...ot not so :)

Things slid yesterday for a couple of reasons.  I’ve had a pretty busy week and I haven’t been doing much knitting.  For one thing, I’m still reeling about the Dulaan news and don’t know what to do with the half finished mittens I’ve been working on, nor what to go on to next.

Well, that’s not exactly true.  I’ve been going back again and again to look at Élann’s Moonlight Sonata shawl.  Despite the fact that I have shawls already, I evidently want this one too.  I will probably enlarge it a bit but I really like the stitch pattern and want to work it up myself.  I know, I know; I just finished a shawl - in fact I’ve finished two this year already.  What can I tell you?  Some people make socks.  For now, it seems, I’m making shawls :)

I put an order in to Knitpicks for Bare fingering weight yarn to dye for the shawl - also a couple more points for my Options circulars :)  I wanted to sample their Cotlin yarn so there was some of that too in the Moroccan Red color and finally, taking advantage of their summer book sale, I also ordered Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch.  I have been craving this book since I got the chance to look at it a few weeks ago - I can hardly wait!

Chatters is definitely on tonight, at 8:00 PM, EST, as usual.  I know we’re in the thick of vacation time, but if you happen to be around, why not drop in?

Hope everyone is having a pleasant and relaxing weekend!

I am an animal lover - and practically indiscriminate about it.  It seems to run in my mother’s line though, of course, I don’t really know if there’s anything genetic about it at all.  But you could (and can) tell when a member of that family is around because there will be animals - dogs, cats, birds…could be anything really.

So when I tell you I love my pets, you have some idea of what I mean.  I try very hard to understand how an animal is likely to think (or not to) and am never severe or over bearing with them. In other words, it’s hard for me to be mad at a pet, not matter what it does short of murder :)  And so, when I tell you how royally they pissed me off yesterday morning by knocking over both my lamp and one of the fans, you’ll understand how annoyed I really was.  I don’t know why they didn’t go for the other fan as well and make it a hat trick!

The problem was it was very, very early in the morning.  See they have a new routine which they have been expanding and refining for a couple of weeks now.  When we get up - they get breakfast.  Of course they eventually realized that if they could get us up earlier than usual, they would also get breakfast earlier.  For a while now, one or the other of them has been climbing onto my pillow at whatever ungodly hour their tummy starts to rumble (we will not discuss the dry food that is always available, 24/7) and whining in my fast-asleep ear.  Most of the time it isn’t that early and I’ve reached the drifting stage anyways.  That means the thought of coffee could occur at any moment and that’s such a beguiling and charming thought that I usually get up and do something about it :)

But this was way earlier than usual and I was dreaming, not drifting.  So I was not amused at the feline insistence that starvation was imminent (it happened to be Jade this time) and when she succeeded in arousing me to unwelcome wakefulness, I swatted at her with my blanket.  That was not, apparently, what she expected and she bolted straight into the lamp - crash - and startled the excrement out of Goldie (who was hovering below, waiting to see if I was going to feed them) who ran smack into the fan - boom! - toppling it over as well.

And, of course after all that I was well and truly awake - pissiness being a self-renewing condition and not conducive to getting back to the arms of Morpheus :)

I’ve been working on another stitch pattern and I really like it :)

It’s called Sprig and you can find it at The Knitting Fool.  I got started on swatching before I realized that this is worked on both sides.  Being a lazy lump, my usual procedure is to look for patterns with a simple purl row on the reverse because it gives me a little time to recover from the active work on the right side and to prepare myself for the next row.  But I was so enchanted with the picture that I had cast on before I knew it.

The above swatch was made with worsted weight wool and size 8 US (5.00 mm) needles.  The pattern came out okay (except for a slip stitch that I messed up) but was larger than I expected.  I know what to expect from size 8 needles and worsted weight yarn, but the pattern kind of took up more space that I thought it would…if you know what I mean.

So, being fully alert yesterday morning and having time I didn’t expect to have (ha-ha), I made another swatch…

...this time with fingering weight yarn on size 5 US (3.75 mm) needles.  This swatch is smaller than the first (the quarter is there for scale) but it still looked…I dunno…crowded?

My feeling is that this pattern would work nicely on a wide expanse - like a throw or something like that?  I guess I still have shawls on the brain because I find myself trying to figure out how to work this into a…well…a shawl or a stole kind of thing.  I should also try this in lace weight yarn and see how that works.  It might be a whole different story.  Anyway, I really, really like this pattern with it’s slip-stitch stems and little buds.

And I am going to find some way to use it!

I had retrieved the Summer Garden Sock…

...having determined to frog and redo it.  The heel was too short and the sock was looser than I wanted.  So I dug it out last night and left it on the kitchen table - in my face - so I would remember to get it done.  As it happened, I was in the proper mood to rip something apart, and so the sock was frogged.

I’ve frogged many things before and soaked/washed the yarn to prepare it to be used again.  You know what yarn looks like when you frog it - you get a very curly pile that even a thorough soaking doesn’t usually straighten.  When I’ve done this previously, I’ve let the yarn soak for up to an hour and when I’ve hung it up to dry, I’ve usually hung some small weight on the bottom of the hank to encourage it to straighten out.

But this stuff was straight as soon as it hit the water.  It was fascinating to see.  My only guess about why this happened is that this is washable merino and I believe all of the other yarns I have used this procedure on before have been regular old wool.  Anyone else seen this sort of thing?

Then I pulled myself together, went out and did a little grocery shopping, came home, put things away, made lunch.

On the way back into the living room, I noticed Jade was sleeping on the back of Myria’s chair - so I whined in her ear :)  She jumped a mile and gave me one of those patented cat glares - the “You know I could have you beheaded” look.

Petty, but satisfying :)