update, but no pictures

SO, swatched, and am almost bang-on for gauge, and i am casting on sleeve stitches tonight. and this malabrigo lace with the slightly-oversized needles makes such a lovely loft of fabric, the cardigan (if it fits, of course, i don’t want to tempt the knitting gods) is going to be freaking GORGEOUS. srsly. i’ve also been encouraged by my lys (not having the needles i wanted, but having lovely staff) to try the magic loop method. the girl was adorable. she was like “youtube videos. you’ll learn it in two seconds and save a bundle on needles!”, so that’s good. but in looking it up, i actually came across this traveling loop method, which the girl says she “unvented”, which i think is adorable, and seems more my speed than two loops and stress. so i’m going to give it a whirl with my LURVELY chiaogoo needles (which, btw, i will be buying exclusively from now on. not only is the cable the nicest i’ve used (including addi and hiyahiya), but it’s RED! you can’t get better than that) tonight! :)

in other news, i may have added every single knitting pattern ever to my ravelry queue, and i’ve cast on for a baktus scarf in recycled sari silk yarn, which is gorgeous. despite the misgivings of one of the knitting crew at work (she did one similar and said that it made a scarf that’s annoyingly heavy), i’m going to keep plugging away on it, because, dammit, i’ve already started! plus, i’m honestly not sure what else this sari silk yarn would be nice for if not a scarf. so a scarf it is!

finally, sad news: i’m going to have to spend all weekend packing up my laundry room/crafting space/spare-spare room. and it’s all going to have to go somewhere else in the house. it’s a basement space, and we’ve got mold. :( so yeah. all the yarn, the fabric, the sewing machine, the spare couch…all has to find a new home somewhere else in the house. and no access to the sewing machine for a few weeks. thankfully christmas crafting has come and gone, and all the babies are (currently) accounted for with gifts. and mister man? he hates clutter more than anything else EVAR. it’s going to be a super awful couple of weeks of crap crammed all over the place and me maybe having no dressing room, and so him being woken up when i get up to go to work so that i can get dressed. the only upside: we rent, so we don’t have to pay for any of the cleanup ourselves. oh, and the guys said that they could work around the washer and dryer so that we could leave them in the laundry room. because really, i was NOT impressed with the idea of having to move them our of the basement and having to find somewhere else to put them in the slightest.

i know that this is bad, but don’t judge me.

i’ve never swatched before. ok, well a couple of times, but not properly. (clearly, since these garments have since been frogged...) le sigh. so now i’ve gotten some delicious yarn for christmas (malabrigo lace), and would like to make an actual sweater that fits. (i know, crazy talk. but still.) so i’ve decided that i really, really need to just bite the bullet and swatch.

problem number 1: i don’t know how to swatch properly…thankfully google’s got my back. go first result!

problem number 2: i’m knitting with lace yarn, and all i want to do is really start my project! but i persevere. and may have a swatch done sometime this week and i can cast on for reals...

and on a less whiny note: christmas crafting was a success. everyone seemed to like what they got, and there was only SLIGHT being made fun of, courtesy of my dad who got some special socks last year, since they were the first pair i'd ever knitted...

so crafting fail. spectacular fail. long story short. my stupid effing february lady sweater from a gazillion (two) years ago, FINALLY got finished, but with a dropped stitch somewhere that spidered over a HUGE area, and so i'm SO frustrated with the whole thing, that i'm going to just pull the whole thing up! take THAT february lady sweater*.

i also started a raglan sweater ages ago, but CLEARLY didn't swatch well enough (AT ALL!), and so will also be frogging that. merry christmas me!



*the pattern is actually quite, QUITE lovely, it's just not happening in this particular instance...

(detour from crafting)

but only so far as the pets, which is pretty much my secondary mandate, so i feel like that's ok.

so i bought this cat cylinder-like-bed-thing, back when we had sophie, and neither of our cats has ever shown the LEAST interest in it, which annoys me an unreasonable amount, because i think that it's pretty awesome, and i would like it if i were a cat, dammit! so i keep trotting it back out to try and make sequoia love it, because EFFING LIKE IT YOU STUPID CAT, essentially.

and we seem to have taken a turn:



but i shouldn't complain, because at least someone likes it? although i could REALLY do without the constant dirty look because REALLY, i could have thought of someone other than myself and gotten a reasonable size so that she doesn't have to curl up into her tiniest little ball to sleep IN the stupid thing...and also, her interest in it has increased the cat's interest, since he likes anything his big dog-sister is doing, which is also pretty adorable.

oh christmas tree...

not that we have one. we have a kitteh instead. but anyhow. i'm not really feeling the spirit, to be totally honest. but, i got the christmas lights up, have only one more gift to finish with, as well as one gift to finish knitting, (BOOYAH) and i'm finally DONE baking stupid cookies for the work cookie exchange. and i only burnt myself once. :)

nothing particularly crafty to report. sick of socks.

the best part of having too many projects started

is getting to see them all come together and be finished.

a bee block, which is quite nice looking, but only from a distance. this block was just awful for me, not too sure why, but i was nowhere near getting it to lay flat. :(



another bee block, which turned out much better, and had FABULOUS fabrics. i have to do something in gray and yellow!



two sets of maplelea doll blanket and pillow sets for my nieces, to go with the beds that we got them:





and i'm hoping that every day will bring something more done: a cowl, two pairs of socks, and a hat are still on the list for christmas, and are all in various stages of completion.

reasons why i should not start projects on friday evening:

1--i'm tired and consequently, and without fail, fuck them up and end up spending the better part of the evening with the seam ripper, which is NOT good times. this has been true ever since i was a little sewer on my mom's old singer in the basement of our house back in the day.

and tonight is no different. i'm nothing if not consistent.

i couldn't bear to look at another sock, and have decided to make doll blankets for my neices. i had decided on pinwheels, which means half-square triangles. which i'm totally familiar with, and love. so in looking at sizing (add 5/8". five-eigths of an inch?? GUH @ quilters! but onwards.), i found this grid pattern thinger. so easy! FRIDAY EASY!

cut my pieces. drew my grid, sew, sew, sew. snag. out of bobbin thread, fine, move on. snag: i'm an idiot. harder to get over, unfortunately. instead of these lovely half-square triangles:



i managed to make a stack of quarter-square-good-for-nothings:



and of course, the inevitable date with my seam ripper. good times.

what a bunch of whiners over here

so i had started a koolhaas for mister man, but somehow managed to screw something up about three rows back, not notice, then notice, then think "maybe it'll be ok" and cable another row, and that somehow magically didn't fix it. so i was so angry that i needed to just put it down.

but i made the mistake of telling him that the hat was for him, and he's fresh out of hats presently (he's lost them all, somehow), so everty time he sees me knitting something, he looks sad and asks if it's his hat (because he has no hat, and it's cold out). and i have to tell him again that i screwed up his nice project and still can't bring myself to look at it, but he'll have a hat soon...

so last night, it finally occurred to me that i could get my brother-in-law gifts (hats) off my needles really quickly if i just made the yarn bulkier (DUH!), but then mister man noticed that there were hats, and was all "what about MY hat, i don't have a hat..."

so now he does:



and, it was all tucked up next to his pillow this morning when i got up, so he clearly wore it to bed! it's nice to be loved. or at least for the knitting to be loved...

also, on my way to stealthily (more or less) photograph the hat in its new natural environment, the cat was also being a big whiny baby, and kept throwing himself in front of me to play:



ps--sorry for such grainy photos, not sure what my problem last night was...