Catching up on knitting

Wow - so incredibly much has happened in the last thirty days, it's unbelievable. Some of it really beautiful and good and exciting. (Opened a second gallery, completely redid the kitchen from the subflooring and studs up.) Other stuff really, horribly sad and hard. See the previous post for a short summary. Between the good and the sad, there was really precious little time for knitting much at all, so my Sexy Knitters Club knit-along on the Somewhat Cowl has been languishing, although I have only to pick up stitches around the neck and knit the cowl itself. I will be finished in the next few days if at all possible.

Also languishing is my sister-in-law's Soleil tank. I was nearly done with the three repeats of the lace pattern at the hem - lace is oddly difficult for me. Not unpleasant, just challenging, even though this particular pattern is about as straight forward as one could be. Anyway, I was nearly through with it, down the second to last row of the last pattern, and I ended up with one fewer stitch than necessary. I tried and tried to frog back and correct it, but I couldn't make it work out to my satisfaction. So I ripped it all out, recast on and started again. I did a left-handed long tail cast on, so I would have a nice even knit row to begin, and then realized that since I need to immediately join in the round, the purl side would be showing. So remove it all from the needles and cast on again. Third time's the charm, I hope - I've completed one 8 row repeat and feel very solid about the stitch now. I hope to really get rocking on it and send it off to New York by June 1, though. I think I can do it - it looks like a pretty quick knit.

I still have yet to sew in the sleeves on my coppery wrap front vintagey sweater from VK summer '05, and then I'll need to add the crochet edging. I've been holding off on that while working on the SWC, as it's still cool enough for SWC and too cool for the cotton short sleeve sweater. But not for much longer. Also, since she's been hanging in the closet, I'm hoping the length will have grown a little bit from the weight of hanging. Even though I measured very carefully, it was still a little shorter than I really like. Guess I really need to make a little dress form - the sort where you where a snug t-shirt and then have someone duct tape you from neck to groin, then cut you loose. I think having the 3-D model of my own lumpy bod will really help with perfecting the fit of my creations.

I had signed up for Project Spectrum Post Card Swap a while back and am really excited to have just "met" my swapping partner. Lady Arliss from Bakersfield CA will soon be receiving a green themed art card from me. I'm excited and scared, since I've never done this before. And I think the last time I made a card I must have been about six, and it was probably a crayon drawing on contstruction paper reading "happy moths day" or something. I hope she'll like my humble offering.