Well, well, well.

Hello there.

A new account on Ravelry (I'm fleurdiabolique, if you're over there) has prompted me to think that maybe I should start trying to update the blog again. Sorry for the long absence. Life has eaten my free time. I am currently in a Master's degree program in English, which means I can have as much as 800 pages of reading in a week, and that's on top of now having to do things like cook and clean for myself (wooo apartment living) and having an increasingly active social/extracurricular life.

That doesn't mean that the knitting hasn't been moving along, however. :)

I've started doing much more knitting in my spare time. Since I wrote last, I've almost completed Tasha. All of the knitting is done; I've sewn a backing on the strap, and have seamed the cabled bits to the sides. So a bit more seaming, another block, adding a lining... and I'll have an official knitted knitting bag! (Pictures hopefully to come, but I make no guarantees; it's one thing to get myself to post regularly and quite another to actually dig out the camera and upload photos.)

I have also, as a side project/break from seaming, knitted Tudora, using the same yarn as I did for the Snakes and Ladders scarf. Right now it's waiting to be blocked and to have the button sewn on. Again, hopefully there will be pictures... but don't hold your breath.

And finally, as yesterday was my birthday and I will soon be in need of a new project, I went down to a LYS I'd never visited before (Commuknitty in San Jose, and it was AWESOME) and picked up a GORGEOUS skein of variegated-purple handpainted laceweight silk with which to make Juno Regina. It'll be my first time working with charts! We'll see if I need to write them out or not...

...aaand I think that's all the news for now. (As though that's not plenty!) Hopefully this won't be a one-time post before a lot more silence...

Is my ruler growing and shrinking?

Measured today again and, having not done any knitting or ripping, got something a bit under 9". ... so apparently my knitting is being done in an alternate dimension, and also being ripped in an alternate dimension.

Going on a two-day trip to Nantucket with the family tomorrow. Hopefully I can finish the sides and get started on the cable sections on the ferry/in the car/while bumming around various places... hopefully I will also get to visit at least one of the two yarn stores that Google tells me are on the island. (Hopefully I will restrain myself from making major purchases in said stores, being a poor semi-grad student who has plenty of yarn already...)

Also -- remember that scarf from waaaaay back when? The one I was knitting in, like, December? I finally started threading twine (best thing I have) up the sides so that I can block it. I have my own apartment now and my roomate has yet to show up (it's school housing, so I theoretically may not have a roomate), so I should have plenty of space to block it, too. It's kind of boring, though, so it's going relatively slowly.

Yeah, yeah...

Haven't been knitting much (end-of-quarter rush equals both no time and using my hands too much to make knitting a good choice for the breaks I get). I did get two rows done yesterday at Class Day, and somewhere between 2 and 4 (can't remember how many, heh) today at graduation. It's 9" long!!!!! Just another half inch, and then something more interesting to knit...

I've managed a slightly modified technique that seems to take some of the work off of my right wrist, enough to make it more comfortable. Rather than "picking" the yarn with the right-hand needle, I use my left index finger to wrap the yarn around the needle. Of course, this will end up giving me a RSI in my left hand... heh.

Augh.

Knit another couple of rows this week. Am unable to measure at the moment, as I don't have a ruler. But I might have to stop again... arm is really acting up again. So probably no updates for a while, once more. Sigh. Sorry, folks... I know this must be just about the boringest knit blog ever.

My knitting is being done in an alternative dimension!

Two rows since I last posted. It's 7 3/4" long. ...and two rows did NOT add 3/4"... I don't know where all of that length came from, but I'm not going to complain.

One and three-quarter inches left... one and three-quarter inches left... one and three-quarter inches left...

Hand is hurting more. I think it's lack of rest plus tennis plus knitting.

Slow and steady...

I've knit a row or two at each weekly meeting of the writing group in which I participate, but it still hurts me so that's been about it. Right now the sides are 7" long, so I've knit 1/4" in two weeks... just FOUR MONTHS left to go at this rate... argh.

Eeeeensy bit of progress...

Knit about three rows at a writing group meeting. It didn't bother my hand too much at the time, but it was pretty stiff the next day. So, progress.

The work is currently about 6 3/4" long. At some point maybe I'll actually take a picture for you, heh... Anyway, so in 11 weeks I've knit one inch. I guess technically an inch in three weeks, since between January 28 and March 25 I didn't do any knitting. (My God, almost two months... how did I survive? ;) )

Back on the horse.

I knit ONE ROW today! :)

Wrist problems have not been fully solved -- it was killing me when I had to do a ton of typing during finals week (worse even though I'd stopped fencing) -- but I'm still working on stretching and am going to try to take it slowly. Maybe a few rows, tops, scattered throughout the day.

Also, there was totally a knitter sitting next to me on one of my planes yesterday! She was making a sweater out of this gorgeous, slightly variegated red yarn. It looked totally edible.

Stockinette is boring.

Sorry for no post last week. I was at Notre Dame, fencing. Since it's fencing season, posting may be a little sporadic. I'll tell you now that I probably won't post next week, since I'll be returning from another fencing trip then.

Tasha continues. I'm petrified that my gauge is changing and I'm not noticing, especially since I hadn't knit for like a week and a half before I picked it up again for a few rows last night (no time/energy due to fencing trip, and I was worried about my hand/wrist -- but I'll talk more about that in a moment). The sides are currently about 5 3/4" (OMG I'M PAST THE HALFWAY POINT THANK GOD) -- so in the past two weeks I've actually knit about 3 1/4"... not bad... but I wonder when I got it all done? *sigh* only... lessee... 3 3/4" left. Woooo.

Have I mentioned that stockinette is boring?

In other news, I'm vaguely worried that I'm giving myself a repetitive stress injury, what with fencing plus knitting plus computer plus writing. My wrist/base of thumb/forearm have been kinda sore and stiff or tense for the past two weeks... I got some tension/slight occasional pain in my forearm during knitting starting last fall but it wasn't terrible. This isn't terrible either, but it's more noticeable and much more persistent. Lucky me, I had an appointment with the athletic trainer for tomorrow anyway (bum knee, which funnily enough has been basically fine for the last few months)... I'll ask him about it then (and pray to God that I just pulled something).

New year, new project

Sorry for no update last week. I flew back to school on the 7th and things were kind of too crazy to update.

I finished the scarf! Only thing I have to do is block it... problem is, I don't have pins and I'm not wholly sure I have space here to do it. (Come to think of it, I'm certainly lacking something to help make sure that I block the edges straight.) It may languish till spring break.

With the scarf finished, I've started work on Tasha. I actually had quite an adventure when I was preparing to knit my swatch. Scroll down a bit and take a look at the picture I uploaded of the 5 skeins of yarn for this project. I thought that they really were skeins, all ready to knit from, but I planned to roll them into balls anyway.

Turns out they're hanks. Not only are they hanks, they're folded in quarters, and the manufacturer didn't leave any scrap yarn tied around them at any point to ensure they stayed untangle.

Need I say that my first attempt to deal with one of these was a disaster?

To make things worse, I started doing it in the car on the way to visit my great-aunt and great-uncle, who live about 2 hours away. Maybe 5 minutes in, I tore the paper wrapping away. One "oops," and then another, quickly followed... and I spent the entire ride trying to untangle the mess, mostly working on a single knot and not getting more than a tenth of the way through. I was literally crying by the time we got to our destination. It was miserable. Of course, that meant that my mom and dad confiscated the yarn and proceeded to work on it themselves to spare me further trouble. Which was probably actually a good thing, for a while. We finally got it all untangled, balled up, and set to go about halfway through the visit, at which point I started in on the swatch I'd planned on being nearly done with by the end of the day.

The next time I had to wind a ball, I was much, much more careful. And wonderfully enough, it went just fine. Even though I did it on an airplane, with a wall on one side and a guy on the other. And I didn't even bang him with my elbow that much!

The swatch is done, but not washed (this yarn may shrink with washing, so I have to do that), and I've started in on the bag itself. I chose to begin with the sides because a) washed gauge/shrinkage doesn't matter too much with these (all other pieces can be knit to fit whatever size they come out); b) other than the strap, they're probably going to use up the most yarn, so I want to start with full balls for them; and c) I was apparently feeling masochistic (two 9.5" squares of plain stockinette, anyone?). I am knitting both sides at once on a single circular needle because I don't trust my gauge to stay consistent. That means dealing with two balls of yarn at once -- a bit of a pain, but I quickly learned to rubber-band them so that they don't go unravelling and rolling around, and I manage all right.

Here's a picture of how the sides look so far:



They are about 2 1/2" long. No clue how many rows I've done; I haven't been keeping track, since these are to be knit to length.

I don't know how quickly the bag is going to progress, since I don't think I'll have much knitting time this quarter. I don't have lecture classes, and I'm not sure if knitting group will meet (no one's written me back yet) so it might just be an hour or so per week at my Dickens reading group, plus a little down time (ha ha ha) here and there. We'll see.

In other news, my grandma sent me yarn! With the promise of more to come, if I've started knitting with wool and like it (what she sent me was mostly acrylic or acrylic/wool blends). She's so funny. When she saw me knitting once, she got a huge kick out of it. The scarf I finished is going to her when it's blocked.

...anything else? Naw, I think that's it. Expect short posts for the next few months, barring some huge disaster... I have seven more inches of stockinette, and I don't think it's going to fly by.