Poinsettia - so close, and yet so unmotivated...

I'm so close to done with Poinsettia that, of course, I've rather run out of steam.
I changed the hem of the sleeves to seed stitch and it seems to take forever to do that portion. Add to that the nervousness that I get when trying to figure out what I did to shape the first sleeve so that I can do it again for the second one and we have a bethieee that's not particularly interested in working on that project.

So I'm amusing myself by working on other things.

Including a second Fetching Baby Hat (it uses the cable and rib motif from Knitty's Fetching) and a decrease system on the crown that worked much better than I thought it would. So I'm going to write it up as a free pattern. If anyone things that's not quite right for copyright reasons I'd appreciate it if this were taken as an invitation to discussion.

Tivoli - 2

I could, in fact, count to 144 the other night far too close to dawn.
And since I chose to knit on Ticovoli during my last day of orientation for pharmacy school, I have gotten down past the armholes and am working on 5" of straight stitch.
More interesting progress will likely follow in a couple days. At the moment, however, it's going to be pretty boring.
Perfect for knitting in class.
I'll work on that next week. For the moment my parents are here for the weekend and we need to go couch shopping.

Starting Ticovoli

I spent about 3 hours this evening (from 11:00 to 2:00 in the morning, as a matter of fact) organizing my stash. (Yes, I know I should be sleeping and not composing this post, but I don't have orientation tomorrow, I just need to open the door for the rug delivery and then I can go back to sleep)

I don't actually know what all I have or where everything is, but there has been progress. See instead of having a closet full (well, not quite full...) of yarn in boxes that were last touched by me before it was loaded into a moving van, driven cross country and unloaded by someone other than me and placed randomly into the closet, now I have a closet full of yarn in boxes that I have taken out, looked into, loosely grouped by either type or project status or fiber content or something and placed back into the closet. This makes it much more likely that when I want something my lizard brain will be able to walk me to the closet, move some boxes around and magically have me in the right general vicinity of the yarn that I was looking for.

While I was doing this I was thinking about projects to start (because I need another project, of course... speaking of other projects, I want to get everything photographed for next year's flash your stash (yes, I'd need to start this far ahead of things if I were even going to attempt it), and while I'm at it I might as well photograph all my UFO's and confess their chances of being seen through to completion, but I digress...).

Specifically I was thinking about the tank top from one skein. I have a skein of Lorna's Laces lace yarn. The only problem is that it's in a colorway that I'm not convinced would work well double stranded (Black Purl)...

Luckily, when I was sorting things, I found a number of skeins of Malabrigo lace-weight wool. I wound up deciding to use two strands of Paris Nights (mostly grey, only slightly varegaited, no clue about undertones (my lighting in here is really bad)). I started doing my gauge swatch and was thinking about adding waist shaping and then I realized that I might be able to get gauge for either picovoli or ticovoli (both Grumperina's, I saved the various ticovoli patterns before picovoli was released). I've been meaning to get around to making one (or more) of these for a good long time now, and why not do it with doubled lace-weight... so long as I can get gauge...

I got gauge...
And I'm thinking the 37" ticovoli is the best choice. Given how my gauge swatch looks I don't want too much negative ease (it gets downright see-through if pulled laterally too much).

Like I need another sweater on the needles...
Here goes nothin'
I'm casting on tonight (if I'm not too tired to count a gross of stitches (a dozen dozen... CO 144 sts...))

Unpacking and Knitting

And periodically sleeping or eating.
And really that's about all I've been up to.

I've finished the back and both fronts of the purple sweater I'm working on.
The sleeves started with 5.5 inches of a "lacy" stitch that I didn't wind up liking (double wrap every stitch on every other row). So in the spirit of continutity with all the other trim on this sweater, I've switched their stitch out for the moss stitch that all the other accent yarn is in.
I hope I like it.

I'm working at getting my bench set up for some minor metal work projects.
Yesterday I finally managed to go buy butane and MAPP gas to run my torches and we'll see if I'm forgetting anything else when I actually sit down and try to do some work later this evening.

Not that there's that much more of this evening left.
I didn't get to sleep until 5:30 this morning and woke up around 2, but I've set an alarm for 10 to reminde me to go to bed whether I'm tired or not.
I need to be sentient in the morning on Monday and having the weekend start with my schedule shifted by about 7 hours from where I'd like it to be is not my idea of a good way to make that happen.

At any rate.
If anyone here doesn't know, Peacock had her knee surgery yesterday. Please keep her in your thoughts and wish her a speedy recovery.

I've arrived...

And the move continues.

I've been setting up house in Winchester, VA for just over one week now. My mother left yesterday. Her help was invaluable. In one week, we are at least 3 and probably 4 weeks into the time I estimate unpacking on my own would have taken. I am very grateful.

I just got the key to my mailbox from the USPS today, so I can now receive mail. If you did not receive my new contact information and would like it, send me an email and I'll remedy my oversight.

Not much knitting going on here. I think I already mentioned that I finished the feather and fan shawl. It's lovely. Not blocked yet, but lovely. Sometime soon I will block it (using my new blocking wires) and then I will post its picture. (after I find the digicam).

The knitting I have been doing is the first piece of a new sweater. The pattern is Pointsettia, the wrap sweater on the coverr of the most recent KnitScene. I've substituted Nashua's Creative Focus Worsted for Classic Elite's Princess called for in the pattern. Mostly that was a price consideration. I also wound up flipping the two colors. I did not set out to use the same colors the pattern called for, but I picked purple as the main color and then a lovely maroon was the only color that worked with both my color preferences and the purple I'd already picked out.

Again pictures to follow later... It is such a bother trying to find things I know I packed. I'm down to maybe 15 boxes of things to unpack, but at this point, except for the 5 more boxes of books that won't fit on my bookshelves, all the boxes are labeled "stuff". While this label is not uninformative, for instance I know they're not completely filled with clothes, it doesn't really give me much to go on as there are quite likely some clothes in the box. I find clothes a wonderful stand in for tissue paper at times when tissue paper is just not readily available.

Hopefully pictures will follow soon.
And, if not, then they'll follow later.
There will be pictures eventually.