Uncle Leona's Day Camp

Did I ever mention I hated sleeves?

The Kauni is in its personal sleeve purgatory at the moment.

I think the sweater body moved faster than the sleeves have. I'm also not 100% sold on the colors on the sleeves so far, but I'm waiting out the progressions to see where this goes. I've already frogged several times on this thing; what's a sleeve?

Oh, and another thing. I hate winter. 14 inches of white stuff in the past 24 hours. 16 degrees and dropping. And everyone's sick. I need my vacation. Now.

Well, the sun's out anyhow

It's a beautiful day here in Northeast Ohio....the sun is blazing, the sky is a brilliant blue...

...and it's a toasty 27 degrees.

Guess the shorts will have to stay in the drawer. I shouldn't bitcheth too much, though. This has been one gray February. And gray around here means one thing: Road Trip!!! Yep, the yearly March Escape From Winter has been set: I'm heading to Houston! No knit shop plans for the trip, but lots of golf plans. The golf board guys have an annual event down there every spring--they're expecting around 20 people to attend, including me and another snowbird from Nebraska. It should be a lot of fun, as long as I keep my golf game expectations waaaaaayyyy low.

As for life here on the yarn front, I have finally received an invitation to Ravelry. As you can see by the icons to the right, I have jumped right into the insanity. It's a fascinating community; there's something there for just about every knitter of any level. And the ads even are interesting--I've visited several vendor sites that I never knew existed (I know...even a geek like me couldn't have found all of the yarn sites out there, but I like to think I have). Lots of inspiration to be had and potential new axe murderer buddies to chat with. Good times.

The Kauni Kardi is moving along.

It's getting close to the end of the bodice portion of our program. The neckline shaping is about an inch away, and the shoulders are at the 26" point. To illustrate:

Yep...it's close. Then I get to do my favorite thing: sleeves!!!

Did you feel the sarcasm?

Moon over Siberia

I did make it outside for the eclipse last night--pretty cool to watch...

...but dang, it was cold out there!!!

I'm tired of illness

As you're probably aware, this hasn't been the best winter for staying healthy. The flu shot didn't work, and every virus known to mankind is making Cleveland its winter home. Couple that with lousy weather for the last two months, and it make for a very cranky work environment. Every parent wants their kid fixed now, and they have trouble accepting that it just isn't going to happen. Most of this stuff is viral anyhow; fluids and rest (and parental patience) is all I can prescribe.

It's winter in Ohio, people. Deal with it. It sucks.

OK, so in order to deal with my aching feet, a lot of knitting has been accomplished. First, the latest blocks in the GAA:

I redid the first block I knit for this thing (the one that blocked so horribly). Once again, this color yarn made the block more difficult than it should have been. But it's done.

This one flew along once I got out of the double pointed needle stage. The pattern actually requested that you do a yarn over when finishing up the stitches on each needle. That is a bit annoying. Eventually, I reorganized the stitches so that those yo's were in the middle of each double point, and things made more sense. It's a clever construction: by doing the circular intarsia, the yellow stripes actually wind up as i-cords and stick out from the fabric. Pretty neat.

As long as we're looking at bright stuff:

Yes, I ripped out the first attempt. The color combos were just not coming out right, and I had issues with the ribbing reminding me of this guy:

This color progression appeals to me much more. Far less hulkified.

Awaiting the onslaught

We here in Northeast Ohio have not one, but two onslaughts on the way. First is the ever-present attack of Mother Nature; we're supposed to get a couple inches of snow and a drop in temperature of about 35 degrees overnight. High temperature tomorrow: 12. Ugh.

Onslaught number two may even be more nasty: it's a matter of time before the campaigning for Ohio starts in earnest. Our primary is the first week in March, which means we'll be looking at Hillary and Obama a lot until then. Should be interesting. There's also a nasty battle going on to oust my ever-running-for-President-yet-not-being-my-congressman Dennis Kucinich. I hope he does get knocked out; he has done NOTHING for my district except make us look like fools for keeping him in office.

I didn't vote for him. He's an attention-hungry hobbit.

OK, back to our regularly scheduled program, the GAA. Two more blocks are done!

As promised, entrelac with a twist. I'm not terribly fond of this block personally. Too much going on. Also, it wanted you to knit two three stitch garter bands (using stitches you had held on each edge of the bottom garter band) and stitch them in place on the sides--what a pain! I went the pick up and knit route--much cleaner.

This one is really cool. I could see doing an entire afghan with blocks of this alternated with plain color blocks.

And yes, there was progress on the Kauni.

I did manage to misread the chart already. The almost three inches of corrugated ribbing was supposed to be 3 centimeters of corrugated ribbing. After knitting all of that, I wasn't about to rip it out, so it's now a design element. The pattern itself goes really fast, as long as the yarn doesn't have a splice, which I already ran into. Thankfully, I have lots of yarn. Turns out I have far more than I originally stated. The balls run 440 yards per 100 grams--I have almost 600 grams of yarn (each ball runs between 140 and 170 grams).

I hate metrics. They just mess me up.

Quick updates, for those who were losing sleep

(Yes, Shirley, two posts in one day....try not to panic)

Well, the front edges of the cardigan seem to have blocked out just fine, so all I need to do is get some buttons to finish it up. Yay!

Good thing, 'cause my postal inspector is checking out what arrived in three days from Oregon:

440 yards per each ball of rainbow goodness. Yum. There are those out there in cyberspace who have said the yarn is scratchy. I am here to say that it feels just as nice as the stuff in the Virtual yarn kits...maybe even a tad softer. It should knit up like a dream.

Just hope there's enough. Everyone who has knit the cardigan has said they have had extra, but with my boobage, that's not always the case. No biggie...they have tons of the stuff at KnitPurl.

There's also a lot of the yarn on some German yarn sites, but my two years of college German isn't doing me much good with translations. And I'm clean outta Euros.

So, it looks like I'll be stranding in the near future.

The Kauni passed inspection.

Super Wednesday

I love days off. I'm sitting here in my pajamas, hair all askew, it's almost 1:00 in the afternoon, and I don't care. I should make a trip to the post office, but that would require getting cleaned up, which I really am not ready to do just yet.

I am a bum. It's a wonderful thing.

So, in order to waste more time before I try to become productive, it's time to post a thing or two. At 11 blocks, I'm almost halfway through the knitting portion of the GAA! Woo hoo! Here's the latest:

This one was a pain. Not for the pattern, but because I couldn't see where I was going with the navy yarn. Extra light around here might have helped, but I like my cave-like existance in my living room. I consider it decreasing my carbon footprint.

Yet another use of the bobble, and yet another way to do it. These were done on the wrong side of the knitting, yet by judicious slip stitching, they popped out to the right side. Ingenious.

I feel like I should be driving a Jeep through these woods. Singing some old Andy Kim hit. With a wolf.

Next up, entrelac with a twist. Literally. Stay tuned.

And look what's getting blocked!

This is what you do during a Super Bowl. You sew up piles of wool/alpaca yarn. The front edges, sadly, curled like crazy. I'm trying to straighten things out, but there may be some grosgrain ribbon in their future. I guess I'll have to find out after I finish this little diatribe.

Thanks to the Hollywood Writer's Strike, I have been doing a lot of crazy web surfing the last few weeks. Mostly, I have been looking for ideas for a Knitting Olympics item to knit (it's looking like it'll be a pattern from Cheryl Oberle's Folk Vests, but that's subject to change). Whilst surfing, I found out that I was a little late to the Kauni Cardigan party. For those out there like me who are oblivious, Kauni is a danish self-striping Shetland weight wool, and there's a gorgeous free pattern out in cyberspace for a possible use for said yarn:

Is that cool or what? The beautiful colors are accomplished by using the same yarn for both strands of the fair isle, but starting one skein a little ahead (or behind) of the color striping. I think I am in love. It looks to be an easy stranded knit, I think. I'm sure I'll goof it up somewhere. It's what I do.

Anyhow, the yarn is en route from Oregon, so we'll see how this all goes once it gets here. I'm getting a little excited.

Excited enough to take a shower? Nah.