Sunbeam Soapbox

AKA WIP Thursday #10. Why is this beginning to feel like such a chore? I used to love writing and reading blogs. So much feels like it’s changing, but it’s not really. Am I putting too much pressure on myself? Maybe what I need is a lazy morning, or evening. Some time where I can sit around and read or draw. Nothing taxing.

I haven’t been quite as exhausted this week as I was last week, thankfully. I realized that I was over-thinking things and tried harder to relax in class, which is a much less stressful way to deal with school. I’m still tired at the end of the day, but not that all-consuming exhaustion, the one that scares me. (I was close to exhaustion yesterday, but not the same.)

I want to be able to write more, but I don’t know what about.

I also want to be able to turn off the computer more, but I can never get over the feeling of being desperately needed. It’s good that I’m going away next week. I won’t take my computer, either. Hopefully that will help me get back to myself.

This week for class I’ve been watching an excruciatingly long mini-series called: Heimat: A Chronicle of Germany.

So, Opal Zwergergarn in stockinette stitch it is. Nice and German to go with the German history. Nice and easy to go with the level of knitting I can handle right now.

Yes, the second mitten is finally moving along. I’m past the thumb gusset, so as long as I concentrate it should all be done soon. Maybe it’ll be done and ready for an FO post on the Monday or Tuesday after I get back?

Last week the snow here was up to my waist. Now you can actually walk on the tennis courts… Spring this year seems like birth: extremely messy and ugly in the process of transforming from winter to spring. Actual spring will be beautiful. Though I am not discounting the possibility of another snowstorm before the month is over. This is Minnesota. Winter lasts a long, long time.

I crawled into bed last night at 10pm, an almost shamefully early hour from the point of view of my peers. And as I laid there with my head throbbing, I thought, ugh, I should’ve lain down earlier. (Probably not those exact words, as I just looked up in Merriam-Webster whether I should have used ‘laid’ or ‘lain’.) My school days (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) are exhausting me, especially as I’m trying to research summer job opportunities between classes. I got home yesterday at 4:45 and heated up some potatoes and watched a few hours of TV. Without knitting. Knitting is also taking too much energy these days.

My thought is, if I had taken a nap when I got home (that is, lain down for half an hour, trying not to think so much), would I have relaxed enough to knit later? To do some work later? To not have a throbbing, pounding head later?

I think I’m going to try it on Friday, especially as I’ll be staying up ‘late’ to go to a big semi-formal event at school. Wish me luck? And energy?

I can’t wait to have more energy for knitting and blogging, because right now I’m just drained.

Whoosh! Once again time is getting away from me. I had wanted/intended to post something on Tuesday.

Which is just as well as I’m also getting a little irritated at the slog-y-ness of my projects. I need an FO boost.

My most recent thought was that I was close to finishing mara, so that would be an FO, but then I did the increase row.

The increase row doubled the number of stitches, so the rows are even longer now. Like 400 stitches long? I have quite a bit of knitting left. (I almost want to abandon mara for a bit and cast on for some socks.)

Finishing parts seem to stall me up. Time to find an hour or so to just finish this mitten up so I can start the next. I absolutely refuse to show you the back part of the mitten until it’s all blocked—I hope it look much more even and pretty then. Until then I’m too embarrassed!

If I didn’t have a paper due on Monday I’d say, maybe I’ll devote an afternoon this weekend to finishing up that vest I was working on… since I have yarn and pattern to start a lovely sweater… I’d like to get more things officially DONE and keeping me warm. But I have a paper due. I’ll settle for one mitten completely finished and the second one on the needles by the end of the weekend?

You’ve got to appreciate a pattern I cast on another for after finishing the first one. Seeing as I’m always hungry for new patterns, and all.

Since unpinning and fixing that pesky dropped stitch, this shawl has only left my shoulders for me to clean the kitchen. It feels wonderful and beautiful and I can only barely believe that something like this could be a product of my fingers.

Maybe it’s the lovely variegation of the yarn (which you can’t see well from the pictures—drat), or maybe the yarn itself blocking so beautifully (with real T-pins at every point instead of a few marking pins at various points). I don’t know what it is, but I am absolutely enchanted with this shawl. Enchanted, and hardly feel worth such a piece.

Ishbel. No modifications. Just size small. (Blocked out pretty big though, fairly bigger than my last.)

Ishbel (Ravelry):
Pattern: Ishbel again by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy – in Night Watch, I think
Needles: Bamboo US 6, again.

Seeing it all laid out the past couple of days made my heart jump every time. So beautiful. I get it. Lace is magic. What shawl pattern should I knit next?

Because it is really irritating me that I’ve only been posting these weekly WIP posts, and nothing else, I finally got around to buying some dish soap and blocking the second Ishbel.

So hey, how about a FO post over the weekend? I’d like that.

There is, however, one problem.

I can’t believe I’m hoping this is a dropped stitch, because then I might be able to wrangle my two inches of leftover yarn (the rest is at home in California) into securing it into place. If it’s fraying yarn what am I supposed to do? How could the yarn be breaking already??

At least it’s mesmerizingly beautiful to look at the shawl as a whole.

Oh, I’ve been working on that mitten too.

My 2-stranded tension is wonky (as usual—I guess I just need to practice more…) and you can’t really tell that it’s supposed to be an image. I’m choosing to be enchanted anyway. :)

Once again I don’t have pictures of what I’m working on, because they’ll look remarkably like the pictures you’ve seen already. miss mara looks like a great big garter blob (of love) and last night I ripped the mittens to start over again on the smallest needles I own (which hadn’t been used up until now out of fear). I believe they’ll progress better now though, and miss mara is getting reeeeally close to time to work on the edging. Since it’s just knitting I kind of plow through it with my brain off (why is that happening a lot lately?).

Problem: finishing miss mara means I won’t have that lovely break project that’s only knit stitch.

Solution: fish out the skein of sock yarn in the yarn drawer (the last full skein of yarn in there… the last of the stash… this is haunting me) and start a pair of stockinette socks. That has to last longer than miss mara has.

Or, after the Knitty surprise showed up, even better solution: fish out the same skein of sock yarn and knit Skew sock. Still mostly stockinette but with a weird construction that makes it a little more intriguing. What do you think?

And what do I do when that is done? Well, I’ve been thinking about that. And fearing of that. And daydreaming in class a bit. Since it’s still freakin’ cold I’m still thinking about sweaters, despite my usual reluctance to think about them. (I think the fact that a sweater I received for Christmas and only worn three times has a HUGE hole right in the armpit is also driving my motivation to knit myself a sweater, because I’d know it’s made better than a sweater I could buy.)

So I doodled a bit in a notebook as to what kind of sweater I’d like, and I think I settled on wanting a crew-neck pullover, or maybe an almost tunic-length pullover with long sleeves. Despite how much I like 3/4 length sweaters I’ve realized that I’ve only worn long sleeves since coming back to Minnesota. (Wonder why?) So I need a sweater that’s not too thick, since I overheat easily, and works with the crew-neck shirts I have already.

Most of the patterns I looked through on Ravelry do not have crew necks. (Although few of those are yoked, and I’m wondering if it’s worth it to look through some yoked sweaters…) So for this very theoretical meandering, does anyone have any tips or pattern ideas for a crew-neck not-bulky pullover?

I can’t believe I successfully wrote 423 words of speculation about knitting a sweater, which I’m really hesitant to do anyway because I’m so scared of getting something that’s not at all flattering or fit right. I need a real-life knit-along or something.

Well – I have to admit that I held out on you in my last post. The yarn for the mittens, you see, wasn’t the only yarn I had purchased on Saturday.

No, I bought some Cascade 220 to make this shawl as well. You see I’ve been mesmerized by mara ever since katie over at brokeknits started hers, with a few words about the color green:

1. Green represents tranquility, good luck, health.
2. Researchers have also found that green can improve reading ability.
3. Green is often used in decorating for its calming effect.
4. Green is thought to relieve stress and help heal.

To which I said: wait a minute, I could use that too. I better make my mara copycat in green too. Although this sea-green is far outside my normal color scheme, that was also part of the point: to branch out a bit. I know I’m a little stuck, color-wise, and I’d like to break out past my deep blues, lime greens and scarlet reds. So I’m trying this.

It’s funny, though. When I first started seriously knitting, I thought there was no way I’d enjoy knitting something was purely garter stitch, or purely stockinette, and here I am now, completely enjoying it. I think I finally realized that there’s a place for those really complicated cable patterns that I love so much (nothing makes me melt more easily than twisted stitches and cables running all over the place), that place is probably not relaxing at the end of the day while watching TV. Then I just lose my place and stop paying attention to what I’m watching. So I guess we’ll be seeing more simpler projects from me in the future, things I can knit and watch stuff with.

And I’ll keep the complicated stuff (like Clematis) for my “buffer zone” between classes, when I don’t want to start watching TV but do want to get my mind away from school.

So — that’s the works in progress for this week. I just got my shawl and vest from January so I’ll start doing the finishing on them sooner or later! I’m super excited for some new FOs! Happy knitting to all.

No need to send the straight-jackets—everything is turning out fine. I managed to rest enough on Thursday to feel much better Friday and today, so today I wanted to go out and walk around, feel some fresh air. And maybe visit the yarn shop. ;) Actually it looks like my inner knitter needed to visit the yarn shop even more than I thought, as I hardly dawdled getting over there, and once I (very quickly) found what I wanted, I bought my yarn, wound it up, and rushed home to start knitting.

And that’s where I’ve been since.

That would be the beginnings of Clematis, which is part of the flurry of downloaded patterns I bought last night as part of the Help for Haiti relief. I may or may not have bought many more patterns than I ever have before, so here’s hoping that my resolution to KNIT MORE really holds true.

And – let’s just say one more thing: this is really not how I planned to spend my day, but I’m pretty happy with the outcome. :)

ETA Becky is hosting a giveaway over at Lunsh.net, please drop by and enter! I guess that means I have to host the next giveaway, huh…?

Picture: The sock from last week, all ready to be grafted shut at the toe, but not done yet because then I would really have nothing to knit, since I forgot to pack the second ball in my luggage.

Picture: The shawl and vest, not quite caught up to my spring semester adventures, as they, too, have been left behind in order to preserve space in the luggage.

Picture: One recently-turned-21-year-old girl, sniffling and hacking, growing more and more irritated by her luck. A girl who had wanted to write a whole post on her birthday, one that could hardly contain her excitement, but saw her confinement to bed whenever possible the more prudent measure. A girl who has been confined to bed with nothing to knit… but at least has fixed up her Internet so she can watch hours of television on her computer without the shows breaking up. This girl would never know what to do without television when she is sick!

Yes, sick, just my luck, as usual, my immune system sucks, la la la, hatred, anger, etc. Obviously this year is starting off juuuust right. If I get bronchitis again I’m going to hit somebody. Preferably whoever thinks this is funny (that would be whatever gods are up there in the sky). I WILL STILL WRITE ABOUT MY BIRTHDAY, PLEASE DON’T HOLD IT AGAINST ME THAT IT WILL BE QUITE A FEW DAYS LATE BECAUSE I’M SICK AND FRUSTRATED AND JUST WANT TO TRADE IN FOR A HIGHER-GRADE IMMUNE SYSTEM. Thanks all. If anyone hears this — please send yarn!