Look, look, it's me again!

Okay, so what have I accomplished in the last day?

This:

This is made from Kristen Kapur's (FREE!) Thorpe pattern. I dyed the fiber a few weeks ago, then spun it over the weekend, and between my last post and now, it turned into this, as if by magic. I'm disgustingly proud of the fact that I turned a hank of 3.5oz of ecru fiber into this, and am wearing it right now, despite the fact that it is 75 degrees farenheit outside. 

"But Lindey", anyone who's listening would say, "this isn't one of the things you were talking about working on at all!"

To these imaginary people, I say... "Look, I have another shiny yarn over there, let's start something new out of it, too!"

Seriously, though, I have worked on something I said I would. I've gotten this far on my Pogona:



Impressive, no? And now I'm working on a pair of socks.

Look over there, shiny!

This is me, biting off more than I can chew.

So, since I can't actually bite into anything more appetizing than an egg white right now, apparently I've decided that I'm going to jump into more projects than I could possibly hope to complete in a timely manner.

At two weeks into this diet, I've actually done... okay. Very well the first week, and while I was very good the second week, I lost a sum total of one pound. (this is why I invariably quit diets. All that work for practically no return.) So I opted to indulge myself in a little yarn, in order to do another Kal-ish sort of thing.

The thing in question is Camp Loopy, brought to us by The Loopy Ewe. Since I am a poor college student, I have neither the time nor the money to travel to cool knitting retreats, but this one is a strictly at home event. Sheri is coming up with three projects that must be completed within the alloted time frame - a month each - and if we do so using yarn purchased at The Loopy Ewe during the correct timeframe.... well, I suck at explaining this. Go check it out, knit some cool stuff, possibly win Wollmeise.

Long story short (too late!), I used my yarn!diet goodwill from the past two weeks to buy the yarn to make my first Camp Loopy project, which will be the Elisa Shawl in Madelinetosh DK, in the colorways Ink and Ginger.

Less impressive photos of the actual yarn will ensue upon its arrival, since I stink at photography and ganked these straight from the madelinetosh website, and cropped them just to give an idea of colors. I apologise if this offends the people there, and if they e-mail me telling me I'm a horrible yarn-picture-stealer and threated to sue, I'll surely take them down posthaste.

I refuse to confess that this color choice has anything to do with Harry Potter. Okay, okay... truth be told, I'm not by any means the biggest Potter Geek, but I like the series  first five books pretty well, and enjoy the world Rowling created, even if I don't think her writing is all that and a big bag of chips. Since I probably need something in my wardrobe that is not green, I went with the closest facsimilies of dark blue and bronze that I could find in yarn format. While I'm sure other people could do better, others would complain that I'm using the book colors instead of the movies' blue and silver, and still others would just complain for the sake of complaining, this is what I decided. It works for me. Plus, all Potter-y aside, I think they're gorgeous colors and work well together. Now we'll just see if I can knit them into a shawl in under a month while dealing with school and my fountain pen shawl at the same time.

Hah!

This is me, procrastinating

So this is what I've been doing the last few evenings instead of homework. It's not that I don't like school, and don't obsess over my grades... it's just that I'm really tired of it all right now. Sign Language Interpreter training is full of the drama, and has the craziest summer term I've ever even heard of. I shall stop whining now, and speak of the knitting.

I've finished three and a half repeats of the body chart, and it's going quite well. That is, if you don't count the total of about two full rows that I've had to tink back, a few stitches at a time.

This is actually the first time I've ever seriously knit lace (There's been lacy patterns on socks, but it's definitely not the same.) and I'm learning a lot. Namely, the fact that I do not know jack. I had to learn how to read a lace chart, with particular attention to the fact that if I don't know what the big red circled parts of the chart mean, maybe I should find out before jumping in with both feet.

I'm quite liking the pattern. It looks a little like the cat's dinner, but I understand that's normal for a lace shawl. I'm also seeing the potential for how it will look after being finished and blocked. I think it's going to work quite well. I'm sure the picture looks like a mess, but I think it's going pretty well.

The dreaded nupps aren't even causing me any trouble. Perhaps I'll come back and post more information on how I'm doing them, since they seem to be a major issue for some people.

Finally, this project has inspired me to go out and spend some money on something I thought I was finished buying: stitch markers. I've been using a variety of things on this project; the safety pin style markers, plain metal jump rings, jump rings with a bead glued over the join, and snagless stitch markers. I have determined that the last of these items is that thing I didn't realize I desperately needed more of. The safety pins are big and awkward in lace, the jump rings catch constantly on the yarn, and even the beaded rings are just a little awkward to move from one needle to the other. The snagless rings? None of these problems, or any others that I've had. So off I went tonight to make another purchase from Seeking Sanity on Etsy. The ones I already have from her are amazing, and owning more will make this project easier.

On one last related note: No, I'm not getting anything for free, have no association with anyone I've ever linked on this blog, and am not being paid by anyone, for anything. It'd be nice, but it's not gonna happen.

It's die, with yarn at the end.

Okay, so I keep reading about knitters going on what they call a yarn diet. This basically appears to mean that they have more yarn than any person could ever knit up in a complete lifetime, so they've decided to stop buying more to throw on the pile. Or you know, slow down a little. For me, this could not be further from the case. Let me count my meager stash:
Sock yarn - 1800 grams
Laceweight - 200 grams
Dk - 500 grams
worsted - 450 grams

I confess, there's more on the way, but as of now, that's it. Not too impressive, right?

On the other hand, in the "me" department, well, let's just say that my cup runneth over. So I have opted instead to go on a Yarn! diet. Which for me, will mean that every week I succeed in losing one or more pounds, I will buy myself more yarn, preferably in an amount commensurate with the poundage lost. The day of truth will be Sunday, because as anyone unfortunate enough to find this blog will quickly realize, it is my unholy day day off.