Flying the Coop

Icarus has left the building.

Icarus winged it's way away from me this afternoon - in a padded mailer off to it's new home in Florida...... I actually finished it last week - my little teaser to you was showing you Icarus' bag with the size 2 needles (oops! supposed to be size 3 needles but I just grabbed and started knitting without paying proper attention!!!!) stuck in the fabric and the cable was completely empty. That was the {hint, hint} part.

So that was fun to finally finish - and as always the blocking was cooler than cool.

What started out as wibbly and bobbly with only a half hour of soaking in lavender Eucalan turned quickly into something light and ethereal and incredibly defined.....

And just as wonderfully, what happened that very same evening (Thursday) was that as I was sitting at work starting to mourn my now-finished knit I got an invite from frecklegirl Jess in my inbox to join Ravelry! I literally screeched out loud with delight. (Thank god my office-mate wasn't sitting at his desk when that happened!) I had put my name on the invite list way back when Sheep & Wool was going on - and I knew that a ton of other folks had done the same thing and that eventually I'd get added to the site - I just didn't know it would be so soon & that it would happen on the same day that I had finished Icarus and needed something uplifting and all-engrossing as distraction!

Ravelry is literally all-engrossing. It's the only word I can think of to describe it. I'm obsessed. At first I sat around and typed in loads of my projects and simply burned with anger that my Flickr account (and not just a basic Flickr account, but a Flickr Pro account that costs good money!) was snafu'd and that I couldn't get in to upload any new photos (Ravelry links only to your Flickr pics) but then I got over it and instead started uploading specs on some of my stash yarn, counting off my needles, etc. I'ts soooooooooooo good. I actually took formal "stash pictures" today (having first set up a formal "photo shoot spot" in my room for that express purpose!) just so that I could put them in my Stash Notebook spot. Yes, I'm that much of a geek, and yes, it's that wonderful & truly necessary of a thing to do.

I worship Ravelry at the moment, my ducks. Seriously. Mock me at your own risk.

So today when my Flickr problem still hadn't been answered & the problem hadn't been fixed I simply jumped around it & opened another Flickr account (this one a basic free one!) and started uploading my pictures there just so that I could shunt them over to my Ravelry spots. Pictures like this:

.....and this.

.........and these:

* Starting at the top we have my Sockpal sock w/ a grand total of 4 repeats finished. Expect to see some serious progress on this front, like, SOON.

* Next we have a whopping 8 skeins of Nature Cotton in a deep eggplant purple {it's kettle dyed, so in some spots the eggplant morphs into a rich royal purple} that I bought this weekend on clearance! from a Northern VA yarn shop. Eventually it will be transformed into the Hourglass Sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I bought it with no specific purpose in mind, so imagine my delight when I checked & found that not only do I have enough but the gauge is spot-on so that I don't have to do any maths fiddling to make the correct size!

* The single crazybeautiful pinkish/orangeish skein is some handspun (?) Gryphon sockyarn in her Sweet Briar Rose colourway that I got a month or so ago when I visited her at the farmer's market. 'Twill be socks for a Certain Someone who I think reads the blog, so I can't say much more than that.

* Two skeins of Misty Mountains Jubilee sock yarn in their Apple Rose colourway. I'm thinking this needs to be a delicate pattern - one that is solid enough to show off the beautiful colours yet not so solid that it's boring. 'twill undoubtedly be a fine line to find it & execute the pattern properly.

* And last but certainly not least is a skein of All Things Heather custom-dyed sockyarn that I got as thanks for my donation to a call she sent out to raise money to buy children's books for a school in South Africa. I'm thinking a pair of Monkeys. I'm thinking for me.

Because I not only finished Icarus last week but I also finished Jay's Screw-y socks last night I suddenly have a lot of project space opening up - with only my Sockpal Socks & Peggers' Vest on my official W.I.P. list. Now granted, I've got a few baby sweaters/ribbed jackets to knit up in the next few weeks, but seeing as how I knitted my very first Debbie Bliss Ribbed Baby Jacket in a mere 3 days (!) over the weekend (a subject for a post later this week) I'm not fussing or even counting those...........

And after all that deadline knitting (backyard leaves scarf, Icarus, Screw-y socks, etc.) that's such a lovely relief!!!!!