Adventures with sticks and string.
This is Hazel Knits sock yarn, a holiday gift from L-B. L-B was on a quest to find a sock yarn for me that I had not used before — she succeeded with this one.
I have two 100-gram skeins, one each in the Lime Granita and Chocolatier colorways. Each skein is about 400 yards/skeins and is 90% wool/10% nylon blend. It’s lovely stuff!
The start of my new project:
A peek at my chart:
A peek at Lucy:
See y’all Sunday!
It’s my first FO 0f 2008. The Crest o’ the Wave Scarf is done.
It is about 18 inches wide and 72 inches long. I blocked it simply by giving a good steaming with my trusty Rowenta iron.
As I mentioned, the yarn I used is handpainted laceweight from Sweden — a gift from my friend Johanne. I used approximately 900 yards and knit it with a 4mm (US 6) needle.
And just because I am just so dang sweet and amiable (sarcasm alert! sarcasm alert!), I wrote up the pattern and posted it here (in pdf format).
It is also available from my Free Patterns page.
It is time to move on. I’m going to be doodling around with something . . .
Lucy would like to thank you for all your compliments on her dance performance. She is now requiring that her water be served to her in a Baccarat crystal bowl. Diva.
If only she’d learn to relax, eh?
Y’all may think that Lucy spends all her time keeping tabs on me and my knitting, right?
But that’s not all she does. Lucy is quite the little artiste: when she can find no other outlet for her creativity, she turns to interpretive dance.
Such style! Such grace! Such emotion! Such raw talent! (Hey Bloglines readers — there’s a YouTube video embedded above this paragraph.)
The prima ballerina was quite happy to see me when I returned home from the office yesterday. In fact, she slept draped over my face for a good part of last night. Apparently comfy for her, not so much for me. But perhaps breathing Ragdoll-fur filtered air is good for you. 
It’s not so good for the sleeping, though. Very little sleep was had by moi last night. But I can’t blame Lucy for all my insomnia. Sheri did a shop update at The Loopy Ewe last night and after the rush of scoring some good yarn, I was so hopped up I couldn’t sleep.
Do you suppose that there is a 12-step program for that?
(Psst! Thanks, Laurie, for the Loopy Ewe gift certificate — that definitely enhanced my shopping experience!)
My knitting mojo returned last night and I was able to complete an acceptable chunk o’ scarf knitting. This bad boy will be done in another day or two. I’ve got other stuff to do tonight, but there’s always tomorrow!
Lucy sez:
Thank you, Daddy, for filming my dance!
Did you ever have one of those evenings when you hunker down to knit, fully intending to go at it for a couple of hours and make great progress? And spend the evening fumbling and dropping stitches?
Last night was one of those nights for me. I could not complete a row without dropping a stitch to save my life. I do not recommend dropping stitches in lace. It is a royal pain to pick ‘em back up again. Good thing the crest o’ the wave pattern is an easy one.
But I don’t have a lot of progress to show you today. Look at yesterday’s picture.
But I ought to be able to complete the scarf by the end of the week, as long as I don’t have any more knitting evenings like last night.
There was a question about the afghan I had the scarf draped over in yesterday’s pic. That’s a Colinette AbFab throw I made a few years ago:
And there were a couple of questions about the scarf. One was how wide the scarf is — it is 18″ wide.
Next, how many yards is in my skein of yarn. It’s between 800 — 900 yards.
Another question — will I publish a pattern for this.
Well, yeah, I can. It’s pretty easy to figure out without a pattern, but I’ll write it up when I’m done.
So . . . what’s on the needles next?
I’m toying with the idea of knitting a sweater, but then again, I might concentrate on some small items for a while. In fact, I have a particular something small in mind . . .
Re-entry
Re-entry today was not too bad. One sucky thing was that the subway fares went up this week. So I’m paying an extra $1.95 per day (bringing my daily total for commuting up to $11.70 daily for fares and parking) for the same crappy service. (This morning I waited 12 minutes for a train at my transfer point. I’m paying the higher rush hour fare for non-rush hour service — something that’s pissed me off for years.)
And another thing. At some point in the recent past, Metro changed their fare machines so that they no longer accept $20 bills (even though they say they do on the machine). So I have to collect $5 and $10 bills to feed into the machine when I want to add value to my metro card. I used to use my debit card to add value, but stopped doing that after the farecard machine deducted $200 from my account and only put $100 of value on my metro card. It took me three months to get that money back from Metro.
Okay, I’m done. 
do I feel better? Well . . . no . . .
Lucy was very pleased to have her Momma home after work and told me about it in detail!
I’ve been working along on my Crest o’ the Wave scarf — see?
I decided against knitting the two halves from the bottom and joining them in the center. When I reached the halfway point, I was sort of “in a zone” and just didn’t stop. So the scarf will be one long continuation of the pattern. I expect it’ll be at least 6 feet long when done. The photo shows it at about three-quarters done.
Tomorrow is the dreaded first day back at work after two glorious weeks at home. Am I looking forward to that? Why, no.
Lucy will no doubt be peeved as well — no one to tend to her every kitty need during the day!
