finish first lace shawl, CHECK

that's right, she's allllll done, and blocked and now sitting in my 'knitwear box' waiting for the right time.

why did i put it away so quickly you might be asking? oh, because i've already managed to pull threads in it THREE TIMES already, it's true, i'm just not meant to have delicate pretty things!

but as it's finished, and since i took such terrible photos of it, here it is. My swallowtail (minus the tail part)

fresh off the needles

a very gentle blocking

so floaty and flirty :) AND FINISHED hehee

now back to the startistic stashbusting blanket, which is now 17" tall, yay!

hope you're all surviving the heat, and have lovely airconditioning to keep you cool and out of trouble.

work in progress update!

so many things on the go, the result of an attack of startitis is that you then have lingering 'lots-to-work-on-with-not-much-getting-finished' symptoms

but that's ok, because i have come to realise that i will finish everything no matter what, so if it takes a bit longer than i expected, so what (so what, so i'm being so unproductive, NO ONE WILL LOVE ME IF I DONT FINISH THINGS)

patience is a virtue right? (and a virtue is a grace, and grace is a little girl who didn't wash her face - i had a sudden attack of naughty sunday school rhymes, sorry *ahem* )

but back to the point of the post, the works in progress

first up is the Startitus Stashbusting Blanket (is there an 'S' work for blanket?)

it's made from leftover stashed Smoothie DK, an acrylic yes, but a really nice and 'smooth' so aptly named yarn. i'm not sure the colours work together quite as well as i'd originally thought/hoped, but it's a stash blanket, I AM NOT BUYING YARN FOR THIS TO MAKE IT WORK

these are the 3 colours (not my photos)

this is about 13" high and about 1/4 or so through the yarn

my TERRIBLE photog skills strike again

also that's about 1/3 of the width (or more like 1/4 probably) so apparently I've accidentally knit up the world's most oversized 'lap blanket', my skills, let me show them

i strung it on to 3 cables to see how wide it was and it stretches out comfortably over my queen size bed. why do i do this to myself? a row takes one episode of FRIENDS to get through, so about 20 minutes per row. should only be 3.45 years until i'm finished then

my other WIP is the January KAL, the Swallowtail shawl (a free Knitty pattern)

now as some of you may know, i'm not the biggest fan of pointy edged shawls. as someone who has a hard enough time getting through the day without catching my clothes on a sharp edge/doorknob/back of chair/drawer/other people, the idea of adding little pointy wispy catching devices to the edge of clothing is just INSANE, so i have decided instead to just knit the main body lace part to double the size in the pattern, then forgo the edging/border lace and just end with a simple 2 rows of st st and a row of yo's and then 2 more rows of st st and bound off super loosely.

that'll work right?

although i was looking forward to the nupps, i haven't ever done them in lace weight (with DK yarn had made me a fan of them as they pop up like magic!)

so yes, here's the in-progress shots from last night

doesn't look like much yet!

up close and personal

i'm up to the 22nd repeat of the lace pattern which is a 283 stitch row, which normally isn't that daunting since if i'm knitting in the round, that's normally around how many stitches i am! but with 2ply it seems way more, slippery and hard to control, i fail at 2ply

Susanne oh-so-helpfully posted a list of the end of row stitch counts for the first 14 sections and so i just extended past that to the 26th section which will be 339 stitches. I was going to stop there but looking at how much yarn i have left, i think i might go to more like 36 repeats

that way i'll have almost no leftover yarn, and honestly that's a good thing as i think i might be staying away from 2 ply for a little while, it's lovely, but time consuming (unless you are magic like sharon and can finish entire shawls in 5 days or less!)

ok so that's it for now, i'm feeling confident that the rest of the swallowtail will fly by since i can knit it in public/around people now, which is integral to the success of any project for me as i'm a knit it all the time or never knit it kind of girl

finished objects make me happy

so in 2011, I am determined to have no unloved projects sitting around.

here's my theory - if i started it, i must have wanted to finish it. so therefore, i should finish it.

simple right? wrong.

when it's 6 months later and you haven't even looked at it in weeks and the yarn is scratching your fingers and it's too hot to even look at a scarf it can be kind of hard to keep things on track

but haha! have people over for a knitting/bra day and much can be accomplished. i decided then and there that I would finish my much ignored Saroyan that night, but at 5am I accepted defeat and attempted to sleep

Sunday dawned WAY too early and I raced around doing a few things then got down to knitting the last 3 leaves and bind off. left the house for a 90's themed 30th birthday, came home and oh-so-lightly blocked this out

it is finally finished and i no longer have to hide my face in shame every time i see the bag it was living in as a WIP woohoo!

sadly as a result of all this not-sleeping, i'm now feeling ill, total cold/flu meltdown with sore throat, coughing, funny coloured skin and hot/cold flushes. so will be missing my fave night of the week, the Richmond SnB and instead crawling home to bed and kitty snuggles

in other FO news, though these have been finished for 2weeks and 1 week respectively, the Ripley for me and matching garter stitch mitts have finally been (badly) photographed!

so that's it on the actual knitting front (and omg, i STILL haven't sewn the zip to my dad's sweater and his b'day is in 5 days)

thanks to the lovely knitters for coming to my/Jen's Intimo party on saturday arvo. much knitting and boobtalk and cake eating was enjoyed and I thank you for bringing your monies and getting me free stuff! have a party, everyone love free stuff ;)

help the clueless blogger

ok what is the dealio, I have been trying to reply to comments and I cannot figure it out

how do i do it

livejournal is so much easier to tink with than this place!

/end rant

Happy New Yarn, ahem, YEAR!

seriously amazing knitted art

so the knitting mojo is back for 2011, which has kind of inspired (along with the Ravelry thread of the same vein) a number of knitting/yarn related resolutions

- I WILL DEPLETE MY STASH (seriously, it mocks me with it's unhandleableness)

- aforementioned stash will be put on Rav so i actually plan projects without guestimating

- i will make extra things for backup presents with yarn that i'm maybe not so fond of

- there will be no more yarn purchasing until Bendigo (except for the already committed to yarn club and gifts for other people)

- i will wind all my skeins into useable cakes/balls

- colourwork will happen, at least once, even if it's fair isle only and not intarsia, i MUST conquer my fear (all the ends! all the tension issues! all the effort for a possible FAIL)

- i will knit more stuff for me!

- learn to take better photos of yarn and FO, mine SUCK BIG TIME

- knit lots of lace

- knit each project only once in 2011, no double ups (oh god, a whole year without doing a pair of Bella's Mittens, HOW will i cope?)

- start writing up patterns for things I 'make up' 

- knit more, sleep is for wusses

part of the main point for getting serious about my stash is that i absolutely, positively MUST knit the yarn I've owned for longer than 3 years, if I love it, I should use it, IS THAT NOT THE POINT? oh the insanity of 'saving' delicious yarn under my bed, all hidden away and feeling unloved i'm sure and gathering dust and dander and other less-than-delicious alliterative dirty things

somewhere in all this lot i'm also going to try and pick up my cross stitch/embroidery hoops again, although most of them are on the living room wall in my apartment right now! I really miss the simple beauty of a well designed and executed sampler. i need something for the walls in my room. As great as wearable 'art' is, I like the (relative) permanence of cloth and thread, it's like painting, only not messy (hooray!) and since i already have in my possession one of the lovely sets done up by the incomparably talented stitcher Miss Penelope Waits, i have the perfect back on the wagon project just waiting for me!

next entry will have pictures I swear! I've finished Dad's Avast sweater (except the zipper) so there will be pics of that, I've completed another Ripley (this one for me!) and i'm almost done with the semi-matching garter stitch mitts. Might also try and get Aga to send me a photo of her WIP scarf, she sadly had to rip it back as she realised that as much as she loved the idea of a super wide scarf the reality is that that is like $100 of yarn and SO FRIGGGING HEAVY so she's made it thinner and i gave her some slightly bigger than recommended needles and she's flying through. big thanks to Sharon for suggesting teaching her yarn overs so she could work in some eyelet rows, they helped keep the boredom down on her mammoth first scarf effort - no holes! hopefully when she comes to visit in a few weeks we'll be able to cast off and block it :)

so that's all for now, back to pretending i'm working. xox