Knitting on Impulse

The Season of Not Getting Things Done

It's time to excavate The Trunk, in preparation for a weekend of decking the halls.

That's it until Rob and Catrionagh get home from the school later this afternoon.  In the meantime, I shall have a go at photographing the other half of my inventory that I told everyone last weekend would be available on the website later this week.  Good intentions.  Apart from finishing up one custom order, so far this week, I have disected owl pellets with the Grade 2 class, attended several Very Important Meetings, walked the boy several kilometres to school and back through deep snow and skied twice (briefly) because Rob threatened to revoke my season's pass privileges if I didn't get out more this year.  Also, when it looks like this,

staying home leaves one in serious danger of losing all credibility as a Whistler local.  (I kid you not, it actually matters, especially when building a name as a Whistler Artist.  It's bad enough that I'm not a professional snowboarder.) Plus it doesn't suck.

Oh, and I managed a bit on the doesn't-really-count-as-a-WIP in the evening:

Paused at the underarm, one cuff complete.  I am loving this sweater, and the shaping adds a serious dose of femininity to an otherwise bold and bulky design.   

Snowy Serenity

Now that the snowy season has properly arrived, I love these early mornings:

And since nobody seems to mind (thanks for all the reassurance), the current state of the won't-take-but-a-moment WIP:

(Honest, there is actual work going on as well, for any of you who happen to be waiting for it!) 

Progress

I heard a rumour (actually, I have yet to stumble across the original sentiment - only rumours of rumours of allusions to it) that in knitblogland, it is now considered gauche to post WIP shots. The cool kids post glamorous FO's only.  Fortunately (or not - I never really had much choice in the matter), I have never been one of the cool kids, so I feel no compulsion to start trying to conform now!

Delusional procrastinatory knitting (zipping along splendidly):

Recent thrift shop finds about to join a load of jeans in the washing machine (I have a plan!):

(Sort of) Instant Gratification

I have this stash of odds and ends of Alafoss Lopi, which was bought with a project in mind that isn't realistically ever going to work out, and I have a sudden craving (as I often do in winter) for an infusion of colour, and I wear my Cobblestone so much that another thick and woolly outerwear pullover seems like a good idea, and also my brain needs to go on cruise control for a little while, and...... does it sound reasonable yet?  Rob suddenly registered the big grey circle that materialized on the couch last night and said "WHAT is that?"

It is going to be stockinette in the round (except for a wee bit of texture at the cuffs), knit to fit (with enough ease for under layers).  And stripy:

I think there may well be some whimsical embroidery, as well.  Scarlet.

I'm thinking of it as a break.  Especially if I could finish it this week, it wouldn't even really be like cheating on the serious knitting and the gift knitting and the duty knitting - just a wee, blink-and-you'd-miss-it pause.  Really.

Re-entry

I'm not entirely sure why that was such an exhausting event when we managed to do an outdoor market every weekend from June to October, but I am still fried.  Sunday we slept in, hung out on the couch with the kids... and by noon I couldn't keep my eyes open and went back to bed for a couple of hours.  Totally discombobulated.  In any case, the show went well, and I now need to pay urgent attention to all the things I've let slide for the last month (housekeeping not least among them).  I envision a glorious future when these events have all blended seamlessly into the rhythm of our lives, requiring no special planning beyond remembering to hire a babysitter for the right days.  Maybe next year.

The notecards arrived in the nick of time from the printer - I will get them up on the website in the next day or two, but I thought in the meantime, you might like to see the six images I chose (minus the copyright info, of course):

Oh, and because my brain has melted, I started another sweater.  More on that tomorrow when there's daylight.

Nomadic

Really, it does feel awfully like being nomads. 

Gather the flocks:

Find green pastures and set up camp:

Pack it up again:

Unwind with a fat sheep and foraged herbs wine and sushi, fall into bed. 

There's worse ways to live! 

Countdown

We are very very close to ready for Friday and Saturday:

(Please avert your eyes from the yet-to-be-gathered-up paper detritus on the floor, and instead behold the magnificent husband tidying up the kitchen post home-made pizza.)  Everything is organized and packed up into tidy compartments for transport, just a couple of signs, a quick finish on a custom order that might or might not show up tomorrow, and.... the sweater.  Three more inches on the sweater, then weaving in, then blocking.  Sigh.  I was up past midnight last night organizing, pricing and retagging, and I can't see the wisdom of being a yawning baggy-eyed mess tomorrow.  How anti-climactic is that?  Ah well, I guess I will frog those few inches and do it right the first time after all.

Speaking of doing it right, the notecards made it back from the printer in the nail biting nick of time and they look great.  More on that after the weekend! 

(Oh, and happy Thanksgiving to our American friends!) 

Taking a Deep Breath and Moving Along....

Thanks for the reality check!  The plan now: leave the cast on edge exactly as is, and knit on down just as if it were all fine, in the knowledge that a) it will look "good enough" by Saturday, and b) I can always frog and redo it after, or c) if I am feeling ambitious, I could cut off these last 7 inches, frog the offending join, redo the finicky business of unpicking my very narrow buffer of "provisional" rounds and properly pick up those stitches for an invisible join (as long as it is within the plain brown rounds, the 1/2 stitch offset will be invisible, it's just that I'm only a round or two away from the pattern, and if it ravels that far, I'm in poo.) Then, I would simply graft 200 tiny stitches with perfect tension, thus saving myself the trouble of reknitting those 7 inches.  Either way, options b and c require way steadier nerves than I am likely to possess in the next three days.

Look what I found this morning:

Don't they look like wee sprites dancing before the mountain?

Perhaps they have a secret castle in the garden....  (More photos here.)

My poor attempt to recreate a little frost magic:

Nitpicking

It's Anxiety Week here (for me, anyway - Rob is blessed with a robust disposition that experiences a sensation of mild concern only if he is actually, imminently about to die.  Lucky bastard.)  One of the truly annoying things about Anxiety is that it seems to be like Velcro, attaching itself to any and every passing event with the misfortune to be in the vicinity.  Which brings me to my deep and irrational distress over what is otherwise quite possibly the best sweater I have come up with to date. 

Here it is, ready to knit down from the waist (I hate to photograph it lying all flat and crumply like that, because it looks totally different and way way better filled out with a human torso, but I don't feel like wangling a half-clothed photoshoot):

I saved the mindless stockinette in the round for the end, and it was supposed to be clear sailing from here.  Except for this:

I meant to do a sort of provisional cast-on, using the garment yarn as the waste yarn, since I had plenty of it, but I realize now (way too late) that I should have knit quite a few more plain rounds as a buffer.  I started snipping the cast-on edge last night and it didn't seem to pull apart as expected, so I completely lost my nerve and just picked up loops a couple of stitches in from the edge, and left the waste as a ridge inside.

This totally does not look like a seamless garment now, and while the front might smooth out with aggressive wet blocking..... it might not.  And then it would be Not Good Enough and I have to finish this in the next couple of days in order to be able to wet block it and wear it on Friday, and if I snip and screw up, I will end up ravelling into the stranded pattern and have to reknit the entire waistband, since it would be horribly obvious if some of the pattern stitches were upside down.  And then I would run out of time.

Anyone care to pop up to Whistler and do this for me whilst I curl up in a fetal position on the couch?

At Last!

Amazing what a little sun can do, after a dark grey week of alternating snow/rain:

 

The rest of today's images are over here.