Very Little Progress

I've been making very little progress in the fiber area. I wish I could say it was because I've been busy planting my garden, or busy making money, or even busy updating my blog, but it's none of that. You see, I bought a new computer.

My old computer, purchased in February 2000, was still running Windows 98, had a 4 GB hard drive, and dial-up internet access. Surfing the web was more like slogging through a swamp and I periodically had to remove unused programs to make way for a new file. In the last few days of its life, the old computer would freeze up every time I closed a browser window that was still loading, making it extremely annoying to blog stalk. And then, $600 fell in to my lap in the form of work reimbursements I almost forgot to submit and which I had not budgeted for. So, clearly, it was time for a new computer.

Well, the new computer came with Windows Vista (the jury's still out on whether I like it or not) with some amusing gadgets such as a desktop side bar with a clock and post-it note memo pad, and other fun stuff. And I was able to get rid of the dial-up and get a DSL line, so now I can listen to podcasts and watch You Tube and all those great knitting and spinning videos out there. And it also came with some new games. Which is what all this is leading up to. It's mostly one game in particular, see. It's called Fate, and it's one of those role-playing games. You know, you start out with a dog and a knife, you go down into the dungeon, kill some monsters, find some gold and some weapons and some armor, get quests, get killed and brought back to life, learn magic spells, the whole nine yards. And I've played 72 hours already. My character, a spear-carrying Magician, turned her dog into a Dire Unicorn by feeding him a fish, and had made it to the 77th level of the dungeon. I am such a geek!

So the knitting progress has stalled. But I have finished a few things:

Mother's Day Tofutsies

Anklet socks with a lace rib cuff and short-row heel and toe on size 1 needles

A little more than half of one 100g ball of SWTC Tofutsies, 50% superwash wool, 25% Soysilk, 22.5% cotton, and 2.5% chitin (fiber made from crab and shrimp shells, supposed to be antibacterial, and stop the socks from stinking the joint up)

As the name implies, made for my Mother, who has nice small feet and loves the color combo. Don't tell her they're 50% wool or she'll go on and on about how they're too hot. What she doesn't know won't hurt her!

I absolutely love Tofutsies and went right out and bought another ball for me when I finished these.

Ziggy's Elephant

From Last Minute Knitted Gifts

One 50 g ball of Plymouth Dream Baby, a dark dusty green, and one 50 g ball of Koigu, multicolor. Yellow Koigu for kerchief.

Double stranded on size 6 needles.

My SP8 downstream, the charming Stick Chick, had a gorgeous baby boy earlier this year, so of course he needed an elephant. It's cute, but not nearly as cute as Ziggy!

And I do have something on the needles:

I bought a cone this fingering-weight 100% bamboo last year from Woodland Woolworks.

It's silky smooth, shiny and soft, soft, soft. It has been swatched a million times in a million stitch patterns. It's very loosely plied and splitty as the dickens. It's also very teeny, working up to about 9 st/inch in stockinette. Thus my decision to make a lace something with it. I've decided on a lace t-shirt. The lace pattern is English Mesh Lace from Barbara Walker's First Treasury of Knitted Patterns. It's an eight-row repeat, all wrong-side rows are purled and the second pair of right-side rows are the same as the first pair, but offset, so it's a very easy lace. Well, I suppose it's a very easy lace, but, dammit, I have to frog constantly. I keep getting into a rhythm and then throwing in an extra yarn-over or something and before I know it, I'm off a half-repeat and have to frog half the row. And how many stitches in the row? Only 195. Am I crazy? The above progress is two night's worth of knitting. On a normal sweater, I would have about 1/3 the back done by now. I might be crazy, yes. Or, by October, I might have a finished lace t-shirt.

And of course, an obligatory kitty shot:

Here we have my 2 1/2 cats. That's Nellie on the left, Chester in the middle, and the 1/2 cat, Theo on the pillow. Theo stays with us when his owners travel, about twice a year. He's a giant, fluffy thing whose meow sounds like a bell. Here they are in typical knitting positions. When I put on the audibooks and settle into my knitting chair (not pictured, but off to the left), they all come in and settle down on the bed. They especially like the Harry Potter audiobooks. They must find Jim Dale's voice soothing. Well, so do I.

Don't notice the messy bedroom. This is an older shot, and the tiny yarn stash in the green bin has more than doubled in size, and this was before I had any fiber, whose stash is now stacked up along my bedside cabinet. Yeah, that stash-busting not exactly making progress.