Monday, October 08, 2007

No mojo

Somehow I've lost it. My mojo. Knitting and otherwise. You know what I mean, right? Just kind of a case of the blahs and you just can't shake it? Well, I've taken to cheering myself up with video of BB doing nothing but hiccuping or lying there looking cute (what else do 2 month olds do?) and my worst guilty pleasure of all, Gossip Girl.

And somehow, my anniversary is already coming up. It's been almost a year since I've become Mrs. McSpazzitron, and I still don't have wedding pictures printed out and sent to my parents or in-laws. Or even a wedding picture on my or DH's desk at work. Maybe for our anniversary, I'll get my butt in gear and finally get my album approved and prints ordered. There's just not much hope of it happening by Sunday, our actual anniversary. We're celebrating in style by whipping out the frozen year old cake and popping open some brachetto.

Anyway, knit-wise, I have for whatever reason, managed to have the most projects on my needles than ever before. A few pictures:
My placed cable aran is slowly growing sleeves. I changed my method of adding sleeves from the top down because my short row wraps look all kinds of ugly. Instead I picked up only the top 20% of stitches around the armhole and then turned, worked back, and at the end of the row, I just picked up another stitch, turned, and slipped the stitch just picked up and worked to the end of the row. Repeat until all stitches are picked up and voila, a sleeve cap with no math involved. Lazy, I know, but I still think it looks better than my old way.
I cast on for new socks because I don't have the heart to rip back the others that have been on the needles for months being too big for their recipient. The toe on these socks have a bit of n*pple going on with them because I moved the toe increases around from where they normally are. But I like the fan panel stitch pattern, and I have ideas in my head of a different to me toe up heel flap sock, so we'll see if it works out. I'm sure this heel is out there somewhere, but I'm too lazy to find it and wouldn't even know what it's called. Also, my picture taking skills are on full display here - the yarn is really more brown than red. If only my red sweaters looked this red.


Lastly, I'm working on a Vogue Knitting pattern now. I had some Berroco Pleasure sitting in my stash originally intended for Blaze, but then I discovered something called gauge and realized that this yarn just wouldn't work for that sweater. Two years later and here we are finally. Big gauge, small jacket, sounds like instant gratification, right? Well, not when there's as much seaming as is involved with this pattern. So far, I'm ignoring that part and just knitting the pieces. We'll see if I lose all my hair when it comes time to seam not one, but two borders all the way around this sweater.

The purple jacket, by the way, has an error in the chart - or at least I'm convinced it does, though I haven't yet received any sort of official confirmation as such. The first picture is the cable panel as published. The second picture has the modification thrown in (changed the center 16 stitches to 4 repeats of k1, p2, k1 - all credit for this mod goes to Veronique). Not much difference, but enough in person to make it worth ripping the whole back and starting over.