Mikknit

Only 3.5 more hours to get your vacation stories in! I will close comments on the contest post either at midnight tonight (if I’m still conscious) or tomorrow morning. Any posts made after midnight CDT will be disqualified.

I’m dealing with some seriously soul-sucking allergies here, so I haven’t gotten any pictures taken. I’m also fighting some bad knitter’s ADD, not helped at all by browsing on Ravelry. I’m knitting on the endless sleeve of this Wonderful Wallaby (only sleeve #1, might I add) and since it’s mindless stockinette my brain is flitting back and forth to all of the things I want to knit NOW!

• The Luna Moth Shawl, for which I have some lovely chocolate brown alpaca.
• The February baby sweater from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac. I have the yarn for this but my copy of the book is MIA.
• I am still coveting the yarn from Beaverslide Dry Goods, but have several sweaters’ worth of yarn to knit first.
• The Peace Fleece sweater is asking to be revived, just as the weather is warming up again.
• The green/yellow yarn from Stonehedge Fiber Mill is screaming at me as well
• My spinning wheel is glaring at me, disgusted with how it’s been neglected

Strangely enough, I am not at all interested in knitting socks right now. My brain has moved on to fall/winter knitting. This will be an issue if we have another month of warm weather, I think, but at least it’s been getting nice and cool at night - then I can wear my nice wool socks to bed

I hope there’s something on tv tonight sufficiently interesting enough to get me through the last couple inches on this sleeve. At that point, I may reward myself by sewing buttons onto the Baby Surprise Jacket and suffering a little bit of babylust.

I’ve been fighting the knitting blahs here. We drove out to Arapahoe, NE last weekend for a family reunion, and DH drove almost all the way. He said that he might as well drive since if he were the passenger he’d just be bored and stuffing his face. Can’t argue with that, so off we went.

I think I can attribute some of my knitting blahs to the fact that I had almost finished the ribbing on sock #2 and pulled out sock #1 to compare. Guess what? I had been doing 1×1 ribbing on sock #2 and I’d done 2×2 ribbing on sock #2. Bugger. So I frogged that and restarted but lost interest again after about 1/2″. I did end up finishing the sock on the trip - I think I did the kitchener stitch on the toe somewhere around Faribault.

Another contributer to the lack of knitting has been my sewing room closet project. I decided to put some shelving in there, but needed to clean it out first. Then I decided I should patch the plaster and paint. Then I noticed that some bonehead had put wallpaper on the upper 1/3 of the walls and on the ceiling in there. Who does that? Argh! So I took the wallpaper down yesterday, DH prepped one long crack for patching and has one more to do. Hopefully he’ll go do that soon and I can patch tonight, maybe prime too if the kids go to bed easily (ha!). My mom has offered to watch the kids for me on Tueday so I can work. It’d be great if I could get it primed tonight, painted tomorrow, and then do the shelves on Tuesday. Cross your fingers for well-behaved kids for me, please?

I’ll have some pictures in the morning, hopefully. I’ve got a project that I haven’t mentioned yet to share - I’m pretty excited about it. Not excited enough to actually work on it, but…

I received my package a few days ago, but I’ve been a terrible Secret Pal and haven’t yet blogged about it. I’ll go line up for my flogging in a bit…

My secret pal is pretty swell! She sent me a July 4th-themed package!

A red, white, & blue beach ball, matching Uncle Sam rubber duckies for the beasties, a US flag pen, some stickers, and red, white, and blue sock yarn! One of my favorite brands, too!

I decided I had to do this tonight as I’m about to rip into the sock yarn. I’m not finished with my second spiral rib sock, but I can’t find the first one to make sure I make the cuff the same length. I don’t know where it could’ve gone off to - it’s not under the couch or my chair or in one of the 92367 bags of assorted knitting stuff formerly hanging on the dining room chairs. Dangit, I knew I shouldn’t have cleaned!

In other news, we have a new family member. Meet Wally:

His official name is Wally the Six-Legged Tako, but since we’re pretty informal here he goes by Wally or Wally the Octopus. Nevermind the six-legged business (that’s all that would fit)… I think he turned out pretty great. He was for Arlo, but Arlo isn’t exactly into playing with stuffed critters that are smaller than him (he prefers to play with a large stuffed leopard and a 4′ long snake from IKEA), so Grace has claimed it. I designed him myself and have a little proofing to do on the pattern. I’ll put it up if there’s interest.

I’ve been suffereng from a bit of disinterest in stuff lately. I can’t be bothered to get out the spinning wheel though I’m in the middle of plying some great apple-green wool. I can’t be bothered to finish sorting and washing my giant fleece. I can’t find the dang spiral rib sock so I can finish its mate. I had to rip out the cotton tank dress I’d started for Grace because I don’t remember what I did on the first two straps and I wasn’t able to figure it out by looking at the fabric (take notes next time, dummy!). I’ve neared the top of the second chopper liner for my grandpa, but I want to have him try the first one on before I finish the second one. I already need to fix the thumb on #1 but I don’t want to have to fix more than I have to.

Obviously, the answer to all this is to start more projects. I dyed yarn for a secret baby gift for a friend, I’ll be working on that project this weekend. I also got the pattern for a Mother Bear Project bear, thanks to Chris. It looks simple enough and will be a good use for the bins full of acrylic yarn I have taking up space in the attic (the bears need to be washable). Add that to the weekend’s list. Plus, I have to start a sock! Must always have socks in progress. Right?

Goodness, it’s late. I suppose maybe if I got some sleep I wouldn’t be so apathetic about it all. Maybe?

I’m working on a top-down raglan (a la Barbara Walker) for myself in Silky Wool. Lovely stuff, a delight to work with, should be lovely to wear. However, I’ve gotten carried away with the raglan increases and now have an extra 5″ or so worth of stitches. Great. So I get to rip back a ways, lucky me.

Although now this means I can just concentrate on the v-neck increases and get on with it. Yay, sorta!

Think I’ll just put this away for now & spin tonight. I want to finish up my $2 Romney so I can spin the contents of the package I got from PippiKneeSocks last week. So. Gorgeous. I love her stuff!

I decided to order the Peace Fleece in Sakhalin Salmon - the red was just too nice to pass up. It’ll be nice to have a sweater that color during the dreary MN winter, I think. I also ordered some batting in Firebird Orange. Love it!

Pictures of random things tomorrow!

Hi, I’m an idiot. I wrote this three months ago. I had grand ideas to sort through everything and freeze out all the buggers while it was still cold as hell outside. Did I do anything? Nope.

Fast forward to this evening, when I spotted a small winged creature fluttering around in the upstairs hall. I squashed the beast, but I know he wasn’t alone. Once the kids were down for the count, I started in the wool/fabric/catchall room. Started putting yarn into ziploc bags, tossing odds and ends and yarns that I really thought were more at risk of infestation and the ones that I wanted an excuse to pitch. I brought down two garbage bags filled with ziplocs of yarn, and there’s more to come. I ran out of steam. There’s still a bin of handspun up there and a couple bins of assorted yarns. I wonder if they can get into Sterilite bins…

I’m honestly afraid to inspect the basement wool stash. That’s where the fleeces are. I put some of them in the space-saver bags a few years ago (I think I did my pregnancy nesting by carding wool). Well, those things have shitty seals - don’t count on them to stay shrunken. One of those bags has two small shetland fleeces from a friend’s flock and another has a gorgeous silvery-gray fleece that I bought at Shepherd’s Harvest right before I got pregnant with Grace. Some of the stuff that I’ve been looking forward to spinning for ages, in other words.

I need someone to come hold my hand while I go look down there.

What do I do if it’s been infested? Do I rewash the fleece and try to make the best of it, or do I pitch it?

I’m going to toss and turn thinking about this all night. Bleah.

My to-do list, more or less in chronological order:

1. Knit and/or crochet wool fruits & veggies + market bag(s) for Grace’s Christmas gift
2. Knit a hat out of handspun wool for future brother-in-law
3. Knit a scarf for Liz out of novelty yarn. Bleh.
4. Finish Creeping Vines socks for me!
5. Knit Robin Hood Jacket for Grace
6. Frog UFO red sweater for me and reknit a v-neck raglan with short-rowed bust
7. Knit a mobius strip scarf out of some of my stashed Cherry Tree Hill Supersock (for me!)
8. Socks for Chris out of alleged “naturally machine washable” yarn (it really isn’t washable, but it makes the best socks!
9. Find my error on the Peace Shawl and fix, then finish the bloody thing.

Longer-term to-dos:

1. Stash reduction, both yarn and fiber. Final goal - ????
2. Design a sweater for myself out of Silky Wool (color #10, I believe)
3. Assign a purpose to the 15 balls (3/color) of hemp/wool blend worsted weight yarn

Now to work on that hat, since I’ve temporarily run out of patience for wool veggies. It’s a little scratchy but I hope that a wash with some heavy-duty conditioner will help. If not, it’ll be a hat for someone who doesn’t shave their head.