Nocturnal Blonde*

So my Clementine’s Cardi of last week may not be a total loss, but I need to do some major revision (the fronts are WAY too long/big and the sleeves/back may be just the right length already even though the pattern calls for a lower back piece that I haven’t even started yet – and to think I thought I might need more yarn!) before I can finish it up. So in the interim, I have started yet another project.

I long time ago I bought the Juliet pattern. I also had a grand plan recently to make some sort of sweater using the huge amount of rust/burgundy colored red yarn that I have but I wasn’t sure what pattern to use. I decided last weekend to start this project using the Juliet pattern. So far so good.

I’ve got this yarn to start with:

5 skeins Classic Elite City Lights
4 skeins Elann Connemara
3 skeins ArtFibers Diva
2 skeins Knit Picks Wakashan
1 skein Knit Picks Elegance
1 skein Brown Sheep Handpaint Originals

I’ve been doubling up the ArtFibers Diva and KP Wakashan, then Diva and Elann Connemara, then we’ll see – maybe Connemara and Elegance? The City Lights is bulky so I’ll use it singly. I really hope the yarn fits well together!

(*”Juliet” reminds me of my favorite band, The Ophelias. One of my favorite songs of theirs is “Nocturnal Blonde” where they act out the character of Ophelia. I wish there was a digital version, but so far I think it’s only on LP. They also do an amazing version of The Kinks’ “Wicked Annabella” – also only on LP. That sucks!)

Big Time

This is going to be one big-ass sweater! (See the Thomas crayon box for scale?) Luckily I’m getting to the end of the sleeve pieces (I started one, needed a smaller project to carry around this weekend, so I put that aside and started the second sleeve. Now they both need about 4″ more.), then I’ll just have the bottom back piece to knit and to piece the sweater together. I’m thinking about doing that on my knitting machine, actually. I got more motivated when I recently saw an episode of Knitty Gritty on machine knitting, and they had my machine! It wasn’t that helpful, but it was somewhat motivating to get back into it.

I’ve finally found my camera, right about the time I realized I have way too much yarn for someone who lives with 4 other people in a 1000 square foot house should have. I took some pictures for Ravelry of some of my more recent purchases, and got some of my most recent finished objects. Here’s the Cable Rib Scarf I finished, and handed off to my mom who was visiting for my birthday:

And here’s another I tried to finish for my friend’s 40th birthday. I finished before her birthday, but it ended up being way too short. I think I’ll end up using it like a cowl with a shawl pin. At least I used up a skein of Cascade 220. (Down 4 skeins with just these two projects!)

I hope to get more projects done in the near future – I’ve got tons of movies to watch! I plan on going to the movies next week to see “The Haunting in Connecticut” (I already saw the TV movie version!), “Observe and Report” and maybe “Adventureland”. We already wasted time and money last week to see “Monsters Vs. Aliens”. It was quite a letdown for me, and I like to support those local companies!

That, and the many movies I have on my TiVo. I’m watching “Jane Eyre” again, I’m not sure why, but I’m enjoying it. I tried to watch “Strange Wilderness” today but I couldn’t even get through 15 min. I am not a big Steve Zahn fan, but I thought the other “Superbad” actors would help. They didn’t.

I got DL into movie spoofs lately. He watched “Spy Hard” and “Hot Shots” this weekend, and I watched “Dracula: Dead and Loving It” with him today. It sucked. You know it’s bad when you’d rather clean than watch a movie!

Okay, I guess I’ve put off my 8 inches of *reverse* stockinette long enough. (Soooo much more interesting than plain stockinette, I’m sure )

Zero

No, “Zero” is not the number of projects I’ve finished recently. It’s not even the number of projects I’ve worked on recently. I guess it is, however, the number of projects I’ve started in the past week, since I finished my Scribble Lace Wrap. It’s also the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ song I can’t stop listening to!

So as promised, here is my unprofessional photo of the very large Scribble Lace wrap I made. I just love it! It’s gorgeous! I used one skein of Manos (and then, duh, I realized I had more than just one skein, so I probably should have made something with all of them) and two skeins of Fortissima sock yarn. They match so well, and I will definitely wear it this summer!

And a close up of the yarns:

And then I got really, really responsible, believe it or not. I pulled out my Clementine’s Cardi that I had started awhile ago, and now I’ve completed the right front, and am almost done with the left front.

I really hope I have enough Malabrigo to finish it. I checked my Ravelry stash list and found that I do have quite a few balls, technically (although finding them in my house could be interesting) in Amoroso, the colorway I’m using, but I also have a skein or two in Geranaio, which is similar, and the cardigan is in pieces, so technically I could make the lower back or something in a slightly different colorway and it might even look like a “design feature”!

And my next project to fix will be the wrap I started while I was in Portland. I loved how the pattern was going, but of course when it was long and narrow (it’s supposed to be a triangular shawl) I ran out of yarn and I was cheap, lazy, something, and didn’t feel like trying to get more yarn. They even had Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk (Aran) at the Yarn Garden in Portland, just not the same color, and I didn’t think of getting a contrasting color while I was there. So I literally shopped all over the Internet to find a comparable yarn (why I didn’t just get the same one, I’ll never know). I went to Webs and found a pretty similar yarn color, with a gold thread running through it, but not quite close enough in color, so I’m still going to have to pull it out and reknit it with stripes or something of this new yarn added in. That sucks! Anyway, here it is pre-frogging:

and a closer look at the yarn, which I do like a lot:

So, I really am working! (And reading too … more to come…)