Because the weekend is the time I get most of my knitting in, it goes without saying that this is when I have the most knitting problems. I still need to post pictures from the lace fix that happened on the 15th (need to find the camera cable for that).

Sadly, I have no pictures from this past weekend’s yarn fiasco. I wish I did; it was truely spectacular for only being half my fault.

I had been happily knitting away on Chart 2 of Icarus when my center pull ball decided to vomit a little. It was sort of to be expected; there had been difficulties when winding it up. The yarn was slippery enough that, when it got to the top of the ball as the winder went ’round and ’round, it would just start wrapping around the ball winder’s core before getting caught in the groove. So, I knew going into this that there was a potential for problems down the road.

As I was sitting in my LYS contemplating how to handle the yarn vomit, the owner, Karen, offers to help out. No problem, I’ve seen her handle many a knot with ease. So, she pulls on the yarn vomit. I could tell that she was thinking to just pull out the problem center section, wrap it back up, and let me go my marry way.

Unfortunately, pulling on the yarn vomit only made the ball more sick. More yarn spilled out and tangled till we had a true mess on our hands.

In the end it took at least 6 hours total (could have been more) to unravel it all and get it back into usable ball form.

And I am now finally working on Chart 3… I may very well be blocking this in the hotel room before the wedding.

Nothing like your lace project, which you’re rushing to finish for a special event, giving you a bit of excitement on the weekend. There I was knitting along happily when I realized that I was missing a stitch. *cue suspenseful music*

I was in the 5th of 5 repeates section of the Icarus shawl. Once I had gotten a hang of the pattern several repeats back I had sort of stopped counting the knit stitches between each set of eyelets on a regular basis. For some reason I counted on section near the end of the row only to discover there were 6 stitches instead of 7. I held up the shawl and immediately saw where the problem was… 20 rows back.

I must have been distracted during one of the k2tog, yo, k1, yo, ssk and instead did k2tog, yo, ssk, and continued knitting on my merry way. This caused the rox of eyelets to shift over one stitch, and the missing yo was my missing stitch.

Since there was no way I was ripping back that much knitting, I decided to go for it and drop the stitches. Thankfully, this wasn’t the complicated section of lace. And, I paid close attention when Stephanie posted S.Kate’s pictures.

I put a stitch marker through the stitches just below the problem row, so the stitches wouldn’t go any further than that. I dropped the ssk stitch and its accompanying yo. This is when I actually realized what I had done… ssk the center stitch rather than just skipped a yo. So, the center stitch needed to be dropped as well. As I was dropping the ssk stitch another stitch popped up… this was from the ssk moving over a stitch.

Then, I took a deep breath.

I tried using pins to keep the strands separate, but they ended up just getting in the way. Thankfully, the tencel yarn is smooth so it doesn’t stick to itself and maintained a orderly queue.

I decided the best thing to do was to use a crochet hook to bring back up the straight knitted stitches: the center stitch and the previously missing 7th stitch. This left me with just the ssk and yo to worry about. It was slow going with the double point needles becuase they kept trying to slip out of the 2 stitches. But, I eventually got it back up to the top, and after straightening some of the stitches out, you can’t really tell there was ever a problem.

Whew. After describing all that I don’t think I have the energy to talk about when I found an extra stitch the next night.

Summer here in the SF Bay Area was ushered in by 5 Spare the Air days (3 of which were official) right in a row. Ever since I’ve been low-level miserable. I tried to very good and stay indoors, trying not to exert myself. This is probably why it wasn’t until the air quality began to improve that my asthma caught on. *ugh*

While my asthma has improved, my allergies in general have been annoying. The worst part being the off-and-on ear drum pain alternating with itchiness. So, I went to the doctor on Tuesday cause it didn’t look like it wanted to clear up on its own. Thankfully, she told me that it’s just fluid pressure and not an infection. Then, she gave me samples of Singulair to try out for both the allergies and the asthma.

I’m only on my second day, but I’m not sure what I think of it. It does seem to help at night (I take it in the evening, and it’s a once a day pill) even though it does seem to make me drowsy. But, today, I feel horribly draggy, and I don’t know if I’m simply tired, or if it’s the medicine. I think the reason I’m confised is because it’s not that drugged tired feeling most allergy medicines give me, it’s exhausted tired.

I’m supposed to try it out for a few weeks, and if it doesn’t work it’s on to something else.

My Records Management class has been keeping my nose to the grindstone (last week’s reading assignment was about 300 pages and that’s looking to be typical). I don’t have much left though. I have my topic paper due on the 20th, weekly readings with discussion board postings, one more class meeting at the Presidio, and a take-home final due by the 5th. Yup, nothing quite like the whirlwind that is 16 weeks of information crammed into half the time. *groan*

But I have been working my way through Icarus. I’m about to start the 5th of 5 repeats of the top portion. Then, on to the lace. I’d show you a picture, but we all know it’s just going to look like boiled ass. I am still hoping to have it done before I leave for the wedding cause I don’t really want to be blocking it on a hotel floor.

I am having fun with the yarn (it’s a lace weight 100% tencel I picked up at Stitches West). It has such a nice sheen to it and feels almost like silk when you scruntch it in your hand. Funny enough, though, I haven’t checked to make sure the color (a dusty pink) goes with the dress I picked out. Now to find a nice pin to secure the shawl to the strap of the dress so that it doesn’t shift around during the ceremony. I have to speak in front of a crowd of people (okay, it’s only like 30), and I don’t want to have to worry about where my lace shawl is creeping off to while doing it.

On a SQUEE note, I have a reservation to see Stephanie at Full Thread Ahead in September. Whee! Steph, I’m not sure if you still read my blog since I haven’t posted in like a month, but I know you lamented the lack of a pub visit the last time you where in the San Francisco Bay Area. My husband, the Canadian you outed with the Smarties jingle, has offered to find a good one in the Los Altos area. 🙂

I can only say that I was sucked into a whirlwind we shall call finals. My last final was on 5/24. I then got a week and a half (which, thankfully, contained a three day weekend) to recover before jumping in for summer semester (i.e., a 16 week semester crammed into about 8 weeks… oh, they say 10, but looking at the class schedule it’s more like 8). But, only one class (Records Management) this semester, so it shouldn’t be too bad. Besides, need to keep on the ball to prepare for another 3 classes in the fall *crosses fingers* if I can get into them (stupid classes only offered in the fall).

Amazingly enough there has been actual knitting. I finished the baby blanket on Friday. Now, it’s just a matter of seeing how long it will take me to wash it, pack it up, and send it off. I have also done a baby hat and one, as yet unsewn up, baby bootie for another baby shower I am going to this coming Sunday.

Somewhere amidst all this I need to swatch for the Icarus Shawl. I have a pretty dusty rose 100% tencel lace weight yarn I picked up at Stitches West that I’m hoping will work its way into a lace shawl for the wedding I’ll be attending in August. I have exactly 2 months to do the shawl as of…. well, as of yesterday. I finished my sister’s shawl rather quickly and that was all lace, all the time. The Icarus Shawl has a top portion that is st st with the occasional double row of yarnovers. We’re not going to talk about the fact that I have not picked out a dress for this wedding yet.

I first tried my hand at crochet when I was about 10. I have no idea what prompted me to give it a go. I don’t even know where I got the supplies, although I’m pretty sure they were already in our house (why, again no idea, cause my mom doesn’t crochet… at least not to my knowledge). I remember I was trying to learn to crochet from one of those little booklets from the craft store, and it was as old as I was, if not older. I had a skein of black acrylic yarn and a hook… a little hook. Some how I completely missed any mention the craft booklet may have had on gauge. Perhaps if I had read it I would be a crocheter today rather than a knitter.

I sat patiently on the floor of my bedroom looking at the pictures and reading the instructions, trying to following along. I don’t think I was trying to make anything, just trying to learn the movements. After getting beyond the basic problem of getting myself all tangled up while trying to hold the yarn in my left hand while working with the hook in my right hand, I began working in single crochet.

It was hard. It was frustrating. I could not comprehend why people did this on purpose. The pictures made it look as if the hook would simply slip into the right spot and come back out again wrapped in yarn.

This was not my experience.

I had to work the hook back and forth to fit it inbetween the strands of yarn. And getting it back out with the yarn still wrapped around the end was making me break out in a sweat.

After creating a strip of fabric 4 inches wide and 1 inch long I gave up. I accepted that I would never be a crocheter, and forgot about it.

Three and a half years ago I decided I needed a hobby and considered crochet for a moment, then passed it over after recollections of my previous experience. That’s when I took up knitting. Since then I’ve been operating under the presumption that I’m a knitter who can do enough crochet for a provisional cast on.

Now, I have been given a second chance at crochet. Itgirl sent me a sparkly crochet hook like hers. It’s a 5.5 inch wand of clear plastic filled with gold glitter; this of course means I must try my hand at crochet again for sparkles make everything better. She also sent along sparkly yarn… this may actually be fun.

I’m getting rather jealous of the pics other bloggers have been posting of their gardening efforts. I haven’t had a sunny weekend in awhile, so my balcony plants (well, those that are still alive) are languishing. Winter took a heavy toll. My lack of watering the palm tree that is under the eave, and thus out of the rain, has left it brown and lifeless. I’ll blame the evil squrriel for the death of my lavender plant. One of the adopted citrus trees is blooming, so not all is lost. The ravages of winter have left my balcony looking simply horrible… lots of blacks and browns, lots of stuff dropped by the overhanging tree. I’m just going to have to find time to get to a nursery to get something with color.

I knit on my mom’s afghan last night while watching Rent. Singing along with a musical is not the way to get knitting done. I have also come to the conclusion that my row gauge is way off. I have stitch gauge (3 sts/inch), but the pattern says that each color strip is supposed to be 3.25 inches wide. Mine are more like 2.5. Another comparison indicates that each pattern repeat (4 strips) should be 13 inches wide. Mine is actually more like 9 or 10 depending on the set of strips you measure. Does Lion Brand Homespun magically widen when you wash it? I have quite a bit more yarn left than I was expecting with only 4 strips left to knit (according to the pattern). Do I just finish it and call it a lapghan? Or, do I add another set of strips, which will take longer to do?

Nothing quite like slogging your way through a day after waking up at 5 am and being unable to get back to sleep. Talk about unproductive all around. We won’t talk about the slight queasy feeling that accompanied me through most of the day since I only brought it upon myself (but the wine was good at the time).

Tonight, however, I have an evening of knitting planned, which is good because I had no time to work on my mom’s afghan over the weekend with a final to turn in. The Husband was called up by a friend this afternoon with an offer of a free ticket to tonight’s Sharks game, the last regular game of the season. So, now that I have fed myself, I’m going to pop Rent in the DVD player and settle down to some afghan knitting. But, I am thinking of walking down to the corner store for some ice cream first… mmm, ice cream.

I had been considering waking up at 5 am on purpose tomorrow so that I could watch the Lotta’s Fountation ceremony live. Then, I found out the commemoration is beginning at 4:30 am. I’m all for seeing history, but this is what Tivo is for.

Nothing like a paperwork run around to make you want to take a baseball bat to something… anything.

The nice people at the Vespa dealership would of course like a check when I take delivery of the scooter. The bank won’t give me a check until they have a signed purchase order. I can’t get a signed purchase order until the scooter comes in and there is a VIN to put on the paper. Oh, and the purchase order has to be to the bank before 2 pm, or it has to wait till the next business day.

Should I cross my fingers that the scooter comes in tomorrow, so that I can then run around like a chicken with it’s head cut off to get paperwork where it needs to be, when it needs to be there? Or do I hope that it just waits until Monday after my EAD final is done and turned in, after I have driven up to Livermore and back for a baby shower (which I have yet to purchase a gift for cause the baby blanket is at the same point as 3 days ago), after my Library of Congress cataloging assignment is turned in?

I’ve been avoiding the projects I need to get done. The baby blanket is crawling along — the kid is due May 24. My Mom’s afghan hasn’t been touched in months — her birthday is in 2 weeks.

I haven’t worked on the Adamas shawl since I cast on for the baby blanket. It sits on my coffee table, glaring at me. And I want to knit it, but I can’t, not until I get at least one of the projects with a deadline done.

Meanwhile, I keep thinking crazy thoughts… my Dad’s 50th birthday is at the beginning of July and a couple of years ago he asked for a lace doily for the coffee table in the living room (this is of import cause when you ask my Dad what he wants for any gift-giving day, his response is predictable – “Nothing.”) My best friend is getting married in August (in Boston), and while I have no flipping idea what I’m going to wear (and he asked me to be his best man), I have been thinking that 100% tencel lace weight I bought at Stitches West might make a nice shawl to go with some dress I haven’t bought yet.

Yeah… all my smart brain cells are doing homework.

ETA: If you haven’t read The Dark Side of Knitting Revealed over at Feral Knitter, you must go do it now.