No gold here.

I started casting off in Friday, but I wasn't sure I liked it, so I put it down and haven't picked it back up. Oh well.

Now I can get back to sewing!

Many stitches.

The Happy Stacker is complete! Yay!


Pattern by Heather Bailey, Cosmo Cricket "Girl Friday" fabrics, and lots and lots of ric rac (as it should be)

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to take a wee break from sewing and actually clean my house. Too bad it won't clean itself. I keep waiting.

And I've made it through the 48-row section of the Pi shawl. I now have 576 stitches on my needle. I only have to go around 40-50 more times, and then knit on an edging. I'm trying to decide if I should switch to a lace pattern now or not.



Probably not. And I clearly forgot that, when knitting lace, I do not like to pull from the inside of the ball. We're on the verge of a collapse, here.

Progress.

Eliza is teething again, and we had a very rough night last night, so I was tempted to just sleep when she slept today (which wasn't much), but, coffee-fueled, I forged onward.


Don't they look like yummy little cakes?

I finished one more ring last night and two today. One ring tomorrow and the pole that they all stack on (instead of the stand-in four poster), and I'll be done. I might be a little sad. This is a fun project. I've been tucking jingle-bell-in-a-cage cat toys into the rings as I stuff them, so they make noise as well. I can't wait to see her play with it.

As for the shawl, I'm on row 33 of the 48-row section, and then I'll double my stitches again and knit 40 or 50 more rows, per EZ's directions, or until I decide it's big enough. I might put it down and tuck in early tonight, though.

Getting into the spirit.

So yesterday I cast on for an Olympic project. I had a skein of handspun laceweight singles (Hello Yarn "Air" merino/bamboo -- another example of me turning a small spinning project into a long one) by my desk that was meant for an Elizabeth Zimmermann Pi Shawl, and when I looked at it this time, it said, "knit me." And I thought, "why not?" This is something I can do at night when I can't be sewing. Nothing could be easier than stockinette in the round, but it is the sort of project that I would never finish without a deadline. So I cast on and made up for some lost time. The rows are already getting really really long, but I only have about 70 or 80 to go. The real beauty is that I can always just cast off where I am on the last day and still win gold.



And I started another project today involving five rings. A fabric stacking ring set for Eliza's birthday. I just finished the first one, and it wasn't as tricky as it looked in the pattern. She's taking a late nap that may just turn into going to bed insanely early (she does this every so often), so I may have a chance to get ahead on this as well while I wait for the fabric for her birthday dress.

Housekeeping.

I used to have Blogger comments. Then I switched to Haloscan, and all of my old comments got hidden. Haloscan no longer exists, and they want me to transfer my comments to some paid service, which I am not going to do. So I uninstalled it and now the original Blogger comments are back, but any comments left through Haloscan are gone. I almost decided the blog wasn't worth this headache, but it turned out not to be so bad.

The bad news is, Blogger doesn't always give me an email address so I can reply to comments. The good news is, I'm really bad about replying to comments, anyway, and now I have an excuse.

So I did finish the sock.

And I started the next one. And I only ripped back the cuff part twice. Once for thinking I still had the chart memorized from the first sock, and once for not paying attention.



But it's OK, because these may be my favorite socks EVER and they're worth getting right. We'll ignore that one of the motifs starts in a different place on each sock (again due to thinking that I still had the chart memorized from the first sock), OK?

And it's time for the Knitting Olympics. I was a year late for the first go-round, and so I've basically been looking forward to the 2010 Olympics for three years. But now that it's here, I don't wanna. I have two pounds of wool sitting by ready to be spun into a sweater amount of yarn and right now I don't wanna. "Don't wanna" is probably not part of an Olympian's vocabulary, but this is my hobby and I don't want to make it suck. For one thing, I keep swearing off big spinning projects, and I keep starting them. I have a 3-ply sock yarn on the new wheel* now that's been going since December, and I am not a multi-project spinner. Also, someone I know has a birthday coming up soon, and her mama has decided to sew her not only a birthday dress, but toys as well, and I don't think she should put that off until the last minute. Especially since the party is at our place. And it might still be chilly, so she might need a knitted shrug to wear over her sleeveless party dress. So will I compete or not? If I decide I want to, I will. Maybe I'll finish that sock yarn and knit the socks. Some challenge, huh?

* Did I mention I got another spinning wheel for Christmas? No? Well, that's a whole other post.

I leave you with this image from today. Blurry spots are snow on my lens.

Snow angels, she says, are not so fun after all.