Long over due

Really, I finished binding off the day after I showed you the partially finished bind off. I've still yet to block the thing though. Not quite sure how I'm going to do that at the moment. One is a question of space. I'm sure that if I just cleaned my room, I'm sure there'd be room there, but it's getting the floor cleaned and all that. There is an empty clean room that I could possibly get use of. Mostly it's just that I'm lazy. I enjoyed the knitting and was quite proud of getting it done. Granted, there where only cats around when I finished, and one must always remember that cats are unimpressed with finished knitting. Even when you throw them on said knitting to be impressed by it.

See? Unimpressed cat thrown on knitting to fully be able to admire it. Any how, I'll do my best to keep timely on updates. Just a kind of busy life. (That and for some reason playing games seemed more fun than knitting. Crazy, I know, but it happens.)

Bright Blessings!

Time for pictures

Well, here's the shawl. I was hoping to get the bind off completed today. Clearly that didn't happen. You can probably tell from the curve of the edge, this is a really stretchy bind off. I still have just under half the shawl to bind off. I could have gotten further along if I didn't mess around for a couple hours, though part of that was cooking and eating. I figure that's important and shouldn't be neglected. Probably in the next couple of days I'll be done with the bind off. Which means I'll need to figure out where and how to block it. Oh, I know the basics of how, just haven't really planned how I'm going to do that yet. I'm just not sure my full sized bed is going to be big enough to host such a project for a day. We'll see, I'll figure out something. I could take it upstairs and lay it out on my bed, or even check blocked measurements from the book. It'll get figured out.

Here's the twisted check block. It was somewhat of an actual pain to knit. Yes, it got a good deal easier to work after I switched to the longer 14 inch needle that I could set the needle into my hip joint and knit.

Anyhow, I need to get sleep before work tomorrow. (And I just realized from the date on the photo's that tomorrow's valentines day. Not really looking forward to that.) So it's off to bed for this knitter.

Bright Blessings and happy knitting!

'Nother list

• The longer needles allows the stable needle use and eases the knitting of the block. Though I'd like to try stabilizing using my knee.
• I often knit while sitting with my laptop.
• Shawl-knitting often covers my whole lap (or computer)
• The shawl covering my computer makes me nervous for my computer. This is mainly because I've had a computer die of cooling related problems.
• This means I'm watching tv while I'm knitting instead.
• I have 18 rows left.
• I'm hoping to have the shawl finished sometime during the week.

That's about all I have today. Bright Blessings you guys!

The blue and white blob!

1. I should get it on a long length of waste yarn to get a nice shot of the thing. It looks less blob-like than the last time you saw it, but still...
2. When I took that picture I have twenty-four more rows before it's done.
3. Point 2 is exciting, 24 sounds like a easily doable number.
4. If I'm remembering correctly that shot shows a shawl with over 700 stitches in each row, and it'll grow a bit for at least half of those 24 rows.
5. If you can't tell, it's actually the "Irish Diamond Shawl" from Folk Shawls. The blue and Irish is why I tend to call it "Bridget's Cloak." If you don't get the reference, look up either St. Bridget or the goddess Bridgit, or some variation of the spelling.

Not that I'm giving up on it. It actually took me by a bit of surprise that it was only 24 more rows. I'm just tempering myself (and you few readers) that this might still be a bit of a slog. I'm not sure that there'll be much way to show progress for this project. (Also, I must take more dynamic shots, not just, "Hey, here's the thing! See how pretty it is?" shots.) I'm thinking of just having a line at the bottom that tells you how close I'm getting. That and I can't get a good gauge of how long this is right now, and I'm slightly worried it's going to end up too small. I know, I know, there's the magic of blocking and I should just trust. (Other than I didn't swatch, and I usually don't wash swatches anyhow...) Plus once I'm done I'll have to figure out how to bind off those 762 stitches loosely. My book says to not bind off in the usually fashion, maybe I should read closer to see what's recommended.

Bright Blessings!

I should be heading to bed

But it just doesn't feel right heading off before leaving you some sort of update. (Even though I have to be in by 6am tomorrow...) I actually haven't gotten much knitting progress to show, well, besides all of the shawl I've knit up to this point. When I'm done with this row I'll have nearly 700 stitches.

My excuse for hardly knitting? Allergies. My one symptom of allergies I just can't stand is when my ears plug up. Sometimes it causes a mild ... hmm, I don't know that there's a good word for it. Discomfort isn't strong enough, and pain is too strong. But the other night I was chopping veggies for supper and was not in pain, but the sound of the knife whacking on the cutting board was not a pleasant sensation in my ear. Though that's not really what had me out today, I yawned about 20 minutes before my shift was over and somehow that increased the pressure in my left ear (my right ear had happened to pop and clear out earlier). It was painful, but one can't really stand at a register with her head resting on her shoulder. So I spend the afternoon on my side to help encourage drainage, then I was trying to dive through the Escher Girls archive... not conducive to knitting. I do have about an inch to go on my latest crazy pants block, so maybe that will be up tomorrow. Either that or I'll show you my bedtime knitting, as I can at least handle the pressure leaves in my left ear now.

Bright Blessings, and sleep well!