I'm getting nowhere...

I'm knitting and knitting with, I think, not so much to show for it. For example, here's a month of knitting, from here:



to here:
Not much to show for a month, is there? Ah, the vagaries of lace and the patience required. I do love the color and texture of the yarn, though.


Whatever! I did knit a clapotis, two hats, and part of a sweater in that month, too, right? That counts, yes? Oh, ok, here's the sweater:

I'm a big girl--it takes a long time to do a sweater. Mind you, I'm doing the entire body in one piece. Once I'm done here, I'll only have two sleeves before I can put a fork in it!

BUT! My AWOL sock jonz is back! Well sort of--

These I like a lot--the yarn, the fabric, the pattern. I'm so crazy about the yarn, I ordered it in 4 more colors. Stash vow, shma-tash vow. I figure multiple skeins of the same yarn counts as ONE YARN, right? Also, this isn't really a color that appeals to me, but my mother might like it in socks. Her birthday is in two weeks, so I gotta keep crackin' at these. These are, as one might graciously put it, a HOT MESS.

Anybody know what to do with Tofutsies yarn? I thought it would be nice to have less-woolly-intensive socks, and I like the general colors, but it's a unmitigated, variegated disaster! I'm taking suggestions. WILL FROG FOR GOOD SOCKS!

Di(re)gressions

See...this is what happens. Sometimes knitting (especially for others) seems like a good idea. I conduct a high school choir and have 22 seniors graduating. Instead of getting them dorky carnation corsages to wear at our last concert, I figured I would knit them all corsages. That should be easy, right? The students are always asking me to knit something for them (as if...), so I figured these would be nice little tokens. I research flower patterns, and find some cute ideas.

Pattern: Flowers
The picture to the left shows them before felting.
Yarn: Brown Sheep Worsted and some left over alpaca yarn from over 6 years ago.
Yarn Enabler: Knit-a-way
Time it takes: About 17 minutes for each flower.

These are quick to knit, but sort of hard to form. I've picked the felted ones, but I don't have a washing machine, so I decide to hand-felt them in my sink. Not so bad, I can handle this.



But in the end. They aren't going to do AT ALL. Way too big, heavy, and they look like...well..lumps of felted wool, rather than the charming roses I had hoped for. And the alpaca ones didn't work out even a little bit, so I'd also have to do about 15 more roses in the next 3 days.

So no knitted corsages for the singers of the Class of 2007. Zut alors!

I'm not going to digress from my knitting plans and plan to return to regularly-scheduled knitting.