Headgear

Much better today, after a brief couch-nap-with-cat yesterday and a full night's sleep. Whew.

I did not break out the sewing machine, and even waited until today to fire up the iron.

Let's see, other than not sleeping well, what did I do last week? On Saturday, I knit a hat. A whole hat, with chunky yarn and 8mm double-points.

This is the Quick Cosy Hat from Issue 101 of Simply Knitting (the 8mm double-points came as a free gift with the magazine, thank you Simply Knitting!). The yarn is Knitpicks Cadena in Currant, rather less than a full skein. In the magazine, the hat looks kind of beret-like, but mine is more beanie-ish. I wonder whether I had gauge issues.

And on Sunday, I cast on a hat. Man, this yarn. Let me tell you about this yarn. I bought it about two years ago, enchanted by the neutral colors in the skein. It wasn't long before I wound it into a ball, where the colors were still enchanting, and started to knit it into a sock.

Suddenly I was disenchanted. The colors pooled, and badly. One side of the sock was all black and brown, the other side all grey and beige. I blamed the pattern, as I am wont to do, and ripped it out and tried another pattern. And another, and another. And then I put it away for a good year, before trying just one more pattern - which pooled. Badly. Just like all the others. There was clearly no way this yarn could ever be a sock.

Fine, I thought, I'll try a scarf. Nope - it pooled just as badly in scarf form as it had in sock form. Rrrrrgh. Fine. FINE. The ball can just sit here and look pretty forever, BE THAT WAY.

And then, on Sunday, I saw this hat pattern. I'd seen it before, of course, as it lives in a magazine that lives in my house, but this weekend I looked at the pattern and suddenly felt new hope for my Difficult Ball of Sock Yarn. A hat? Could it be a hat?

 Yes. It can be a hat.

Superwoman

I am running on two hours' sleep, a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee. And adrenaline, one assumes.

What is it about total exhaustion and a little caffeine that makes a person think she can conquer the world? I should be trying to squeeze in another couple of hours' sleep.

Instead, I am:

1. Contemplating getting out the sewing machine (talk me down! I can barely operate the blasted thing when I'm fully rested!)
2. Looking at the recipe for the soup we're going to have for dinner tonight (because I should totally cook that now, right? And reheat it later? That makes so much sense)
3. Thinking I should practice the guitar. And the ukulele. I can play "Let it Be" on the uke, you know. Over the weekend I heard a song that I thought I should try to figure out on the guitar, but I'm damned if I can remember now what it was.
4. Composing the pivotal scene of my midlife-crisis novel in my head, and should be writing it down, but I this is being hampered by
5. Writing a blog post about sleep?? I don't need no stinkin' sleep, I am going to solve all the world's problems right now, give me another cup of coffee and get out of the way. Because I also have the news on, and the world needs my warped sense of awesomeness right now to fix it.

With any luck I will pass out, drooling lightly with a cat draped about my person, on the couch before I decide I should call the President and offer my diplomatic services. And also before I get out the sewing machine.

Knitting with only one needle

Like Freddie Mercury, I'm only going slightly mad. The main problem is socks. I've been knitting them, a lot, but not in pairs.

I finished a Whitby last week, but didn't feel like starting the second one, so I whipped out a little sparkly socklet real quick.

And then I didn't feel like starting the second sparkly socklet, either, so I cast on a lovely bright pink Hedgerow, and then last night I suddenly found myself knitting the toe of a Chimaera whilst watching the Top Gear blokes work out that, yes, you can play rugby in a Kia Cee'd. (The Cee'd is also pretty good if you're a sodium and eel salesman.)

There is also this, which doesn't look like much yet, but lace never does at first.

This is the shawl I'll be wearing to the wedding in April, if I stop fooling about with not-pairs of socks and finish it in time. The pattern, from the gorgeous book Victorian Lace Today, goes by the melodic name of "Scarf with the No. 20 edging from The Knitted Lace Pattern Book, Thompson Bros., Kilmarnock, Scotland, 1850."

I think I'll call it the Wedding Shawl.

Mardi Gras

For the last week or so, all I've been able to think about (craftwise, anyway) are the three hundred projects I'd rather be knitting than the ones I have in progress right now. So in the spirit of the day, I had a strawberry paczki for breakfast and cast on a scarf.

The astute (read: nerdy) among you will recognize the slightly-washed-out colors here: it's a Doctor Who scarf. It's the good Doctor's 50th anniversary, so this is the year I will finally knit the scarf, after talking about it since, like, 2006.

It's supposed to be a good-sized scarf, 12 inches wide and 13 or 14 feet long, so I happily cast on 50 stitches (for the 50th anniversary - because I like my cast-on numbers to mean something - don't make it weird) and knit the first purple stripe. Then I stopped and measured, and decided two things.

1) It was 11 inches wide. Eleven is definitely not twelve.

2) It was HUGE. Look, Tom Baker is a tall gentleman with lots of curly hair, he can get away with a foot-wide scarf. I am considerably shorter than he is, though I can definitely take him on in the "lots of curly hair" department, and I'm just going to look silly in a foot-wide scarf.

So as long as the scarf was already not 12 inches wide, with the 50 stitches, I decided to make it a bit narrower still. I unraveled it and cast on 41 stitches (because I'm 41, so everyone will know it's mine and I knit it this year) (yes), and knit the purple stripe again. It was much better, about 9 inches wide now (and Nine is my favorite Doctor, so this is a big win), so I carried on with the beige stripe. Well, with a few rows of the beige stripe. And then the buzzer on the dryer went off, so I stopped for a while.

I did do something this week other than have strange thought processes about sci-fi accessories. For instance, I finished my Honey Cowl.

Gorgeous! Unblocked, of course, but I'll get around to that, hopefully before this weekend when the Arctic Blast the Weather Channel is predicting shows up. The yarn is Knitpicks Wool of the Andes Tonal* in Deep Waters, and the needles were 6mm. This really is a spectacularly fun and beautiful pattern, you should knit one right away.

Last but not least: a couple of posts ago, I mentioned knitting a wrap for a wedding we'll be going to in April. Well, I still will do, but not that wrap. Over the weekend I bought a skirt for the wedding, and the skirt is definitely not going to support any of the gorgeous colors in that particular ball of yarn.

It will, however, support this color. How long has this been in my stash, waiting for me to need a red wrap? I don't even remember. Hurray for yarn, it's so much more patient than I am.

* Knitpicks website is refusing to show me Wool of the Andes Tonal. I hope it isn't discontinued.

Same time next week

No new picture of Sallah; it looks pretty much the same, a bit bigger than last time. Haven't been working on it the last couple of days, if I'm honest, because Saturday afternoon I cast on the Honey Cowl again.

Mmm, much better. The fabric feels just right, and this pattern makes a person a bit giddy. After four or five rounds it's quite a rush. Look, I've almost finished the first skein of yarn; time to wind the second one into a ball and have it ready to go!

Also: half a Whitby sock. This has been on my List of Stuff to Knit since approximately the dawn of time, and finally, here it is, being knit, when I am able to put down the Honey Cowl for a moment or two. Always good to have a sock on the needles, even when I'm in the midst of a cowl obsession.

Since I've been showing up at the blog approximately once a week anyway, I've decided to make it official and be a Tuesday Blogger. (I make that sound like it's really a thing.) See y'all back here on the 12th!

Starting, stopping, starting

All I've done for the last week or so is cast on, decide I don't like the way it's going, pull it apart, and cast on something else.

I cast on a Honey Cowl, but it was slow going because my left thumb was killing me. I finally realized my left thumb was killing me because I was using too small a needle; the fabric was tight enough to be bulletproof.

I hated to frog something that looked this beautiful, but it was the right thing to do. It will look more beautiful when it drapes, rather than standing up by itself.

Then I cast on a wrap with this little morsel of deliciousness.

Again: too small a needle. I frogged it after about 20 rows. Honestly, from now on when my brain says "You should use these needles!" I'm going to select needles two sizes larger, just on general principles. Still, I liked the pattern, the yarn is fabulous, and I want that wrap for a wedding we'll be attending in April, so you'll be seeing this stuff again soon. On larger needles.

Finally, a winner:

The most fun thing about this pattern is that you knit the right-side rows with a 3.75mm needle, and the wrong-side rows with a 6mm needle. I don't think I'll be frogging this one, it's fantastic! The pattern is Sallah, by the way. Another cowl, naturally, yay for cowls!

Neckwarmers

Just in time for the bone-cracking cold that rolled in overnight, I've finished this:

 London Cowling, a lovely warm thing that will protect your neck (and most of your face, and your ears if you arrange it just so and kind of scrunch up your shoulders) from below-zero wind chills. So much fun to knit that there may be another one in my future, just because. Yay for cowls! My first London Cowling was knit on 5.5mm needles with KnitPicks City Tweed DK in Porpoise.

And last week, while we were between cameras*, I finished up this charming little stashbuster:

Josephine, a fun garter-stitch scarf/shawl/depends how much yarn you have and how big you want to make it. Mine is more of a scarf, and was knit on 4.5mm needles with some leftover sock yarn bits. The purple/yellow is KnitPicks Sock Garden in Pansy; the green/tan is KP Sock Memories in Cape Cod; the blue/yellow is also Sock Garden, in Morning Glory. Sock Garden and Sock Memories are long since discontinued, but both were 100% non-superwash wool, so I wanted to knit the leftovers up into one project rather than mixing them in with superwash wools. You know, so everything has the same washing instructions. And I'm glad I didn't convince myself that the colors don't go together, because 1) I love the way this turned out, and 2) of course they do.

* The old one finally gave up the ghost, and we bought a new one over the weekend. I'm still getting used to the new one, or it's getting used to me, or something. Please stand by!