and replying where I thought I could add anything to the discussion, then I had to go back and look to see if there were any replies to my posts, then... and it has been straight downhill from there! I can see where someone could spend hours and hours just checking everything out on Ravelry. I mean, what kind of brilliant idea was that, anyway? You could end up like that guy who just died after playing online gambling for three days straight.

"What happened here, sir?"

"Well, Officer, my wife discovered Ravelry last week, and she hasn't been off the computer since. She hasn't slept, she hasn't gone to the loo, she hasn't blogged, she hasn't eaten... And if that wasn't shocking enough in itself, she hasn't knitted, either! That's when I knew she was really in trouble, but I couldn't lure her away! I tried waving rice crispy treats under her nose and then slowly backing away from the computer. I tried rattling the car keys and yelling, 'Let's go to the yarn store and spend LOTS of money!', but nothing worked. Finally, she just fell off the chair with a thump this morning."

"I'm sorry for your loss, Mr. Sorenson, but I have to tell you, we have reports of this happening all over the world. It's spreading like an epidemic. We are recommending to husbands that they just disconnect the computer until after this whole Ravelry thing can be disbanded and the perpetrators can be rounded up. It's a threat to world peace as we know it!"

But thank God it isn't like that (not quite) and reality intervenes and you realize that you haven't blogged in ages, and that you really do need to do the laundry and wash the dishes.

Anyway, last time I checked in, I promised to tell you about the fingerless mitts I was designing. In the meantime they have been finished and other projects started, of course, so here they are from start to finish. Or I should say, here it is, since I have only knitted one.

My whole premise when thinking about this design was that I wanted to work with a hand-painted yarn that I bought from Lucy Neatby when she came to teach at our guild last year, pair it with a coordinating yarn, and work a pattern in two-handed Fair Isle. Seems reasonable enough. And so I started working with these yarns... Actually, I was going to pair a blue with the hand-paint, and then realized that they matched a little too well and nothing would show up, so I swapped it for the green.

And found that it looked like poop, the pattern barely showed up, and even then wasn't particularly perceptable. I mean, you can't really see what's going on here, can you?

Back to the LYS, where I swapped out the hand-paint (which was the WHOLE point of the exersize) with an orange... And it worked.

Tudor Trellis Mitts

I was rather pleased with the result, and now just have to find time to sit down and write up the silly pattern, which can take, sometimes, almost as long as knitting them does. Or so it feels. The stitch pattern is taken from Sheila McGregor's 'Traditional Fair Isle Knitting', except for the thumb gusset, which was a pattern of my own design. (Slight pause while I go throw the laundry in the dryer and put the dishes in to soak.) They are a fairly quick project only slightly complicated by doing the THFI while using two circs. I also used an Italian tubular CO, with a sewn tubular BO, and really loved the way both of those worked out.

The other main thing that I was working on at the same time was chemo hats for my Aunt. If I told you what a difficult life this woman has had, firstly you wouldn't believe me, and secondly it would take away some of her dignity by making her sound pathetic, and she is anything but. She has survived event after event - any one of which would bring lesser souls to to their knees - and come up smiling. Such as the loss of her eldest daughter to a drunk driver at the age of 18. Her house burning to the ground on Christmas Eve. After a horrible car accident where she actually died in the ER and was revived and that left her without one eye, she told my father, Well, I don't have to close one eye any more to thread a needle. My Aunt is an amazing woman. I don't know anyone who is genuinely happier for another person's good fortune. And now she has lung cancer. She is on chemo, just starting, and will start radiation soon as well. So, chemo hats are all I can do from this distance. Her favorite color is red, and here are the hats...
Lynda