Blue, white and grey round-up

It's the end of the blue, grey and white section of Project Spectrum, and on Sunday we start on green, yellow and pink. So I'll just assemble all my PS projects here now!

Here's the finished denim bag. I use it all the time. I actually started it last year, and am glad I finally sorted the handles out. If I were Ms Perfect-craft, I would line it with fabric, especially after the other night when I was walking along and heard my tiny sock needles tinkle to the sidewalk, having wormed their way out of the knitting and through the bag! But I am not, so I will now just put my sock-in-progress in a plastic bag....


Speaking of socks, I did finish this pair, but now they are in use and it seems I didn't get a picture of them complete. I like the ribbed pattern for socks -- it's super for growing kids!

I also made a couple of blue hats for Save the Children. Super fast and easy and fun! Apparently they collected over 4000 hats for wee newborns.

I finished one grey Lopi hat, and am halfway through a similar one. These fulfill Rule 5 in my Knit from Stash program -- I'll give them to charity come fall. You might notice that this picture is taken in snow-free bright outdoor sunshine! Yes, we have a bit of spring here. I am skeptical, and have not put the big boots in the basement just yet. But it is a lovely change to be outside in shirtsleeves!

Stephen's Retro Rib sock is not progressing very fast. I am liking the stripes more now, and am sure they will be fine socks when done. Soon...

Finally, a picture showing the truly thunderous colours in this blanket! I'm only on the second eighth of the edging, progressing slowly around.


It'll cover someone's lap nicely. Still looks greenish in this picture, doesn't it? It's fun, but a bit fiddly now, and the edge pattern is full of "k2togtbl" and "yo twice" and I can't just whip it out and carry on without the book. Still, I'm keen to get it finished.


And to end, another outdoor picture of blue, grey and white! No, I haven't been jetting around, but Stephen was in Berkeley and San Francisco a while ago and took this picture of the Golden Gate bridge. Ah....

Two things in my mail box

Oh, I do love mail! And today I got a card from the OFA as a thank you for participating in the Red Scarf Project! That's a treat! Oh, and a new Vogue Knitting, so I can think of lovely summer things to make... More on that later!

Denim thoughts

I was looking at the straps of my denim bag the other day and noticing that in the cables, the colour change is already quite noticeable.

And here's wee Hugh in his denim sweater, after almost a year of use. It's still got rolled-up sleeves and lots of room in it, so he'll be fading it for another year, I hope!

I'm looking at patterns and thinking of a textured denim sweater for me in the future.

It was illuminating to have a toddler in the house again -- everything is chewable or bangable, it seems. I'd forgotten that. But ain't he cute?

It helps to talk about it

When I went to bed on Wednesday night, I was stewing about the border for my blanket. I had eight sections, so I could use a border pattern with eight rows, and it would fit. But I had 53 stitches in each section, so if I wanted something divisible by 10 or 12 or 18 or 20... I'd be fudging it for sure.

But, I had to leave those troubles and woes and take a small project (heck, let's start a Lopi hat) to Alterknit to meet Heather Thursday morning. And I have no pictures of Heather and me in the shop, but you can see her Central Park Hoodie here! This is a story of people meeting sort of because of blogs, but mainly because of real-life mutual acquaintances -- her professor was my co-knitter and fellow student about a million years ago. And I re-bumped into her in a yarn shop in London, Ontario, because my brother moved to London last year. But we also re-met because she and I both read Mason Dixon Knitting. So. Six degrees of separation and all that.

So, gab gab chat chat knit knit... and I was telling her my border story, and ding! A lightbulb went on in my head and I realised I could do one more increase round, have 54 stitches in each section, and be able to use a 16 or 18 or 12 row pattern, and now the possibilities are endless! I also figured out I can take the whole dang thing off the circular needle onto a piece of yarn and just use a couple of short dpns to work the edge. Oh, I was so happy! When I came home, I managed the increase round, plus one more to cover the yarnovers, and even had time to pick the border pattern from the bazillions available in Nicky Epstein's Knitting on the Edge before dashing off to get the kids. I'm doing one called Princess Anne's Lace, which is quite wide (13 stitches to start) and not very fussy. It's such a plain, solid blanket, that a floofy edge seemed a bit silly. And I've now done 3 repeats, only 24 to go! Ack.


And the moral of the story is, go out and discuss your knitting with real people, just in case you are being stumped by something that really has a very simple solution....

Report on two things

Well, since my last post, I have done nothing on the socks, despite now being under the gun to finish them in time for Stephen to wear them to Lisa's thesis defence! Easier to knit a pair of socks than write a thesis, I think, but perseverance is still necessary. I'll get right on that....

Let's see what I have been doing. This is a portion of the octagonal blanket that is taking most of my time.

It's very hard to get the colour right in pictures. It's also hard to see how big it is, since it's all scrunched onto a circular needle. By the time I get it finished, it'll be warm and dry enough to take a picture outside, perhaps!

I've now done 3 rows of eyelets, and I think I'm almost at the point where I can start the border. Soon I get to pick an edging, and won't that be fun!?

Then there's the wonky square. I was thinking of carrying on till I had a square big enough to cover a cushion. But several things stopped me.

I started doing dark colours on two edges and light on the other two, but soon realised I didn't really have enough light colours to continue!

Also, I agree with what Cara said, that I like to play with the colours, but the continued wonkiness of the square kinda dragged me down. I was fretting about getting it back to a square shape, and didn't like having to plan out the craziness of it.

I'm still looking for a project where my colours can be all mixed and mingled, but the knitting is more straightforward (without being too boring, of course!).

Three knitting projects

I was working on three things this weekend.



The thundercloud blanket. Knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit yarnover! Knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit yarnover! Sometimes I get so bored with this that I make a whole row of yo, K2tog, which perks me up a bit. I love the soft yarn, don't especially care for the colours (which are not this green at all!) and the pattern is mind-numbing, but heck, I'm not going to go to any trouble to figure out anything more thrilling at this point. One more ball to go before the edging, which will indeed be a thrill.


The Retro Rib socks. I offered to make Stephen a pair of socks out of the red stuff I got last week, but he declared it too pink! It's red, dear, and white. No, it's pink... Sheesh. So, instead of knitting a pair of red socks for someone who would appreciate them, I got out this most manly of sock yarns for him. And decided I would not make just plain old stocking stitch socks! The retro ribs involve a 4-row pattern, which is really just 2 different rows, but sometimes you twist a stitch and sometimes you don't. It doesn't strain one's brain too much, but one does need to look at the sock once in a while! And these colours are... kinda dull, and in regular stripes. Where's the fun in that?



The wonky square. Ah, thanks to Kay for pointing me to nona! (And also to the Barbara Walker Treasury site! Love all these swatches!) Now this, I have to think about: what colour next, how wonky should I make it? Oh no, time to change colour again, and can't I just make this one straight across?

So still, I search for a project that I can't complain about! Too boring, not boring enough.... what's a girl to do?

It's still Friday

It's getting late, but not too late to add some Friday eye candy!

The kids and I joined KT and J-Rock for coffee at Alterknit this morning. Elaine got bored and wandered around with the camera. This is one of her masterpieces, a shot of the needle roll KT scored at a boot sale in England.

Knitting with a caveman

Things are heating up around here this March Break. Arthur got out the playmobil guys and made this movie. Very slow knitting by me. Too bad about the old icky stain on the footstool, which shows up a bit too much with the flash....

Update on March Break

I pass by this blog once in a while, and am always disappointed that no one has updated it. Oh, that's my job!?

Monday, Toronto Islands, Arthur and friend working on taming the ice floes. They got wet, but not tooooo wet.


And a nice blue/grey/white view. We actually saw a robin, too!

Tuesday, a bit of shopping, and make-your-own-pizza night.

Today, we bought an enormous lasagna at the store and then went to the museum and then came home and realised we need to cook the lasagna for 2 hours. Lucky Arthur got a huge collection of Loony Tunes on DVD for his birthday, so that will entertain them till dinner at 8 pm.

Tomorrow, who knows?

Saturday sky, and a wee bit of new yarn

Nice blue bits in the sky, but mainly overcast today. Warm as heck, making everything melt.

See, big puddles, to reflect the sky!

This morning, before the melt got well under way, I went up the hill to Knitomatic, for their big sale.

Oh, my, a lineup outside the shop! Oh, my, a ton of people in the little shop!

They had a lot of novelty stuff, and the story I heard in the lineup was that Haley was thinking of donating the old yarn she had in the basement to the Goodwill, but decided to see what she could sell cheap first. The green wool I got was $1, the orange $3 a ball and the sock yarn $8, which is not at all bad! People were walking out with stuffed shopping bags, so I guess she is doing okay! Of course, you get in there looking for a bargain and can't resist the full-price cashmere....

So, I have used my one chance to buy yarn before Sept 30, and didn't do anything outrageous. I'm keen on this Knitting from Stash stuff, and just got myself a couple of little pretty things.

Day one of March break is almost done, too!

Not spring here yet

I got a card from my sister today (because, in fact, it is my birthday), in which she hopes the snow is gone... It's not. It was supposed to get above zero today, but so far, no luck. We have some sun, but no actual warmth yet!

This is our slushy lane from my roof.

You can see the snow has come off most of the roofs. The CN Tower in the distance has been causing a bit of trouble lately, as you can read at the bottom of the history part of that article. And of course, it's on You Tube. I think we're safe now, but it's only mid-March; there's lots of winter left!

That same sister asked about the amaryllis seeds. The stalk of the plant has fallen over, exhausted and depleted, but the papery little seeds have been put into some dirt. We shall see. But this is what she told me:

I had an amaryllis that produced seeds once. I planted a few of them in pots and ended up with 2 baby amaryllis plants, one of which I gave away. The other I kept for many years. I watered it little and often. (I lost a big amaryllis plant when I put it out in the garden one spring and it rained and rained and the amaryllis bulb rotted).

It would put out a set of leaves which would stay green for quite a while, then turn yellow and die down. Then it would put out another set of leaves, a little bigger than the previous set. This went on for approximately 15 years.

[Fifteen years, folks!]

Then the large leaves died down and a new set did not appear, but the top of the bulb was green. So I put it in a dim corner and didn't water it for a couple of weeks or so. Then it put out a flower stalk and bloomed. That was about 3 years ago and it hasn't bloomed again. It didn't set seed either. But it's still making leaves.

That's my story, for what it's worth.

Well, it's off to a dark corner for this guy for a while.

Today is the last day of school till the 19th. Plans here include hanging around, watching cartoons, and maybe even going shopping tomorrow! I have the urge to use my Get out of Jail card (rule 2b), but have no idea what to buy. So maybe I'll just go look and stay out of jail.

Projects piling up again

There was once a plan. Knit on a thing or two, till they were done. Then pick up some other project, likely one abandoned some time ago, and finish it. But perhaps spring fever has struck, because I'm back to my old devil-may-care knitting habits.

I was happily knitting along on Elaine's second sock, thinking about how I had to work on the green Rockpool cotton cardigan so I can wear it if and when spring actually comes, and then I just had to knit a secret hat (it's secret, but I'll just make a note here that I made it) and now I'm no longer satisfied with just a sock, and can't bring myself to pick up the cardi!

Oh, no!

I started a scarf in some weirdo yarn I found at the side of the road (honestly!) but it was too 80s, and is now in the Goodwill box.

Then I remembered that I had this lovely Malabrigo. Once upon a time my friend Pat bought this yarn. It looked sort of faded-denim-like on the store shelf, and she took it home and made a sweater, which I have not seen because the crazy lady will not get a blog! Anyhoo, she had bought way too much yarn, so gave me the leftovers. She kept calling it purple, which seemed odd to me, since it was so bluish, I'd thought.

What colour is it, indeed! I now think of it as the colour of those really scary thunderclouds in the summertime, which is not very cheering.

The blue is greyish-metallic-greenish, and the grey is purplish and the purple is not noticeable until you realize the whole darn thing is purple...

However, I am declaring that it fits the Project Spectrum colours of blue, grey and white, and by gum, I'm going to knit me a big old octagon out of it!

Now it is all scrunched up on a 40 cm needle, but soon I can start on a bigger needle, I think. It should end up something like this, except bluish purplish greyish, and I think bigger. Only time will tell.

(I just looked at the Malabrigo page and think it must be the one they call Alpine Pearl! Scroll down.)

Oh, and Happy Women's Day.

New Knitty, new Knitty!

It must mean that spring is coming -- there's a new Knitty up. Dashing fingerless mitts, and I still haven't made the Fetching ones! Nice looking socks! And more....

Getting older

I bunged up my back. I think I must have done it while bowling at Arthur's tenth birthday party.

He's ten, which is pretty grown-up, but I am even older, now limping with my hand on my sacroiliac...

If we all bowled with the elegant style of Elaine, one side would not get overworked, I think!

Since it's his birthday, I can't really nag all day long, "Do your homework, don't you have a test tomorrow, what about that book report..." so I made a bunch of bits of paper with chores and fun things written on them, like the old job jar.

So first he picked out "Lego" and had to put together the new Lego set he got for his birthday.

Then he tried again, and was forced to "watch a movie." I'm sure I also wrote things like "study for social studies test" and "write out times tables" but he's so far evaded those! Maybe we'll try one more time... Hey, maybe I'll take the other fun things out of the mix!

It's snowing again

You wouldn't think a little snow would be so noteworthy at this time of year, here in Toronto. But this is a lot of snow, all at once, and just at coming-home time. I quickly dug out the sidewalk and went off with the sled to get the kids at school, and when we got back, the sidewalk was again under several inches. Since we haven't got around to taking down our Xmas lights, we turn them on in the snow, to melt little pits!

Tomorrow, as part of Freedom to Read week, I am reading something or other to my kids' classes at school. I wanted to read something they wouldn't otherwise hear, and I have letters written by my grandfather on his way to WWI; I have the story of my dad and the oranges in the Milan train station in 1965 (it's a classic, involving the train starting out of the station without him); and I have a story of smuggling jewels through Nazi border points in 1938. But, I think I might just read Katy and the Big Snow, and something from Winter Holiday. If we can dig ourselves out in the morning...

Oh, and I'll tell you about my sock yarn from the previous post. It's Regia, Canadian Color, number 4737. Lovely! I got it at the Mary Maxim store at Yonge and Eglinton when it first opened.

Random tidbits

Let's see now. I'm finished this sock now, and started the second. That's good, because we don't like those single socks hanging around! Since they are for Elaine, they are much quicker than socks for, say, Arthur!

I also ripped out the toes of socks I made last year! They fit nobody, so I am shortening them to fit Elaine. So far, one ripped out toe, no reknitting!

The handles of my denim bag were stretching crazily, so I ripped them out about 6 inches and put the whole thing through the wash again. Seems about right. The only thing is, I can't carry little knitting needles in it, because they poke through!

Lots of ripping, bits of new stuff. I have an idea for a hat, but so far have half an inch of 2x2 ribbing. Not very exciting!

Today is my brother's birthday! Sunday is Arthur's birthday! Next week is my birthday!

Stay tuned for more thrills and adventure!

Little hats and Saturday sky

Baby hats on a glass table out in the sunshine!

I think nine little hats is enough for now! Six are nice cotton, one is some crazy stuff called Stretchwool, and the two plain blue ones are superwash wool. I'm worried that the wool will be scratchy on the teeny heads, but am not sure what other cotton I have in stash. Save the Children wants the hats by March 15, so I've got a couple of weeks to whip up a few more, if I can come up with some suitable yarn. Maybe some Cotton Fleece?

The thermometer says -11C, but it's nice and sunny. As long as you watch for those pesky patches of ice, it's quite pleasant out. Elaine and I will head to the library this afternoon, all bundled up.

The amaryllis cam

Sandy has an amaryllis cam. Norma has an amaryllis cam. And I know I've seen at least one more, but where?



Now, my amaryllis bloomed some time ago, was magnificent and lovely and amazing, and now all the flowers have faded and fallen off, but this one seems to have made itself some seeds in a pod. The pod is now drying out, but was once sleek and full and ... fertile-looking. So, my question is, what do I do now? Will the seeds fall into the pot and take care of themselves? Is there some tender loving care I should bestow upon them? Is this a freak amaryllis, or what?

And a snow update: Bleah! It's now above zero, the snow on the trees and rooftops is melting down into the snow on the ground, which is getting wet and slushy and messy, and if one should be outside trying to be neighbourly and clearing the snow from the sidewalk, one runs the risk of having a blob of melty snow fall right down the back of one's neck!

And that's why we turn to flowers...

Thunder and snow

Once I was in a Latin class, reading Ovid, and the prof looked out at the falling snow when we heard thunder, and said, "Someone's been feeding the gods raw meat." And they've been at it again, since we woke up to huge flakes of snow, and thunder. That last time we emerged from class to find that the university had been closed and classes cancelled, but I don't think we're getting that much this time.

And for fun: My brother is a physicist who does things with foams sometimes. And he was looking around for images of foam, and came up with this little experiment. Looks like snow towards the end, there!

These are addictive

I took my first little hat to a mommies' party the other day, and, well, after the S'mores, I'm sure it was the hit of the evening. A couple of people were even keen to knit some.

And then I made another, and more and more!

I've got one more hat's worth of this yarn left, and then what? Find another bag of scraps in the closet, or perhaps move on to something else. I can certainly see myself churning out another dozen, but perhaps that would be crazy!

(And I won't take any more flash pictures on the black footstool.)

My hat-knitting was interrupted this weekend by a house full of little girls. It was Elaine's 7th birthday.

(I think she's decided that we are okay parents, after all, by the way, but she hasn't taken the sign off her door...)

We played Pass the Parcel and Tape the Hat on the Clown and Poisoned Sweet and Musical Statues and ate popcorn, carrots, cheese, candy, cake and strawberries.

No one cried the entire time, not even Stephen, and Arthur got to wear his party shirt, and zip-off pants with one leg long and one leg short. So, a good time!

Could this be eye candy?

Elaine's looking for some new perfect parents. Know any?

Snow and little hats

I can now show you the pictures we took yesterday before Stephen took the camera off for the day. Here we have the phenomenon known as Mommy-is-a-sucker. That's about 120 pounds of cargo there...

It's fine once one gets going, but it only works right after the snow falls, because if people start shovelling the snow off their walks, we grind to a halt. I made the mistake of taking the sled after school when I went to pick them up, and they had to keep hopping off and on.


Someone at our school told us about this campaign by Save the Children, to provide little wee hats for newborn babies, to keep them warm in those crucial first hours. (The e-mail sent around started with, "For some reason I think of you all as being knitters..." which is, I think, a reflection of my haranguing people to make blanket squares.)

So, to keep up the appearance that we are a school full of knitters, I made a hat.

One takes about an hour or two to make, and it uses up tiny bits of pretty stash yarn, and so these little hats are my new quicky project to work on while ignoring any other responsibilities I might have.

Hard to imagine little heads quite that little, but they say they want them 9-11 inches around! I think I can get another 3 or 4 out of one particular bag of bits. If one knitter can make 125 blankets and set her next task as 250 pairs of socks, I can knit up a half-dozen little hats...

WIP Wednesday, snowy Valentines

It's WIP Wednesday, folks, and I am here to tell you that I have finished the second blue sock! Yay for me! I can't show you a picture, because Arthur is wearing them to school today.

I also can't show you a picture of the 20 cm of new snow, because Stephen took the camera to work, complete with pics of the cool wind-blown look of our front yard this morning, and then I shoveled the walk and messed things up, so a picture of our front yard right now would just look like a plain old picture of snow.

I can show you these limeade green mitts I made some time ago. Just as I was finishing them I got a note about a publisher looking for mitten patterns, and since I'd fudged up this particular pattern myself, I sent it off to them. But guess what, they didn't want it. They're quite good mitts, but the insides are slowly pilling up and I take out a little ball of fluff every so often!

And in non-knitting news, I took Geoffrey Chaucer's quiz about medieval times. I got 24%. This is what old Geoff had to say to me:
Grant merci for taking my quiz of medievale trivia. Ich hope that yt hath delited yow and peraventure shewn yow sum interestinge thinges. Yf ye haue scored low, ye kan comfort yowerself wyth the fact that yower brain is probably full of useful craft. Yf ye haue done wel, ye kan be grateful for yower lerninge.

You, too, can be humbled, at this site. At least he recognized that my brain is full of useful craft, and I can comfort myself with the knowledge that I am, after all, supposed to be a classicist, not a medievalist.

Well, that was easy

Got my denim handles done. My, my, all that fuss over nothing... I guess I was just waiting for the right idea to pop into my head. The braids were quick and fun and turned out just the right length. (Make 'em long because the denim shrinks, but not too long, because they'll stretch out with the weight of the bag on them.)

And yes, I had to go out in the snowy bright sunshine for the photoshoot! Cold toes!

Like all knitted bags, it will sag under too much weight. Thinking about this led me down a crazy road when I decided to line it with blue jeans -- all those useful pockets! However, it's unlined for now, and I just won't use it for trips to the library!

The bag itself has been washed several times already, but I'm sure the handles will catch up in the fading department.

I still have almost 3 full balls of this, and some bits of 2 other denim colours, as well, and am keen to start something else. I almost feel like I should rush out and buy more, to embark on a blanket project. But, tsk tsk, I think we can invoke a few rules here: Knit from your stash, and I have plenty to do there. WIP Wipeout, and I think one blanket in progress is sufficient. Even if it's a blanket that is going nowhere fast... Maybe I'll get out the blue and make me a few squares.

I wonder if WIP Wipeout takes precedence over Project Spectrum!? When I finish Arthur's blue sock, the next sock yarn I have lined up is very pink and pink doesn't come up till April. And now that I am finished the blue handles, what I really want to knit is my long lost green cotton cardigan. So I will, even though green doesn't come up till April, either. I will toss in some white or grey here somewhere, too, just for fun. (Lucky it's really just me making these rules, isn't it?)

I tentatively knit a few rows on my blue scarf (sorry, it's one of those gigantic photos) and it's not compelling enough. And now I see a couple of places where I knit only one of the strands, making it (gasp!) imperfect. We'll see what happens with that.

Onward to blue sock!

Blue eye candy

My blue, grey and white earrings, for a Project Spectrum Eye Candy Friday!

I don't really go in for blue much, but once I found and took apart a necklace with those pale blue "pearls" and little snowball beads. Enough beads for way too many earrings!

The little Fimo fishies were made by the sister of a friend, way back in the 80s, I guess!

And there's a bit of greyish seashell, wrapped in wire and a few beads, that would dangle on its own, unpaired.

What the heck am I going to do with this?

Once upon a time I knit this, sort of copying a medieval floor tile from a Dover book. It was going to be a sort of pouch pocket on the front of a tabard-like poncho-sorta-thing. Lucky I never actually made it!

But this, now, is a fine piece of knitting, and devilish to rip out. A bit too tall to be half a tea cosy for my little pot. A bit funny to be the front of a hat.

I had originally 2 balls of the yarn, one of each colour. Most of the brown is made into plain swatches. It's Classic Elite, I think this stuff. I wonder if it would felt?

So here we are in February

Wasn't that poetry day great! Spend some time skimming around and following links and you will be richly rewarded. I especially liked this one.


While reading lots of poetry, I finished up the scarf and hat for charity.

Things I learned: Mistake rib pulls in enormously, and while it makes a nice, thick, reversible scarf, it also takes a lot of yarn to make a nice, thick, wide, reversible scarf!

The hat is a tad large; it even fits over Bunny's ears... Perhaps one day I'll follow a pattern for a hat... That's an idea!

I told Arthur, my colour consultant, about the three colours for February and March in Project Spectrum, and he said, "Boring."

I was thinking they are the colours we see all around us these days. We are getting more and more grey and less white, as the old snow gets dirty. By the end of February there will be frozen heaps of filthy slush all over the place. As long as the sky tends more towards the blue than the grey, we'll manage, but unfortunately, it's all grey out there today! But you can have a picture of the sock in progress to cheer you up.

I also have (drumroll, please!) begun the denim handles! You know, it is not so bad!

Once again I learn the old lesson: if you do it, it'll get done. And if you don't, it won't. Terrible that one has to learn these things over and over. I realised I started this bag in March last year!

The handle is 13 stitches wide, with a 9-stitch braid up it. So far, so good.

I have, as you can see, several buttons in the sidebar that link to things. However, I tried and tried to get a PS button to work. It just wouldn't show up. I'll give it another go...

Poetry on the blogs

I learned about this at the wonderful Creating Text(iles), who got it from Deborah Oak, and invite you all to join in.

WHAT: A Bloggers' (Silent) Poetry Reading
WHEN: Anytime February 2, 2007
WHERE: Your blog
WHY: To celebrate the Feast of Bridgid, aka Groundhog Day
HOW: Select a poem you like - by a favorite poet or one of your own - to post February 2nd.
RSVP: If you plan to publish, feel free to leave a comment and link on this post. Last year Reya put out the call and there was more poetry in cyberspace than she could keep track of. So, link to whomever you hear about this from and a mighty web of poetry will be spun.

And here's my poem:
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, by John Keats


Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

The last day of January

It's the day before Project Spectrum kicks off.


I have already got my blue(ish) socks on the go, and am working on the heel flap. So those will be out of the way soon.

I was planning on a pair of socks for each PS colour segment, and though these were mostly done beforehand, I'm counting them! (Yeah, okay, I started them in October...)

The bright pink will be next on the sock needles, even though pink doesn't come up till April.

(When I started knitting socks for Arthur, I could get all but the second toe out of one 50 g ball, but this time I only got one sock and most of a leg before I had to bring in the second ball.)


And I've got a scarf and hat on the go for Streetknit. I had four balls of this wool -- I paused the scarf after two, to make the hat, and then I'll use whatever's left to finish the scarf.

I hope the hat will be extra warm, with a strand of sock yarn knitted along with the main yarn. It's fun and fast, though the mistake rib scarf is dragging a bit!

This hardly counts as blue, but I'll finish it asap and move on to something that does.

I am itching to make a bigger project. I made an 8-inch square the other day for the school blanket, with cables! Got out my Alice Starmore book, set to work in earnest on a piece with a couple of different cables... and got completely bamboozled. Gauge goes right out the window, for one thing. There's been a rash of mis-crossed cables in the blogosphere lately, and I did my little part in that, too, though since it was just a wee square, it got ripped before being documented! In any case, it put me off cables for a while and the thought of a sweater full of them now fills me with dread. But I managed this square of three identical braids, and it looks so nice, that my present grand scheme for the blasted denim handles is to make a long thin braid! We'll see how many inches I can get before cracking.

And the plan for the bigger project will just simmer a bit longer.

Done Branching

My Branching Out scarf is done!

This scarf was fun to knit, though I never quite felt comfortable doing it without the chart at my side. It does use 5 different kinds of decrease, so by the end of it you know for sure how to slant to left or right, get rid of one stitch or two, or make a straight line in your double decrease.

And it's pretty.... The yarn is Lady Godiva, wool and silk. I think it's the colour "Forest" with a wee bit of "Mineral." I wish I'd done what I'd originally intended, years ago when I bought this yarn, and worked a whole piece with the two yarns together. Mmmm!

I think this brings to 19 the number of Mary-handknit scarves in the house!

I made it about 4 feet long, and saved a bit of the green wool for my green mish-mash pile. This will one day be some marvellous ... not sure what! Blanket, perhaps? I'll see what else I have to do in green season of Project Spectrum!

Getting itchy fingers

I've taken all my sock yarn out of the closet to "study" it. Yeah, and tossed it all over the unmade bed...

I've got another bag of yarn tipped out on the living room couch. I am looking at lace patterns for a shawl, and I don't even really want a shawl! I've got two projects almost completed, and I'm dying to toss them aside and start something else.

It's a sickness, I tell you! Must be strong! Must finish one sock before starting another! Must not try to knit all the yarn in the house at once!

Sheesh!