etc.

…a scarf it is then! this took about 45 minutes to finish & it’s all frothy and sumptuous around the neck. yum.

that’s Colinette WigWam cotton tape and a couple of balls of Cotton Braid. i’ve been looking for something to go with the cotton tape for a while and the other day, it hit me that the Cotton Braid would do. so, a scarf?

O, most excellent Secret Pal! this trove of goodies arrived for me to-day: 2 skeins of cotton/hemp yarn (my favourite colour!), funky bag handles and a pattern for a purse, lavender body wash, a 2004 wine guide, and a delightful cat card. thank you Secret Pal!

And so to-day, being Friday, instead of doing all sorts of necessary work this morning, I finished the Paris Loop, the pattern for which I love and unreservedly recommend to any beginning knitter, and took an inventory of my needles.

It’s called Productive Procrastination and, Hello, I am your Resident Expert.

who doesn’t love a quick knit? this is a great pattern.

Has it been almost a week?

I have no good excuse for this unoccasioned absentia, given that I’m on vacation now and will be for the next two weeks. This was supposed to be the fourteen-days-to-charge-the-batteries-before-the-student-onslaught, but instead I find myself structuring my days to accomplish as much as possible: work/chores in the morning and knitting/reading in the afternoon. I have two book reviews due next week, along with some deliverables for that course I’m teaching in the Fall, so my mornings are set aside for sundry book review/computer work, and my afternoons are devoted to wanton self-indulgence.

Speaking of self-indulgence, I’m happy to report that work on the organic cotton sweater is finally complete. I know now why it’s a good idea to have more than one knit-project on the go at once: because a single project makes for dull reading and sparse blog-fodder, so I won’t blame you if you are as sick of this sweater as I am. I’m not entirely sick of it, to be sure. It was just the five hours of frogging, re-knitting, seaming and weaving in of ends that put me over the edge. More details are here, I’ll let you read your way up to the neatly folded finished product. The single most valuable lesson I learned with this sweater was that I need to enroll myself in a finishing techniques class, post haste. The hope is that such a class will not only make my seams prettier, but that a prettier end-product might make me enjoy the process a bit more. Call me eternally optimistic or perpetually delusional, whichever.

And so last night I treated myself to 2.5 hours of stitching n’bitching with a lovely bunch of knitters (and some knitbloggers!) at Lettuce Knit, where I added 5 inches to the Paris Loop I started the night before. This little poncho is just what I need after the sweater: bulky yarn, quick knitting, no seaming! It’s win-win-win.

and so, a new project begins! this is the Paris Loop in Gedifra’s Cicco #5844 (red!), because a girl can never have too many ponchos.

all seamed up. what? you were expecting a modeled shot?

…then after a 30 second lesson from Linda, I had all raglan seams done to moderate satisfaction.

the Great Organic Sweater Seaming Adventure that stalled a few minutes after it started when I couldn’t find any satisfactory raglan seaming instructions in all the knitting books I trawled.