So very quickly, while I’m online:

My Mondo Cable Cardigan – it’s not a great picture, I want to go to the park for a little photoshoot, but I have too much work to get done. This weekend, maybe. Can I just say that I absolutely totally 110% adore this sweater!! It’s so comfortable, and warm, and well, perfect. I’ll be wearing it a lot, I can tell. My idea to use the shawl pin didn’t work, though, so I’ll be doing some button (and giant snap) shopping as soon as I can.

The yarn. Madelinetosh’s tosh merino DK, in colorway Byzantine. The colors are deeper and richer than this photo suggests – I just haven’t had time to try to capture it yet. But you can see that it’s going to be gorgeous in the Eve’s Rib Shrug (which I’m calling Eve Shrugged, in honor of my teenage fandom of Atlas Shrugged, which I thankfully outgrew). This yarn is … well, it leaves me without words.

My handknit sweaters……so far. I’ll be adding to this mini-stack, and I thank the sweater knitters among you who tolerate my silliness over something that is old hat to you. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s like being a labor & delivery nurse; even though you’ve done it many, many times, each time is still magical. Anyway, thanks for indulging my excitement.

I’m in a new round of new authors writing me enthusiastically about their manuscripts; for some reason, it seems to come in waves. When they hear the price, many decide to forego editing, but enough seem to be OK with it so that’s great for me. Off to work – happy last day of summer, y’all.

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Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone
And another one gone
Another one bites the dust
Hey, I’m gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust

I finished my Mondo Cable Cardigan y’all! It’s soaking right now, so it’ll be a little while before I have my F.O. pictures, but I’m telling you, it’s a beautiful sweater. The madelinetosh merino is thick and lofty and will probably pill like mad, but I don’t care. When I had to bind off the collar (1×1 ribbing), I started with a regular old bind-off but it was wavy and hideous so (being the newly mature knitter that I am) I ripped it out and investigated my options.

Tubular bind-off seemed like the best approach, but all the tutorials I found were confusing. I started, got several stitches in, and ripped it out. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Minor despair started to build. Then I found this great little video and *presto changeo* it was easy and obvious. And my bindoff is amazing, if I do say so. You’ll see, I’ll be sure to point it out in the inevitable pictures.

“Video tutorial courtesy of Liat Gat of KNITFreedom.blogspot.com, the site that teaches people how to knit over the Internet using high-resolution video e-books.”

So two sweaters are done, and I’m really ready to get my new yarn this week to start the Eve’s Ribs Shrug project. Byzantine, y’all. Byzantine.

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This work is of the type that causes (and requires) complete immersion. If I were just doing proofreading, I could pick it up and put it down. But I have to hold the whole novel in my mind, see redundancies, sections that would better fit elsewhere in the novel, gaps, inconsistencies, etc. Plus, I get in a kind of flow with it; I’ll open the file and start editing, and the next thing I know it’s 8 hours later and I haven’t stopped to pee or eat or anything. Poof! Eight hours have passed.

I’m also teaching stats, and let’s be honest. None of the students love stats the way I do. They’re required to take it, some are very smart but some are incredibly stupid. That’s right, I said it. Some are mushy-minded people who seem to have been failed by the educational system. But anyway – also teaching stats. And also needing to do 6 research projects for the publishing house I worked for.

So when’s a girl to knit? I also worry about all the hours doing very finely-focused computer work (on a laptop with a cramped keyboard) and getting carpal tunnel. That would be just horrible. At the end of these very long days, I still need to eat dinner and straighten up, and the day is done. Last week I didn’t sleep one minute Tuesday night (thank you stupid waitress who clearly gave me full-caf instead of decaf, even though I emphasized and asked again twice before drinking it), and Thursday night I slept 2 hours.

So here is the current state of my WIPs:

there it is.

First up, the one that’s been sitting in my bag the longest: Mondo Cable Cardigan, with madelinetosh merino, in Graphite.

near the end of sleeve 1, body finished.

look at the beauty of the yarn

I realized some of my skeins were a drastically different color – blue black instead of charcoal gray – and it put a hitch in my gitalong. Thanks to ravelers, I was able to score a couple of skeins that matched better, but I’ve never recovered my mojo on this one. But it really is beautiful, and softer than a baby angel fairy’s bottom.

coming along - but not too quickly. FUN pattern to knit!

This is blanket-sized: It’s the Totally Autumn pattern by Anne Hanson, and it’s such fun to knit! The pattern is cool, and it remains so engaging as I work on it. The Cascade 220 is hard, though, and my index fingers starts to feel raw after a while, as the yarn runs over it. It’s never as hard as I remember it, so whenever I do pick it up to work on it, I’m always surprised. Still, I’ve got a long way to go on that one.

Peasy - after I finish the current ball, I'll be ready to do the collar and button band!! WOO-HOO!!

Peasy, of course, though I couldn’t photograph the color accurately today, for some reason. You’ve seen it so many times on my blog, so you know the color is a rich avocado. I’m getting there, and cannot wait to wear it at Rhinebeck. One good thing that’s come about as a result of this sweater: I don’t hate the purl row as much as I used to. The collar and button band are simple, and not very wide, so I really am getting near the end with this one. Just one more ball of Rowan Felted Tweed.

this one is suffering from no commute time

The Sockhead Hat, in a Regia yarn that I’m not all that crazy about but it was a gift so I love it for that reason. This one stays in my project bag in my purse, and whenever I’m in the subway I feverishly work as much as I can, but I’m only in the subway once a week now.

I don't know; I'm not feeling it. The yarn is just so special - may just frog this.

This snowflake hat pattern is fun to work, and of course the yarn nearly makes me cry, it’s so soft and lofty and such gorgeous colors too. I suspect I really want something different for the yarn, something I might wear against my skin – a little shawl or something, to wrap near my neck. I do suspect I’ll frog this.

close to the toe on sock #1

And my socks, out of Tosh Sport (colorway tweed – this photograph does capture the color pretty well, which I think should be called bronze. But they didn’t ask me.)

the beginnings of bag #1

And a new project I cast on yesterday – the Monteagle bag, using the Louet Euroflax yarn string yarn I recently got from Paradise Fibers. I’ll be making two of these, if I can tolerate it. The linen is kind of hard to work with, especially with these tricky stitches (the next one of which I cannot begin to figure out: “*Knit into the back of the second stitch with a double wrap, but do not transfer to the right needle; knit the first and second stitches together through the back loops with a double wrap and transfer both stitches to the right needle; repeat from * around on each following pair of stitches.”) WHA??? And the linen wants to be straight and hard and pop off the needle mid-stitch.

For now, though, many other less-pleasant tasks are calling my name. Shut up you less-pleasant tasks! I’d rather be knitting.

Colossus of Rhodes

I guess I fall on the process side of the process/product divide (here’s an aside for any reader who isn’t a knitter: we are process knitters if it’s really the process we enjoy [and some of us are even pre-process knitters], otherwise we’re just after the end result). Of course I also adore the products, and love having my handmade work as part of my daily life. I guess I’m like the Colossus of Rhodes, straddling the harbor – one foot firmly planted in the process, the other firmly adoring the product.

ANYWAY. Geez, I get off track so easily. When I started composing the post in my head, I thought I’d open with the first lines of The Odyssey, about asking the muse to sing. I must be in some Classics/Ancient Greek head today.

ANYWAY. Good grief. OK, to my point. I am languishing in stockinette wasteland. (oh yeah – this is why I brought up process knitting. I do love the process, but I’m going really bored with stockinette! sorry for rambling…) I’m nearly finished with Peasy‘s 2nd sleeve, and have been randomly working body rows when the round-and-round-and-round of the sleeve starts to be too hypnotic. Yay! An alternating purl row! Variety! (sidebar note: I once had a knitting blog called I Hate the Purl Row but decided that was a little too harsh.)

ANYWAY. So if I’m tired of Peasy, I can work on …… my Mondo Cable cardigan. Also at the sleeves, and also all stockinette. OK, so that’s wearing a little thin and boring? How about my subway knitting……oh yeah. Stockinette hat, knit in the round.

So one project is sock yarn, and not all that soft and lovely a sock yarn either. One project is madelinetosh merino, o so soft and lovely. And the other is Rowan Felted Tweed – scratchy and rustic. I can focus on the yarns to experience some variety, but I think I’m coming down with a case of startitis. I suspect I’ve been infected by

don't you want to rub them against your cheek? 70% baby alpaca, 30% merino

Cascade Eco Duo. Two skeins – hazelnut and vanilla. Only 197 yards each, aran weight. Oh y’all….they’re so soft it’s like lying down in a field of puppies. Or bunnies. And having fairies kiss your cheeks, while dusting your nose with marshmallows.

SEE?! See how they’ve hypnotized me! The problem is that I need to make something with them, and now….but do I use them both, in some stripey scheme? Or make something precious with one of them – there’s the 198 Yards of Heaven shawl (dang, I have 197 ). But I don’t want to just pick something, anything, just because it’ll work with the yarn.

aaaaaargh!!!!!!!! The paralysis of a perfect yarn. All advice and recommendations welcomed.

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This line came to mind this morning when I saw the following article in the NYTimes:

we're perfect

Yep – that’s what it says. More city preschoolers are perfect. Test scores show. To me, that suggests that the tests are imperfect, or imperfect for assessing what they need to assess. Had I seen those data, I’d have written an article pointing out the problems with the test. But New Yorkers – you know how they are – instead say that we’re just perfect.

As a Texan, I really get that, and it’s one thing I find dear about New Yorkers. Well, dear and really irritating. Just like people get irritated (or worse) with Texans for their/our grandiose views of themselves (ourselves). NYers and Texans should either get over ourselves, or at least keep our mouths shut a little more often.

And look at this – what do we see in my gigantic knitting bag next to my place on the couch:

peasy and mondo, mixing it up together in the bag

That’s my Peasy sweater (I’m knitting a sleeve right now) and my Mondo Cable Cardigan (also on a sleeve). Two sweaters! But lost in sleeveland, the seemingly endless land of stockinette tubes. Yesterday I did a little Peasy sleeve knitting, then a little Mondo sleeve knitting, then back to Peasy. It didn’t feel like too much of a break, switching to the other. I don’t have a purse knitting project going right now, and I keep thinking I ought to cast on something small and quickly-finishable, but then I know I’d just do that instead of sleeves, and the sleeve-knitting elf hasn’t found my apartment yet so if it’s going to be done, I’ll have to do it.

Everything there is to do in this world has a bit that’s less fun than the others. I read an article by Jane Patrick in one of the first issues of Handwoven, where she talked about how much she hated sleying the reed (I think that was the detail). Then she realized that’s a necessary task, she’s always going to have to do it when she weaves, so she tried to reorient herself to the idea. That happened to me when I took my intro stats course as an undergrad – at first I hated it, but I realized it would be my essential tool so I found another way to think about it, and now I adore stats. So my mission is to find another way to conceptualize the endlessness of sleeves.

Happy Thursday, y’all.

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So what’s on the needles? There’s one I can’t reveal here, the wedding shawl, but here we go:

2nd Kai-Mei, ready to work the heel

My Kai-Mei socks – I’ve been sneaking little wearings of the finished sock because it’s so dang wonderful. Madelinetosh sock, in crow – feels kind of hard when you’re knitting it, but as the fabric flows from the needles, it’s softer than you think it’ll be. And when you soak it and block it? Really so nice. The pattern is clever and fun to knit, but when I was knitting the first sock I was just going on faith (Cookie A faith) because I couldn’t see how it was going to work. I highly recommend the pattern and the yarn.

OK, next?

oh, my dearly beloved Ishbel, languishing....

I do love this Ishbel, knit with madelinetosh lace, in lettuce. It’ll be my 3rd (why do I think “she’ll be my third”?), and the pattern is fun and the color is great and I love the whole deal but it’s been set aside for so long that I struggle to pick it up again. Once I finish the wedding shawl I’ll return to this because it’s going to be fantastic.

Next?

what is wrong with me?!

Stop it, me! Stop! Why did I start this one?! I had plenty to work on, the last thing I needed to do was to start another project, but I did. This is Baktus, and I got about 1/3 of the way through it with Noro Silk Garden Sock (pictured above, the yarn cake) when I decided that I’d rather alternate the Noro with a black yarn. So even though I had no business starting this one in the first place, I frogged it and started over, alternating it with a KnitPicks Essential Kettle Dyed, in soot. [Lori, do not start another project!!]

such a 3-D blankie!

Totally Autumn, which I’m knitting with Cascade 220 Heather in chocolate, so it’ll be more like a blanket. The photo represents the length I get from one skein; since we want it to be ~6 feet in length, I’ll need 7 skeins and of course I’d bought 6. Luckily the sale is still on at Webs, so I bought additional skeins.

Next?

hanging my mondo head in shame and denial

This project, the Mondo Cardigan in madelinetosh merino (graphite) has been so painful. I had enough yarn to complete the sweater, but I foolishly didn’t look at all the skeins before I started. One of the lovely things about madelinetosh yarns is the variability in color, but this time it bit me in the butt. When I got to this point on the first sleeve, I noticed that my last two skeins were quite obviously blue. That would not work. I couldn’t find any graphite in any of the online stores, so (to use Yarn Harlot’s phrase) I threw up the Bat Signal in the rav forums, pleading and begging. Very kind raveler Glennae offered to sell me two of her skeins, which looked like a match to mine, but that would leave her with an insufficient amount of yarn to knit a sweater – the reason she bought it. I didn’t want to leave her in that spot, so I basically just went into denial and ignored the problem. Then, last weekend, I “randomly” decided to look through ravelers’ stashes to see if anyone had any of this yarn, and found Jenny – boopersin on ravelry. Jenny, O Jenny, my new BFF and savior. I wrote her asking if she’d sell, told her my sob story, and she quickly agreed. Isn’t she wonderful? Friend her immediately if you’re on rav, she’s a keeper (and Glennae too, if you don’t know her yet). So Jenny’s two skeins are winging (or brown trucking) their way to me, which means I’ll be able to finish my Mondo Cardigan. Whew.

Next?

froth and beads

Is this technically “on the needles,” given the fact that I’ve obviously pulled out the needles? Apparently not. It’s gorgeous. It’s Liquid Silver, by Rosemary Hill, with Elann Silken Kydd, a luscious and halo-ey mohair and silk blend, with glass beads. I started knitting it when I first returned to knitting a couple of years ago, and honestly, it was beyond my beginner’s skills. I struggled with the very thin yarn on the very slippery needles, with nothing on hand to thread the beads onto the yarn. So I got this far and then put it away. Apparently at some point I pulled the needles out – to use them for another project, probably? – but I don’t remember doing that. The pattern would be very easy for me now, so I hope to frog this and just start over with the same pattern. After all, I have the beads.

I know this is supposed to be a fearless inventory, but I’m not being fully honest here. There’s a sweater in progress, halfway up the back but I don’t like it so I’ll frog it and reuse the yarn, and a Christmas stocking for one of my girls, just begun and set aside.

There. Now I’ve been really fearless, I’ve confessed my excess. I feel much better. And I just noticed how many of my projects are made with madelinetosh yarn. I love her.