Easter TONS

....tons and tons and tons of knitting was done this weekend, that is!

(Despite 6" of freakish snow, a 5-6 hour power outage,
and not being at home for all of Saturday and half of Sunday)

I'm actually a bit amazed myself at how much was finished! And I'm a s-l-o-w knitter compared to many (being the 'grabber' type knitter instead of the continental or other styles of knitters makes me considerably slower than most, I've always thought) - - yet despite my turtle-like tendencies with the needles here is what I managed to work on this weekend:



I finished my Green Tea Raglan and blocked it and seamed it all together. All is left is to finish weaving all of those hellish ends. I have also tried it on & happily enough it fits (!) altho' I do have to say in the sake of modesty I will buy a cami to wear underneath it before I actually sport it outside of the house.








I also did a ton of knitting on the Backyard Leaves Scarf using Gryphon's amazing yarn. This stuff is pure gold, lemmie' tell you - very very very soft (and passed my patented sniff test with its very first whiff!) and just lovely lovely lovely colours all melded and melted together. It is actually due to Gryphon's lovely yarn that I credit actually finishing the first half of the scarf, as I rapidly grew tired of the pattern repeat after about, oh, the 6th one. Finishing those last two (you do 11 repeats before finishing off the pointy end) took some serious discipline! I'm guessing, however, that my lack of enthusiasm was not because of a failure in the scarf pattern, but rather because I did all of this scarf knitting in a day and a half. I will cast on for the second half very soon - I have determined that I will finish one pattern repeat every day at the very least - which means that the scarf will be more of less done in a week and a half. PLENTY of time to make my Mother's Day deadline!

I interspersed the scarf knitting with some Icarus knitting - -

(my progress shot taken outside Saturday afternoon during the power outage!)

- - my Jaegerspun Zephyr from Sarah's Yarns came stunningly soon after ordering it - - I ordered it around 1PM on a Thursday and it was literally on my doorstep time-stamped by the UPS guy at 12:40 PM the very next day. Talk about the speed of light! The yarn is wound for you by the Sarah folks - - they take their huge-mongous cone of Jaegerspun and wind off 2 ounces for you and then sell you just that 2 ounces at whatever percentage of the total 1-pound cone price would be. In my case that came to just $5 and some change per two-ounce ball. Can you believe it? Apparently they're a bit controversial in the yarn-retail world because of this practice, but as a person who literally snorts out loud when I read People magazine or US magazine and see the prices on those "designer" bags or "designer" jeans that celebrities wear ($700?????? For a pair of JEANS?????? Unless they magically turn my ass into a size 6 and do the dishes for me every night, I'm hard-pressed to shell out $70 for a pair of jeans!!!) this discount pricing model sits just fine with me, thankyouverymuch!

(Above is a progress shot taken this morning - I've finished the first repeat of Chart 1...the outside shot above is much much much more true to colour than this particular shot - something about the indoor light plus the grey-ish background - that is - it's grey in real life! - just washes out the intense intense intense robin's egg dark blue that is truthfully is...)

The bugger part of the Icarus story is that I also ordered an Addi bamboo size 3 (24") needle to knit it on, but decided to go w/ the size 3 Addi (16" - one of the circs that I use for socks) that I had to get started. You know - starteritis - I totally couldn't wait until the longer needle arrived in the mail......until yesterday when it actually did arrive and I slapped my forehead in disgust. I already HAVE a size 3 Addi (24") needle (turns out those sock needles that I bought were in fact ALL 24" long!) - in fact, that was exactly what I had been knitting the sucker on in the first place!!! So now I have three Addi naturas size 3 in 24 inches. I just didn't bother to check & measure (or heck, even READ the packaging!) before my silly self went crazy online ordering with reckless abandon. So now what do I do? Do I try and send it back? Do I even think that 24" is remotely long enough for such a huge shawl in the first place - so do I try and send it back and ask them to send a 36" long needle instead? Do I offer it in a swap to a friend? Do I burn it, offering it up to the gods in an attempt to prevent future Online-Knitting-Supply-Ordering Stupidity???


This morning I also started organizing my current batch of projects. Below what you see is nothing other than my patented "circular needle method" - which for me means that anything remotely small that I knit on a circular needle I stuff in one of these $1 Target bags that I bought over the summer and keep labeled (and therefore organized, as in my world this counts as organized!) with little ring tabs. While I haven't yet started Seraphim, what I currently have in that particular bag is a freshly-wound yarn cake of the Handpaintedyarn skein (didn't like the skein too much, but love love love the yarn cake!) and a pair of Knit Picks Options, size 5.

Pointy little suckers, those.