Meh.

It really really has been one of Those Weeks. Poor little Lola-Frog spent five days in hospital over these last two weeks with pneumonia. It just about broke my heart, seeing her all hooked up to the IV antibiotics and oxygen. But she's home now, much stronger and eating better. She's almost back to her usual smiley, giggly little self.And now for the knitting?

Firstly, all the time spent sitting with Lola-Frog in the hospital made for ample knitting time, particularly to catch up on knitting the Sea Wool Scarf which was intended for Mum's birthday... last Wednesday. So, after one complete frogging and several tinked rows, I found that I'd done somethin' stupid with the 'feather and fan' rows, creating wobbly waves that increased rather exponentially...

... so I was left with wobbly-wave-ruffles.After finally casting off and realising what had happened, I did a totally non Knitter-with-a-capital-K thing. I looked at it and held it up. I threw it across my own shoulders and pulled it round my neck. I turned it around and held it across my neck and chest, and said:

"Meh."

I was so over the whole thing that I think I conned myself into thinking 'Hey, it's still pretty, it still looks kinda cool... sorta free-formed and avant-garde. Yeah, avant-garde, I like that...'. I'm about to sew some green glass beads onto the corners, where I've also added the requisite tassels. More photos to come on completion.

Having upheld my end of the bargain in casting off the scarf successfully (hey, I said I'd get it cast off, not finished!), I decided to open my package from Interweave...I'm very impressed so far. I'm trying to read both books at the same time, and I've already watched the beginning of the DVD three times over. Once to get an idea of what's going on, once to try to commit it to memory, and a third time whilst actually having a crack on the spinning wheel. Excellent, excellent stuff - the books are well-written with lots of useful information and clear photos that really help me to make sense of what's being said. I'm learning lots, which for me is a pretty big deal!

Frenzied mutterings

This damnable scarf is killing me.

I have four (count 'em, four) other things I want and need to get started on, and each row of this scarf is taking longer and longer each time. This may be due to the four-stitch increase on each row, but I don't like to presume anything.

Oh, the agony!

This arrived yesterday:And I know what's in it, too - the books and DVD on spinning that I ordered from Interweave as a bit of a birthday present to myself. Sadly, I have restricted myself from opening and devouring the contents until this is finished:
It's Mum's Sea Wool Scarf, which I have to have finished for Wednesday. Although, maybe I should try to get it done for Tuesday so it can be blocked. Aack! Now I've got even less time.

This one has been unnecessarily frustrating; I've frogged it once and restarted after coming into stitch count issues that I couldn't resolve through a few extra K2TOGs, and I've also found I've had to tink several rows when I've not been paying attention. All I can say is, I hope I can finish it unscathed before Mum's birthday!

Knitting queue overload!

I can't believe I'm contemplating saying this, but I have a feeling I may be adding too many new projects to a queue that I'm not going through at the same rate.

But that's normal, right? Right? Maybe that's what I just cheerfully refer to as 'my stash', and keep merrily knitting at the rate that I'm comfortable with. Yeah, that's what I'll do. Sorry to disturb y'all!

The most recent addition (and a worthy one I'm sure anyone would agree) is the recently made available "Baby Mine" cardigan designed by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. It's available through Blue Moon Fibre Arts, for the extremely decent price of $6.50. I ordered mine a couple of nights ago, along with two skeins of Socks That Rock Mediumweight (you only need one to make the newborn and six-month sizes, but I wanted to be absolutely certain I'd have enough, just in case) in the colourway, 'Pebbles'. I wanted colours that would suit either a boy or a girl, since (a) we're only going to find out the sex the traditional way - when it comes out! and (b) I'm just not fast enough to knit both a "Baby Mine" and a "Baby Yours" in both pink and blue, just in case.

I've been hoping to knit up a storm during this pregnancy so that Little One would arrive home to at least a couple of completed garments, but I'm at the twenty-week (halfway there) mark, and seem to be still knitting lace scarves for myself!

On the needles right now (she said, clearly avoiding any thought of the WIP Drape Cardigan in a bag in the stash cupboard) is a skein of Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn that I picked up at Tapestry Craft in Sydney, on Pete's and my Anniversary weekend away last month. I'm enjoying the pattern, too - enough to look pretty and a little complicated (to the untrained eye, at least), but simple enough so I can knit it in front of the telly of an evening without too much tinking and cursing.

The colours are so unusual. I love the big slash of hot pink in the middle of all the greens best of all, I think. Here we are so far:And, in other knitting-related news:

Several months ago, I was hopping around, looking at other people's knitting blogs, and came upon "Runcible Spoon", where Andrea's most current post talked about a 'Paying it Forward Exchange'. This is a copy of what she had linked in originally, describing the whole concept...

"I like listening to the Changeling's Knit and Stitch podcast, and when I heard she was looking for someone to participate in an exchange, I checked it out. When I saw the terms of the exchange, I put my hand up straight away to participate.

You can participate, too! The conditions are as follows:

The Pay It Forward Exchange is based of the concept of the movie Pay it Forward where acts or deeds of kindness are done without expecting something in return, just passing it on, with hope that the recipients of the acts of kindness are passed on.

So here's how it works. I will make and send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment to this post on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I do not know what that gift will be yet, and it won't be sent this month, probably not next month, but it will be sent (within 6 months) and that's a promise! What YOU have to do in return, then, is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog. I will now Pay It Forward to you THREE, I wonder who you will be?! Please, be a PIF. You will enjoy it just as much as we do! And, remember— you have 6 months to get your gifts done!

So let me know if you would like to participate, and I will create something just for you within six months from the time of your comment. In turn, you will need to make the offer to three other people. Pretty simple, eh? I look forward to making whatever it is for whoever you are."

So, on the off chance that I may not have left it too late, I was the first to respond on Andrea's comments page... and wondered what might happen next.

Well, I was very pleasantly surprised to receive an email from Andrea earlier this week, saying that her Pay it Forward gift to me is almost ready! It's terribly exciting, and means that I need to be getting ready to make a similar announcement... in the vague hopes that I do get a response, of course...

Watch this space.

Fortuitous weather

WonderBoy put up with a trip to the RTA today so I could renew my license, as well as our grocery shopping (which he has come to view with distaste, usually saying "No shopping, Mummy?") and a walk up to the butcher's, so we went to the park on the way home.

Did I say the park trip was for his benefit? Silly me.

While he enjoyed the slippery dip, over and over, I enjoyed close to an hour sitting in the sunshine, working on a little summer scarf.

I'm knitting it from leftover Rowan 'Linen Print' that I used to make a lace top last spring. I think it's been discontinued now, which is a shame 'cause it knits with a lovely drape, and it gets softer with every wash. Once it's done, I'm planning on adding a loopy sort of fringe, and I'm looking forward to teaming it this spring and summer with a crisp white shirt and jeans that have been mucked around with to accommodate my belly as Little One grows bigger!! Speaking of whom, since she or he is due in January (a bit hot for wool!) I ended up buying more Linen Print that I'm going to use in an attempt on an Elizabeth Zimmermann 'Baby Surprise Jacket' for him or her...

Here we are. I'm around or just over the halfway mark.I enjoyed a fabulous two nights away with Pete last week to see 'Phantom of the Opera' for our anniversary (it's been ten years since we met!), and took the opportunity to get over to Tapestry Craft on York Street, where I picked up thisskein of Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn. I've earmarked it for yet another lace scarf (I'm into those at the moment!), the pattern being the 'Fern Lace Scarf' by KnittingPixie (Ravelry link). I'm totally in love with the colours - I first caught sight of the lime, then the yellow-orange, and then had to look a little closer, where I saw *gasp! Oh, joy!* hot lolly-pink! I can't wait to get stuck into it and see how the colours work out.

On another topic, I am desperately waiting/trying to figure out if and when I might be able to get a hold of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's heart-meltingly gorgeous 'Baby Mine' pattern. I've just found the her blog entries for the 'Baby Yours' and 'Baby Mine' jumpers in July 2008, but for the life of me, I cannot link just the one entry! It's worth it. Go and have a look, trust me. I have a little bit of a feeling that Little One might be a wee girlie, and this is just the sort of thing I'd love to have knitted up and ready to wear.

It's a good thing I like wearing hats

... because I have created this weekend, a hat that would have to be titled one of two names:

The Biggest Ever Hat Intended for a Six-Month-Old

or

The Greatest Gauge Cock-Up the World May Ever Witness

I jest not. Our darling Little One is due to arrive in January, which I do admit is quite some time from now. Plenty of time for me to be knitting, calmly and in a planned manner, but 'planned' and 'knitting' are words that for me just don't really go together in the one sentence. I will 'plan to knit', so to speak, but I mean I will plan to knit... instead of doing the washing... while I supervise WonderBoy in the bath... on a trip to Sydney. I don't plan projects, projects tend to find me and demand to be placed at the top of my to-do list.

So, I grabbed a very colourful (not gender specific!), slubby single spun Adriafil 'Baba' from a yarn/tapestry/needlework place nearby, thinking if I knitted into a hat to fit a six-month old, but the time the weather had cooled to winter, Little One would be just the right size to gaze up at me adoringly from under its rolled woolly brim.

Ok, so far so good. I pulled out Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's "Knitting Rules" and had a geez at her recommendations for sizing. I even pulled WonderBoy's baby medical record book and checked to see roughly what size head he had at the age of six months. Now, I would like to make this clear from the very beginning - this is most certainly my fault. As much as I followed the Yarn Harlot's guidelines, I paid little to no attention to the enormously chunky gauge of the yarn I was working with. I mean, I did knit and measure the gauge, but I either didn't knit far enough before measuring or I cannot make a basic mathematical equation work.

I'd say 'a little from Column A, and a little from Column B'.

And here is what the mixture of stupidity, denial and stubbornness got me this afternoon:Part of me wants to rip it up and actually knit a hat for a six-month-old, but the larger part of me that is bored with the yarn and wants to knit something else is saying "Sod it, let's get a skein of Noro Silk Garden and have another crack at it later". You never know, I might end up with a hat for me made of Silk Garden.

Next up, my most recent pride and joy: my "Paris" scarf, knit from the most delicious skein of Hand Maiden wool and cashmere sock yarn...I was able to wear it up to Sydney, the way I'd planned, and I was so thrilled with the way it felt and draped. The colours have just striped and blended like a dream, and I really enjoyed the pattern as I worked it.

Oh, and as promised: another tale of hat woe... I knit this monstrosity for WonderBoy, thinking it would be good to whip up another winter hat for my huge-headed darling boy. Now, I really did research this one. I measured WonderBoy's head and worked on the largest size possible. All I can surmise is that I've knit it tighter than I should have, or possibly on needles slightly too small.

But here it is, on my darling WonderBoy, looking like one of those weird leather gridiron helmets that George Clooney wore in his film 'Leatherheads'...

And yet, he still looks so cute. The necklace-type business he has on there, for those who may be curious is the waistband from an old (clean) pair of my husband's boxers I had just cut up for cleaning cloths.

Maybe the hat isn't so weird after all.

Playing Detective...

I did a stupid, stupid thing... While I could have got this scarf finished in the last week, I have gone back to work, thus rendering me unable to maintain intelligent conversation, let alone knit lace of an evening. I just need to get back into the routine, I'm sure.

But in the last few days of the holidays, where I always end up cramming in way more than I should in an effort to have 'done something worthwhile' with my time off, I only managed the odd row or two and stupidly, stupidly left the scarf halfway through the the ten-row set (I usually go to the end and stop each time so I already know I'll be back at the start when I pick the knitting up again). On top of this, I've left the Post-It marking a row I had already completed, thus compounding the problem...

I've managed to sort it out, thankfully. I've tinked back a row to see whether the number of stitches had changed, and the began to tink the row before, to determine the pattern of stitches I had finished that row with... I'm hunched over the knitting, held backwards, muttering, "Right, so there's the K3 I've finished with... the one before it looks like a K3tog, but it can't be. No row has finished on that before... unless... a-ha! I thought so. It's a sl1-K2tog-psso! It's Row 7!!"

Ah, the triumph.

I tried last night, but I found it more important to focus on the screening of 'Jamie's Fowl Dinners'. I make a point of only buying free-range eggs, but this show really opened my eyes about just how crappy the life of a meat chook is before it's offed for our consumption. Crammed into overpopulated, shitty barns to eat and eat before being knocked off at the ripe old age of forty weeks old. They're bred to gain something like sixty grams a day, they can barely stand and walk; their bones just can't cope with the excessive weight. I'm certainly not saying we should go veggie (I tried it once and wussed out pretty quickly!), just that we should really try to find out where our chicken and eggs come from and trying to buy the best welfare bird or eggs we can afford. I'm a big Jamie fan anyway, but I think he's going above and beyond being just a chef; he's doing some good things in a lot of areas.

Back to the scarf.

Oh, and could anyone think why, when I spellchecked this post, it wanted me to change 'knitting' to 'antitank'?

Oh, this is pathetic!

Crikey, Moses. I can't believe it's been nearly a month since my last post - this is very, very slack behaviour on my part, and there really is no excuse for it!

There is so much going on right now. I've been stashing like mad, having procured a couple of lovely skeins of merino-cashmere that I've got earmarked for my very own 'Clapotis'; a couple of basic balls of a blue/brown 8ply 100% wool I picked up at my local chain craft store for a hat for WonderBoy, and three balls of a really nice cream-pink-green soy/wool spun into sorta chunky singles, bought at the same time as the WonderBoy yarn. And then there's the enormous ball of handspun I managed to get washed and dried nicely. The soy/wool has been cast on for another hat for myself, an I'm thinking of a cabled scarf (maybe a matching hat?) for the handspun.

It's amazing with the handspun, actually - even after several washes and dries (drys?), I found that the spun and plied yarn was dropping a fair bit of dust as I wound it into a ball! Grrr. Maybe several more washes and dries?

I actually finished the hat I planned for Wonderboy and was a bit annoyed with a) the pattern, and b) myself for just continuing with said pattern. I measured WonderBoy's (somewhat enormous) melon, and worked to the measurements stated in the pattern, and although the hat fits him around his head, it's just a wee bit shallow. Damn! Ah, well. It was less than one ball, and I can always knit another when this one is way too small. It'll fit Wonderboy for a little while at least. Can't win 'em all! I can always send it to the next friend who has a little boy...

The drape cardigan and I are having a trial separation at the moment. I've completed the back without any issues, and I've got halfway through the left front now twice and had to frog it twice when I've come to an numbers issue with the pattern - I'm always ending up with way too many stitches! I even took it to Mum, and she's got no idea, either. So I've put it, in all it's half-completed glory, into the bag with the yarn and it's going to spend some time in the stash cupboard while I busy myself with hats and scarves for awhile - a few easy, instant gratification pieces. I'll get back to the cardie... at some point!

In other news, I have my spinning group meeting (or 'Mummy's Playgroup', as we term it) on Friday, which I'm looking forward to, and then I'm taking myself up to Darling Harbour, Sydney on Saturday for World Wide Knit in Public Day. I have some fabulous Ravelry buttons I ordered a couple of weeks ago, ready to wear on the day, and I'm hoping to feature my new hat, as well. Should be a good day; I'm looking forward to knitblogging the whole thing!

Another pathetic thing about this post is that I am not going to be bothered with adding photos today. I know, what a stellar lack of effort... Hopefully, I'll get myself organised once Wonderboy's hat is washed tomorrow and whack some photos up before Saturday's festivities.

I blame the long weekend for my laziness!