Backlog

Hurray for vacation! It's so nice to be a little free from school, to stay up late KNITTING, to sleep late, get up, make a cup of tea, and knit some more!

My finals were manageable (one tougher than the other), and I passed the cumulative exam ("cume") on mass spectrometry that I took the previous weekend, so that was excelent news (one down, five to go!). Grades are due in on Friday, so hopefully soon I'll find out how things went.

But what about the knitting??

I decided a while ago that when the weather is cool out and I take the bus, I can knit. And then when I'm sitting in the lecture for the undergrad class I was TAing, I could knit. And also during the TA meeting. And then I got permission to knit during group meeting, and world was a happy, knitful place. And then the end of the semester led to a number of beginnings (of new projects!), so there's lots to talk about. (Unfortunately, the camera is on loan right now, but I'll add pictures when I get it back.)

(These projects are in walking-around-the-apartment-and-look-at-stuff order, which is no particular order at all.)

1. Unfinished socks. Group meeting is for knitting socks. Plain, boring, stockinette socks. It keeps my hands busy and my eyes free for looking at people's slides, and at two hours a week (occasionally more!), it's time well spent. Cuffs, heels, gussets, and toes have to be done at other times, but that's not too much of a problem. I'd originally decided to do afterthought heels, but I hated the first one I did, so I went back to heel flaps. Some of these just need to be kichenered at the toe and some are in progress, waiting for meetings to start again.

2. Ostrich Plume scarf in Brooks Farm yarn. I bought this to-die-for yarn at Circles last spring. It's beautiful and soooo soft. I've really liked the Ostrich Plume pattern (Barbara Walker. Second Treasury) for a long time, and I think this is looking beautiful. I think it will look great with my trenchcoat and should be very warm.

3. Tangerinia. You remember Tangerinia, right? No? Cute overalls for a growing boy in Boston. They're done! Well, they need four ends woven in and two buttons sewn on. Yes, I should do it soon. Really. Maybe this week. And then it will be off of my table.

4. Surprise knitting. Project 1 has been done for a while. Project 2 is in progress and is coming along nicely.

5. Jewelled Shell from Knitty. This is done, except for the jewels. I need to go down to the bead store and pick something out. It's warm and fuzzy. I think I'll wear it for Christmas Eve. And maybe New Year's Eve! I did this over the last week of classes, hoping that I could finish it to wear to a party last week (which didn't happen). I cast on last Monday morning, at 5 am, as I was printing out my spectroscopy paper, and managed to count to 170 correctly, on the first try! And I would have finished it in time for the party if it hadn't been for all that pesky schoolwork.

6. Bulky sweater. I bought these really cool yarns at Webs when Mom visited Boston, and I finally swatched for this jacket. I still need to wash and measure the swatch; I'd decided I was too busy to do that during the end of school.

7. Accordian from Knitty. This project is also moments from finished. I just need to sew in the zipper (shortening it first -- any tips on shortening a separating zipper?) and tack down the collar.

8. Copy of a magazine sweater. I've gotten a lot of clothing catalogs this fall and usually flip through them to see whether there are any decent sweaters, and the answer is usually no. I saw this sweater in the Sundance catalog, though, and thought it was really cute. (The picture of it on a person (here) is better. Click on "Additional Views" and choose View 2. It takes Macromedia Flash.) Mom and I did some detailed viewing of the picture and figued out how to do it (it's not that complex), but made a bunch of suggested changes (smaller gauge, more cables closer together, decreasing to the single rib instead of just stopping most of the cable stitches, and maybe only running the rib from one side of the cable). I have two bags of Lana d'Oro in a darkish purple (also a Webs purchase) that I think will be fabulous and yummy and I've started to swatch. Since I'm doing smaller cables and closer together, I'm thinking about crossing them about at the rate that's in the sweater in the picture, or if I should make them taller between crosses to elongate the look of the sweater. Or is it fine the way it is because of the rib at the top?

Well, that seems like enough for now! There are other things I want to do, but haven't started yet or figured out enough how to start, but my needles seem pretty full, I think. Hopefully I can accomplish a lot in the next few weeks!
Pictures should be up in the next day, I hope.