Monogamy

I'm a knitting floozy and Ravelympics is getting the best of me.  Six days of fidelity to one project and I am losing interest.  I browse Ravelry, yearning for a new, more exciting project.  I swoon over yarn in my stash.  I drive by my LYS with a sense of sadness.  I find myself singing Howard Jones.

You can look at the menu but you just can't eat.....

I am SO itching to start a new project right now.  Seriously, 10 more days of nothing but the same project?  Not sure I can do it.

FO: Nantucket Waters

First of all, there is snow.  Lots and lots of snow.  Yesterday's additional 2" almost put me over the edge, but hardened veterans that we now are, we survived.

So as I look out the window of this house, you won't blame me for daydreaming of the view from the other house.  Ahhhh July, you can't come soon enough.  For three weeks in the summer, the kids run in and out of the water, playing on the same beaches, surfing the same waves, and falling asleep to the same foghorn that their dad and granddad did when they were kids.  It's a grand old house with a million-dollar view, and a long family history to go with it. 

But back to the knitting--thoughts of those cobalt blue waters inspired me to knit my Citron in Sundara's fingering silky merino in the Cobalt over Mediterranean colorway.   

That is some *nice* yarn.  I have a few skeins stashed and I'm never quite sure what to make of them.  I'm not a very good lace knitter so the idea of sweating through hours of yarning over and passing slipped stitches over just to bunch my masterpiece around my neck just never seemed worth it.  But a semicircle of stockinette?  That I can do.

I followed the pattern almost exactly (left out a few rows of the very first gathered section so it would not look bunchy).  I also blocked it somewhat more aggressively along the straight edge to elongate the semicircle so it would wrap better around my neck as a scarf (but making it difficult to photograph, obviously).

A quick shout-out to NutmegOwl, who was my pick-up Citron KAL buddy--check out the beauty she produced.   Looks great, no? 

I'll leave you with one more shot from my summer daydreams---the men in my life:

Olympic Knitting

Yes, I'm on the bandwagon.  I'm going to attempt to finish an entire adult sweater in two weeks.  I've chosen Seneca (rav link)

Those look like olympic rings right?  I figure it is the right amount of challenge in the sideways cable with lots of straight stockinette thrown in for plenty of mindless knitting.  I'm not a huge fan of angora, but wanted to make sure the sweater was soft and drapey with a fuzzy halo, so I chose Cascade Eco Alpaca in natural.  The yarn is very soft and I got gauge on size 7 needles--I'm a bit concerned that the cables don't look as "solid" as I would like, but I think blocking will help them plump up.  I will admit that I did not block my swatch (I know, I know) but I used the first sleeve as my unofficial swatch.  Having used this yarn before, I have a feel for how much it grows with blocking and I am taking that into account as I choose my size.


Progress so far:

Day 1: Could not cast on during the opening ceremonies as we were out to dinner so I spent Saturday catching up. Finished the cable section and about 7” of the first sleeve. Goal is to finish the second sleeve by tomorrow night, so I have most of the games to do the body.

Day 2: First sleeve finished! It’s 10:30pm, I’m very sleepy but halfway through the second sleeve cables. Can I get them done tonight? That would set up a straight shot of stockinette to get to the goal of finishing the sleeves by tomorrow.

ETA: Powered through cables, finished at around 11:30, thanks to some mistakes that needed fixing. Not unlike the “penalty” lap in biathlon.