I'd Rather Blog Than Pack...

Since I ended yesterday's post talking about tomatoes, that's where I'll start today. But don't worry...I have a bunch of knitting stuff to get to.

Check out these guys! I can't even say how awesome they are. I love the fact that for the rest of the summer I don't have to pay outrageously expensive fees for tomatoes that taste like...nothing. (Hey Ma, there's no tomato in my tomato!)
Did I mention I'm on vacation? Kidding. Of course I did. The first thing I did last night was get my hair done. (Backstreet Salon in Medford, MA) I love having my hair done. It's really peaceful there. The ladies all talking...the trashy magazines...the smell of the bleach...the feel of the wax ripping the unwanted hair off my face (Yes, my eyebrows are rocking the house right now...Mustache? What mustache?).
I wanted to post some pictures of the Xenocryst Hat (by Linda Shelhamer) that I'm making. It calls for the Estonian Double Cast-on, which I'd never even heard of so of course I didn't know how to do it. There's a great tutorial video on You Tube: It's stretchy, it's decorative and it's Estonian - or so I've heard. I was able to get it without too much difficulty and here it is on the left. It's basically a regular continental long-tail cast on with an extra step and a double tail. Sorry if I'm getting too technical for you non-knitters. I'll knock it off. You can see that I'm about two inches in, and I've got a couple issues. First of all, there is no way this this is going to fit on the head of an adult. It's not the fault of the pattern, but the fault of the knitter (me). I'm an extremely tight knitter, so I need to switch to a bigger needle. At least I didn't get too far into it, because it's getting frogged (translation: ripped out) this afternoon. The other issue is the color. The cables are really beautiful, and they are hard to see b/c the teal is so dark. I'm trying to knit from my stash and I've got a ton of this colorway (1500 grams) so I figured I could use one hank on this hat and four or so on Bella's Mittens I'll do to go with. I'll ask D & B to opine when they get here later.
That takes me to the "Is Everybody REALLY Doing It? Shrug". That's the Holly version of the Everyone's Doing It Shrug by Megyn. What a complete nightmare. Here's the recap: D made and was wearing the shrug in less than a week. Holly thought, Cool! I'm looking for a quick project, but I'm going to add extra rows of seed stitch for sleeves and make it a bit longer down the back. Right HERE is where someone should've stopped me. I was 19 rows from completion and I knew I wasn't going to have enough yarn. D was here and held it while I frogged it directly onto the winder. I then cast on again with 44 instead of 48 stitches so it wouldn't be as long down the back. I blew through it and here it is. I sewed up the first "sleeve", tried it on and I loved it.



I then lined up the second sleeve and I realized I had a problem. It's a good one, too: The problem is that even though I used a row counter for the second sleeve, I still somehow managed to skip 1 1/4 inches of seed stitch. What the hell? If someone finds my brain, could you please return it? So it's not that big a deal. I can just undo the bind off, do another 10 rows of seed stitch, bind off and sew up the sleeve, right? No... I'm out of yarn. I need about 5 grams of yarn and it comes in 200 gram hanks (200 grams is enough to knit a whole 'nother shrug). So given the choice of A) Frogging it AGAIN, B) taking it out to the driveway and setting it on fire, C) buying another hank of which I need a fraction, or D) throwing it in the closet with the other dead UFOs to never be seen again, what did I do? That's right; I bought another hank. I'm not knitting this thing a third time. I can barely stand the sight of it now.

I'm still trying to finish up the organization of my stash. I'm at the point of winding half skeins and random bits - primarily Lamb's Pride and Cascade 220. I make a lot of felted bags, so I have tons of worsted weight laying around. The spaghetti looking yarn in the foreground was the stranded part of a lovely mitten that has been mostly done for a year and a half. B says finish it or frog it. Indeed.
Gotta scoot. Thanks for stopping by...