One skein at a time...

Lent is officially underway and Chez Hedgehog is all UFOs all the time.  At least, until I start browsing Ravelry and notice patterns like Contrast and Complement or Chantalle. Then I start stalking the stash and wondering just where the right size needles might be tucked.  Then I remember it's Lent and I've committed to that giant blanket. Maybe those patterns will be this year's Easter basket.  Along with the Cadbury eggs.


I think it's probably the worst thing I've ever named a project--Instant Gratification. Sure, each skein doesn't take THAT long, but it's 26 skeins and each of those is taking me a couple of hours and did I mention that there's a gouge in the one needle point that's catching quite often? Wooden needles are failing me left, right, and tweed.

Since taking the blanket back up last week, I've gotten through 4 more skeins of the taupe yarn.  I've got one more left before I go back to the green.  That means I've got 10 skeins of yarn left: 1 taupe middle in the middle section, 5 in the green stripe, 4 to finish the taupe border. That also means I'm definitely past the half way point in this blanket. This would be a very good thing because it's starting to get a little large.


Blanket 1
I don't really remember what the plan was in La Crosse. I doubt I swatched, so I assume I picked an arbitrary number of stitches that seemed like enough and ran with it. There might have been consulting of the ballband and general ideas like "oh, on x needles y stitches = 4"/10cm, so I'll just cast on z stitches" but even that is optimistic. Now that I'm several feet into the blanket, I can approximate that before any blocking it's currently running about 90" wide (approx 2.2 m). It's currently a little over three feet long. 7'x3'....hmmm, no wonder I'm starting to feel some heft when I pick it up and move it around.

Apologies for the dark cell phone pictures. I need to order a new camera battery.

I did put some time in on my purple socks at a meeting Thursday and made real progress on the purple mitts earlier in the week.  Pictures of those to follow. I'm hoping by next Thursday I'll have a finished pair to show you--at least one whole pair in February.

I also read Sheepish by Catherine Friend on Thursday evening. It's very enjoyable and a quick read. I was both amused and found myself identifying with some of the realities of farming (death of animals, particularly baby animals, that you can't control. It's heartbreaking but pragmatic reality and she's very honest about that).

How are your Lenten knitting plans going?

Comments

Post a Comment

Leave me a message! (Blogger doesn't give me your email address so if you'd like an answer, please see my About Me page for my email address)

Popular posts from this blog

Knitting Adjacent

I've been searching for a knitting metaphor for the world over the past days since the US election. Not so much for you, for myself. Knitting focuses me when I am troubled, gives me tangible progress when information work feels horrendously intangible, and has the added side benefit of connecting me to a large community of people who share my hobby--if not all of my opinions (e.g. DPNs vs. Magic Looping for socks. I'm #TeamDPN).

Knitting is often made up of big projects. Long projects. Anyone who has ever undertaken a large shawl, the second sock at that tiny gauge, or a full size afghan knows the slog, the haul, the do-I-really-have-that-much-more-yarn-to-go feeling.

That is what is keeping me going right now. Following the election and facing tumultuous and scary time ahead, I'm grasping on to all the knitting metaphors I can find. This may be simplistic but it gives me a little bit of reassurance.

I can do big things. And each big thing is made up of many thousands of s…
Read more

You Should Too...

Image
Deciding the title for this post, I was rummaging around in my head for phrases and kept returning to "You come too."  It was a phrase from a poem, I knew that and fortunately, the internet tells me the source: Robert Frost's The Pasture.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44270/the-pasture

I've never been a big fan of Frost, but long time readers will know I am a huge fan of Blue Moon Fiber Arts. So when this image scrolled by, I was immediately enchanted. Tina came up with "A Total Eclipse of the Sun" --a colorway for the forthcoming eclipse?

Me? Well, I'm apparently nothing more than a very susceptible lemming. It's coming in STR lightweight and I think I've already picked out a pattern for it.




















And for those who are more gradiently/miniskeined inclined, that's available too. I can think of two or three patterns that'd work nicely with too...


I don't know if Tina will mention this on her blog but I have giant hope that maybe …
Read more

There had better be time on the plane...

Image
We're 11 days into March and the only real progress I've made on my Loopy Academy projects is that I wound all of the wool for the Spring Junior Year stuff. And considering the price tag on those (I went with Wollmeise DK for one project...) I need to get things underway and make good use of that wool and money.

Unfortunately, I've been snowed under entirely with work stuff: I'm mid-manuscript with one colleague, facing down another manuscript that needs to be entirely written here shortly with another, working on a conference presentation with two more, and the usual grading, teaching, give presentations, and other day job stuff.

I love working with a variety of friends and colleagues on projects though, it's wonderfully inspiring to work with such smart women and figure out who it is that knows the information I'm seeking. Add us together and we can speak or write about nearly everything.

But it doesn't get the knitting done.

As I'm headed east to Mar…
Read more