I never get tired of this

I never fail to be amazed by the power of blocking. Here we have a recently completed vest for CIC, fresh off the needles:

As you can see, it is a puckery blob. Not something you would actually want to give to anybody, or wear. But, after a little swish in some cool water, and a nice lie-down in the spare bedroom (off limits to all feline types), we have this:

Why, lookee there, it's a vest! I know, little things amuse little minds. :p

Meanwhile, I finished up the matching toes for the latest CIC socks (raveling and reknitting the first toe wasn't bad once I made up my mind to do it), and started on another pair.


The lavender and purple yarn is Dale Baby Ull, sent to me by Shelly Kang when her house was in the process of being buried under sock yarn. These weren't quite full skeins; not wanting to have a repeat of the latest toe incident, I weighed the yarn, then carefully calculated how much yardage that should be. My calculations show that I should have plenty for a small pair. Plenty. I keep reminding myself of that fact as I watch the remaining yarn dwindle. Plenty. Worrying won't make the yarn last longer. Plenty. I think I have one of those "once bitten, twice shy" vibes going. I just keep repeating to myself: plenty.

Workin' hard

Here's what I've been doing at work today; a little knitting, a little reading, a little surfing. What's that you ask? What about work? Oh, there's no actual work for me to do. But the powers that be decided they want an IT person in the office on the weekends just in case there's a problem somewhere. *Sigh* I won't bore you with all the reasons why this is stupid, just take it from me that every other weekend I'm going to spend 8 hours in the office twiddling my thumbs. Oh, and working on the search for a new job.

On to more important matters--what about the sock? The overwhelming majority agreed that I needed to finish my CIC sock in a contrasting yarn, and ravel & reknit the other sock to match. Thank you to all who responded to my plea, both here & elsewhere; you helped me do what I really knew I needed to do, but was trying to avoid. I decided against the purple yarn I originally thought to use; it overwhelmed the purple in the sock and made it look muddy. I finally decided on this steely blue yarn, which I think coordinates nicely.

It's getting close to lunchtime, and I'm wondering how much green beer and revelry I'm going to run into in my search for a meal. The weather's turned cold again, which may be in my favor. I'm off to try my luck; if I don't make it back, I hereby bequeath my stash to the CIC-knit group. :)

Uh Oh

I just started the toe on my second sock in this pair for CIC, and I've run out of yarn. I searched through the stash, looking for something to finish the toe with.

Here's what I found. The socks are made with hand-dyed Lion Fisherman's Wool. On the left are two little bits of a different, but similar yarn; one is pink & purple, the other purple & blue. I don't think I'm up to doing alternating rows with the two different skeins, so I'd have a toe that was missing one color. I think that would bother me too much.

On the right is a skein of Lopi Light in the same colorway. The colors are pretty close, but Lopi is shinier than the Lion Wool, so I think the change would be noticeable, but not glaringly.

My third choice is to finish up with a solid color (I have plenty of purple lying about), unravel the toe of the first sock, and knit it to match.

I'm having a devil of a time deciding what to do, so I've relegated this to the spare bedroom while I work on another pair. Input would be greatly appreciated!

Procrastinating

I can't blog from home at the moment; my firewall is blocking the blogger login. I wonder what blogger is doing that it looks like an intrusion attempt? So, until I find the time to correct the problem, I'll have to blog in stolen moments @ work.

Most of my joint pain is gone, just a little lingering here and there. Donna asked what my dentist gave me that caused joint pain; tetracycline, of all things! It actually goes by another name, which I've forgotten, but the dentist told me it was a low dose of tetracycline used to treat gum disease. I didn't even bother to read the info that the pharmacy provided with it, since I've taken tetracycline before. That'll teach me!

I still haven't put my vest together. All the pieces are done, and the buttons are bought. I'm finding it much harder to find time to sit down and sew up the seams than I expected. Not procrastinating, exactly, but not far from it. I just never seem to have a block of quiet time when I can sit down with the instructions in front of me, and just focus on one thing. My birthday is next week, and I'm taking the day off, so maybe this will be my b-day present to myself.

In the meantime, I've been working on finishing up a pair of socks & a vest for CIC, with as little purling as possible. Hope to have some pics to show off soon. And I've been devouring all I can find about seamless sweaters, since I'm eager to try one. Have been visiting this blog almost daily; so many beautiful projects to admire! EZ never fails to amaze me.