12 in 12

So, according to Ravelry (which doesn't count cross stitch, quilting, canvas or hardanger, so no, I didn't get The List down super-far, don't worry), I have twelve WIPs. WIPs are things that I actually intend to finish at some point, as opposed to UFOs, which I have finally realized means I will NOT finish them. (The List has both right now; it will be pruned of UFOs for the new year.) Anyway, here are my Ravelry WIPs:


They're presented in order of "happiness" - which should probably also be updated, since by "happiness", my Evenstar should be dead last. (I am loathing knit-on beaded edging and only keeping going because the yarn is soooo fluffy and the beads are soooo pretty and I WANT THAT SHAWL.)

As pictured left to right, top to botttom, the items are as follows:

1. The 2011 Advent Calendar Scarf, Part 1. I started this on December 1 this year, so it hasn't been a WIP for long. Since I'm doing it with MadTosh Merino Light, 91 stitches and 12 days of pattern will actually get me a shawl. This is probably the closest item to being finished. It will be saved for the OWL frenzy that is March.
2. Slytherin Crest Bag. The knitting is done, the blocking is done. I have the hardware, the straps, and the canvas for the lining. I have zippers and more canvas for pockets. I just have to actually (*shudder*) SEW the thing together. February is a short month with a long weekend - I think I'll save this for then.
3. Ancient Runes OWL: Pretty as a Peacock Shawl. I actually have to frog back through the first set of peacock feathers, which is what killed this shawl getting finished in the first place. And (oh, joy!) I don't think there's a lifeline anywhere in the thing. (I have learned better since!) Whereabouts currently unknown; I'll keep this for August, in-between terms, since it's silk and not *super* warm.
4. Swiss Cheese Scarf. A pleasant little mindless something to carry around with everything else. Also to be saved for an end of term - preferably one where I'm traveling - like July.
5. Astronomy OWL: Evenstar Shawl. It's JUST the edging left. The beaded edging. Still, I think I've got a shot at finishing it in a week or two of knitting. Since it's very warm, it needs a winter midterm - either April this year, or hold until December.
6. Pullover WITH FLAMES. About half the flames are done. I just need to rework the neck (I hate the way it looks now) and worry about the sleeves. Except for the WITH FLAMES areas, it's simple stockinette, so it goes fast when I'm actually knitting.
7. The 2010 Advent Calendar Scarf. Whereabouts currently unknown, and I think I only have about seven days done. This one should be a midterm project, too... and I think I just ran out of midterms.
8. EZ 100th Anniversary Pi Hearts Shawl. This is a big shawl; I think I just kicked up to the 560-stitch rows. It's working well, though, and the Neighborhood Fiber Company silk is a pleasure. It's a pretty simple pattern, despite the size of what's left; I think I can do this during regular term.
9. Yarn on Thursdays: Stitch Edition Blanket. I'm going through (or was going through, I enrolled in the HPKCHC) the entire Knitting on the Net Stitch Directory. I got through 19 weeks of my project in 2010/2011, and 67 stitches on the list. For sanity, I think I'll call "finished" for the blanket at stitch 77, which should be two more panels on the blanket, which should make it queen-sized/futon sized. The rest of the stitches will be handled as sampler pillows for the colorwork/mosaic stuff and the rest in a nice little lap-sized throw. But finished for this is the last ten stitches in part II of the list. Should be able to knock this out during term.
10. Dragon Illusion Blanket. OY. I started this a long, long time ago, before I really had a grasp on what either "287 st/row" or "every row in illusion knitting is actually four rows" meant. I'm almost to the halfway point; I'm thinking if I can get five (really 20) rows a month, I might have it done by the end of the year sometime. And 20 rows of this thing is about all I can manage before it gets exiled again.
11. Peacock Feather Beaded Scarf. This isn't just "whereabouts unknown"; it's so small - just a tiny ball of merino and some beads - that I think it may actually have been accidentally thrown out. If I haven't found it by December 2012, it'll officially come off The List and my Rav page as "forever frogged".
12. History of Magic OWL: Peacock Fillet Crochet Tablecloth. I want this thing done. IT FREAKING TAKES FOREVER. It's a tiny hook. It's tiny thread. BUT IT IS SO PRETTY! I think this will be another "work about ten rows, put it down for a month" projects.

So, according to the above, I want to finish the twelve items in the following order, more or less. Any of the larger items (tablecloth, illusion blanket) will get worked on well before the month they're due - heck, all of them might be - so this is just a "hey, if I haven't started finishing this yet, I really should" list :

January - Pullover WITH FLAMES February - Slytherin Crest Bag March - 2011 Advent Calendar Scarf, Part 1 April - Evenstar Shawl (OWL) May - Yarn on Thursdays: Stitch Edition Blanket June - 2010 Advent Calendar Scarf July - Swiss Cheese Scarf August - Pretty as a Peacock Shawl (OWL) September - EZ 100th Anniversary Pi Hearts Shawl October - Peacock Fillet Crochet Tablecloth (OWL) November - Dragon Illusion Blanket December - Peacock Feather Beaded Scarf

Yeah, that should keep me busy this year. Not even counting the upcoming 54 classes, three BROOMs, three OWLs, Quidditch, Challenges, and other events!!

More on the scarf that turned into a shawl...

Okay, so I really thought I'd have the Advent Calendar Shawl #1 done by today... but not quite. I'm working on Day 10 right now, which is kinda short, so I should be on Day 11 soon (on the way home?) and hopefully Day 12 by tomorrow, which will be The End for the first shawl. Then I'm giving myself until New Year's to do the second one!


Day 7


Day 8


Day 9
It is going to be really pretty, and blocking should help a LOT. I'm just amazed that I've managed a shawl instead of a scarf; everyone else must knit tightly with thread and teeny-tiny needles! (And yes, I'm purposely not doing any more full-length shots until it's done. I gotta keep some of the mystery going!)

The Kauni Got Me.

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm doing Wollkistchen's Advent Calendar Scarf for 2011: LINK. So far, so good, still on schedule. Since I've got a Time Advantage (the pattern for a particular Day drops, for me, at 5pm the day before), I haven't fallen behind yet, although it's been close once or twice. Here's what I have so far, for the first week:

This was a little triangle-lace motif that gives the border of the scarf a pretty scalloped edge:


Day 1
Next, we had lace with cables (ooo!):


Day 2
Next up, some wavy green not-cables... kinda cool!


Day 3
Then, some snowflake lace. I stopped half a repeat short of what was called for, so it would balance top-to-bottom. (In my opinion; I'm quite certain it's fine as written, too, based on all the lovely photos in the Day 4 thread of the Rav group.)

Day 4
About now, I'm realizing that I love the MadTosh Merino Light I'm using, and that it's REALLY REALLY going to benefit from blocking. The stitch definition is good now, ditto the lace, but it'll be spectacular once everything is opened up and stretched out a bit. And I'm actually making a shawl, as it turns out - without much stretching, mine's over two feet wide; with blocking, it'll probably hit 30in/2.5ft! Also? It's a TOTAL BEAR to photograph it just now. It really, really needs to be blocked so you can see the pretty better. (Some people are actually pinning out their scarves each day for the daily photograph; I'm lucky to get it knitted, and couldn't find my pins to save my life. They're in a bag marked "OWL DO NOT LOSE" lost somewhere in my house.)

On to some leafy-looking stuff in the next band; I'm glad it randomly wound up on a "green" day:
Day 5
Then, this fun one. The chart was NOT making sense to me (and I'm one of those that usually prefers charts to written instructions), so I actually didn't start it until Day 6 (thus getting me horribly behind for the day, since I'm supposed to be ready to start Day 7 on the commute home the previous night).


Day 6
By the end of Day 6, I've determined that I'm not knitting an Advent Calendar Scarf. I'm actually knitting two twelve-day shawls, of which this is the first (which will be done by Monday, in time for Yule Cat!). I also had massive fail getting started on Day 7 - I had to cast on three times because of a persitent inability to count to eight several times in succession after 10pm at night. Did manage, finally, just before work started, and using paperclips as markers.

I'm only about halfway through Day 7 at this point - the first time I've actually been behind so far, and I should catch up easily during my coffeeshop time on Saturday afternoon. Why am I behind, you might wonder?

Because I started a Swiss Cheese scarf.

The Kauni got me.

And now, for some relaxing knitting!

Wednesday night, since I made it all the way through work, I wandered (albeit slowly) to Fibre Space to peruse the Madeline Tosh MadTosh Merino Light. As it turns out, I love it, so I got three skeins, one each in Byzantine, Moorlands and Brothers Grimm. I've already cast on with it: I'm doing Wollkistchen's Advent Calendar Scarf for 2011: LINK. Instead of all one color, I'll be doing all the divider segments (25 total!) in Brothers Grimm (black), then alternating the Day Patterns in Moorlands (green) and Byzantine (brick), starting with Day One in Moorlands. (My original plan had been to do a beaded version using Neighborhood Fiber Company's Penthouse Lace in the bright purple, with lovely dark iridescent beads. That plan didn't survive the MadTosh Merino Light.) There's a knitalong group on Ravelry, Advent Calendar Scarf 2011, if you want to play along. (Here, also, is the link to last year's scarf, which is also lovely. I'm about halfway through that one, in some lovely Neighborhood Fibre Company "Loft" in a lovely forest green. There's also a Rav group for the 2010 scarf, if you have any questions about it, the answers are probably in there!)


Day One
Since midnight Thursday in the far side of Europe is 5pm Wednesday on the here side of the US, I was able to start my "spacer row" last night. Several people had already posted their finished Day One in the "Day 1" thread in the Ravelry group by the time I got to work on Thursday! I caught up to yesterday (Day 1) at lunch, and was able to get the spacer in preparation for Day 2 done on the train ride home. So, this morning, I got Day 2 done:


six rows shy of being done with Day Two
Sorry I didn't get this up yesterday, but it's not too late to join in! I started four days behind last year, and caught up quickly!

Stuff I Got!

So, last Tuesday (the Day of the Earthquake), I was going to hit FibreSpace to soothe my rattled neves with yarn. I left work at 5pm; the Metro, which was running at 15 miles an hour, got to King Street Station at 6:53. I can't move fast enough to get up the street to the store in seven minutes. So, on my way into work (late) on Wednesday, I managed to sneak in a side-trip. I found needles, yarn, and goodies.


The needles are Kollage DPNs, which I would love just because they're shiny copper-colored things, but they actually work really, really well. I got a set of size 3's for starting my OWL later this week, and with those and a pair of size 5s, I'll be making a pair of Flourishing Mittens. I'll be doing them with some Mini Mochi, which I last used as the fluffy green edge of the Serenity Baby Blanket, and some Dragonfly Fibers Djinni Sock in the Espresso Roast colorway. I think the bright colors and contrast with the deep brown yarn will work really well. And the fibre content is *almost* the same - and it's all washable, which is key for mittens of mine that aren't mostly black!!


note subtle favorite NFL team plug
The goodies are another Herdy keychain (already clipped to the strap of my current totebag) and a lovely Perl Grey shawl pin. It goes delightfully with my new StellaLuna Ravenclaw shawl (see last post)!


So, I'm now really, really set to start my OWL, I've got a potential OOtP project (or at least a class project), and classes start on Thursday. I'm pretty excited!!!

Tour de Fleece Update: I made yarn!

So, I got a shiny-new Ashford spindle from Nature's Yarns this past Saturday, since my little tiny spindle was Full-o-Yarn. I also got three little $1 bags of merino roving, and a three-minute impromptu how-to-draft properly lesson. Here's what I've done with it so far:

Tour de Fleece Day 9 (aka "Saturday"):


The plan is to make one long yarn from the red, orange and yellow fluff (1.5oz all told). I was able to get all the red done Saturday during the NASCAR race (not the most exciting race of the season, as it turned out), and thanks to actually *finally* being able to draft as I go all the time, it went quickly, comparitively. The heavier spindle actually helped with that! Also got much thinner yarn.

Tour de Fleece Day 10 (Sunday)


Started spinning up the orange the next day, and got very, very tired. Soooooo very tired. I think I only got a quarter to a third of the bag spun up. Near the end, it started to get thicker, too, so I called it quits for the day.

(Day 11, Monday, was a Rest Day)

Tour de Fleece Day 12 (Tuesday)



I was *beyond* tired Tuesday. Not only was it really, really hot ("93F, feels like 100F!" at 5pm), but the air quality was HORRID. It would've been a Red Air Quality day under the old system. So, in addition to not sleeping, I got to add "not really breathing" into the mix. On the other hand, of all the crafts I do, at this point, spinning takes the least amount of brain-power. (Getting the photo posted in time on the proper TdF thread on Ravelry? That almost didn't happen!!)

Tour de Fleece Day 13 (Wednesday)


The third and final color began, and except for interruptions due to some amazing dance routines on SYTYCD, went smoothly. So, by the end of the evening, I had about 120 yards of a three-color single.

Tour de Fleece Day 14 (Today)
Now, suddenly having the ability to try the whole Navajo plying thing was too entrancing to hit the snooze alarm, so this morning, I tried it. I got some stuff that actually looks like a nice little three-ply yarn:


... however, on the main, it's a wee bit of an overtwisted mess. When the spindle is going slowly, it's pretty easy to get about five feet of nicely-twisted looks-like-yarn stuff - but then the spindle has to stop, get wound with yarn, and things just *happen* in the middle of it. Part of it, certainly, is a practice thing, but part of it is something that just plain works better on a spinning wheel. Constant tension on the stuff being plied, on the resulting thing, and constant motion? That would actually work. (Possibly having caffiene *before* plying might help, but I think it's mostly mechanics.) Anyway, it resulted in 40.5 yards of yarn that *will* be used to make a tiny bag - since that's about all one can do with 40 yards of yarn.


I think I probably should've been able to get double that - but it's horribly overtwisted for the first third, badly overtwisted for the second, and almost real yarn-like in the final third. Oh well, that's why Attempt at Plying #1 was with the $1 bags of fluff! Back to the silk tomorrow!

Tis the season... to show the loot!

First post after Christmas... so let me show you the Knitting Loot from my boss-who-knits! (She goes to FibreSpace; gift certificates were obtained; stuff was then obtained, as said certificated quickly burned a hole in my pocked. You know how it is.) First up, the adorable new Knit and Puuuuuurl shirt. I had to get the version with the blue space-cat. I'm all about blue space-cats.


front




back

Then I espied the bargain yarn bin. Lookit those tags. Yep, Malbrogio LACE. In Orange/Tiger Lily (my favorite color), and Chartreuse/Apple Green (a color that's usually on me somewhere). I'll probably be combining both into one lovely shawl, but I'm not sure. It may be one big and one small thing. We'll see. But it's really pretty lovely soft yarn!!



The point-of-purchase display of needle gauges got me, since one of the things I tend to lose with regularity are needle gauges. It's pretty, and flat, and will now live in my backpack. (Which, just so you know, is chartreuse.)


Whee! I got stuff!!

I have a Kitty!

Busy, busy weekend. More on the busy later, but first...

Meet my new Virtual Niece, Kitty! The world's cutest baby, in my opinion. I admit to no bias. She's the one that gets all the Baby Stuff I've been knitting this year, and she looks adorable in all of it!


I'm not the sort to coo over babies, but she got me. (And someone had a camera to get proof.)


As I was visiting her, I didn't get much knitting done... here's my Advent Scarf. I'm 1/3 the way through Day 3. (It's now Day 13... oops!)


Also - in her neck of the woods? There's a different feel to the Christmas decor!


Yes, it's a palm tree. More on The Weekend of Babydom later!

Friday wrap-up

First, a note: OMG SQUEEEE!!!


Srsly. Exploding SNAP has been worth it just for the fact that I *haven't* added to the list for three straight weeks. (I know the Official Count is 20 days, but I know I didn't start anything on the 31st of July, either, although I was really tempted.

Not starting is a good thing, because I've got plenty of work yet to GET started for the fall: One of my SNAP items (which *doesn't* count against me for SNAP starting, but DOES go in the UFO list) is to wind up the balls for my upcoming Herbology O.W.L. and get all my cable swatches done. Here are the fifteen skeins of Silky Wool all ready to hop on the swift:


I'm hoping to get that done this weekend, and get my swatching all done next week, since on the first, I hope to submit my O.W.L. proposal and get knitting on the lovely jacket that will be the result!

As a result of Not Starting things, I've kept working on the carry-around projects, of which there are two. The first is the Forget-Me-Not Shawl (have I given you the link to the pattern lately? I don't think I have. Hrm. Well, here's the Rav link; looks like you have to have a free Elann account to access it now, so your choice on signing up or not.) Anyway, I'm now one Chart 2 repeat away from the edge. Then there's the fancy-schmancy picot bind-off. Just between you and me, I'm doing two rows of garter stitch before I start on that! Anyway, I'm going to try to finish this in August, since it's one of the older knitting UFOs, and it'd be nice to have it finished.


The other thing I'm carrying around is the Tiffany Wisteria Window. The last picture I could find of it is below, with where-I-am-now below that.




I really need to (sigh) get a phone with a better camera. This looked all pretty and sparkly in the sun, and none of the pretty sparkles came through on my (relatively) ancient Samsung Juke (I got it when it first came out in 2007).

Oh, and in other Upcoming Projects news, I received my new TKGA Master Handknitting Level I packet on the 18th, so Masters Monday will be back, starting next week. This time, I'm going to get it done in a timely manner DANGIT!!!

Tuesday Afternoon

Running a bit late today, due to work going nuts and desperately needing an hour of knitting during lunch, which you now get to see.

At the end of lunchtime (such as it was) yesterday, I was getting close to the end of the yarn. I can't even remember who made this yarn: I just know it was mohair, hot pink, and on deep discount at Stitch DC Georgetown sometime in 2007 (2008?). There wasn't enough of it to make the entire Forget-Me-Not shawl, as you can probably tell. (I'm halfway through the first repeat of Chart 2.)


So, since I didn't want to run out, and hot pink mohair somehow makes me giggle every time I see it (and more happy in the universe is a Good Thing), I tracked down something similar. Three times over, in fact. I have enough for a couple of shawls - there are three more of these:


Now, this yarn *is* different. It's a hair heavier than the Mystery Merino, because it's wrapped with silk. The color match is almost exact (which is a miracle), but that little bit of silk twisted around the mohair is going to make it behave - and shimmer - a bit differently.


You can see here that there's just a wee bit of difference:


Now, the new fiber caused a wee bit of trouble with the felt-splicing - the silk didn't want to play along. Luckily, the mohair more than made up for it, so the splice got made. Now, even though I've got 230 yards of yarn to finish up, I'm pretty sure the Mystery Merino came in a skein of 685 (why I'm sure of this? I have no idea.), and I've hit the really-long-rows part of the shawl, and have about 40 rows to go. So I'll need about 1/3 of the total yarn for the shawl, which is about what I have.


And if not, hey, I've got three more!

... and one more thing.

Bonus End-of-Year Entry: I accidentally started a hat Tuesday night with the leftover yarn from my husband's Trilobite Hat - It's called The Year-End Deadline Hat. Thankfully, it got finished well before midnight on Thursday!! Here it is about 1/5 done, whereupon I decided that no, there WAS such a thing as "too many DPNs" for a hat.



By the end of Wednesday morning, having switched back to five DPNS, I was about six rows from where I thought I could call the crown "done"; by the end of lunch, I could almost see about how much hat I had left to go... and, more importantly, I could tell that yes, though on the close-fitting side, this hat will actually fit. (Yay for having a tiny, child-sized head - my glasses are cheaper (with my eyesight, this is really, really important - people can buy cars for what I'd have to pay for "grownup" frames!) - and it doesn't take much yarn to knit a hat or headband!) Plus, I remembered that if I don't have enough gray yarn for this hat, the orange-rust from my Sharp Shootin' Mitts is also DK-weight. So, there may be pom-pomage. I'm went back up to 9 DPNs, since hat was starting to edge a bit too close to the ends of the 4 DPN setup; that got too complicated, so I went back to 7 DPNs, which worked well.


Looks, um, questionable though, so that's a "GO" on the pom-pom, so the, um, pointy bit is obscured. Finished all the gray yarn Wednesday night, and started working the orange/rust. And managed to screw up a bit, so there' a bit of reworking (hey, "k2p2 around" CAN be confusing if you haven't had much sleep due to over-knitting) that happened on the very, very long commute in this morning. I figure I'll do one "repeat" of the cable pattern I made up for my mitts, and whatever yarn is left? POM POM. Here's how it looked at the end of Thursday lunch:


And, here it is, all done!


Note: if there's an image here, I finished it in time.
If there isn't, it'll be done before the first time I fall asleep in 2010.
I'm hoping there's an image.
If it's done, that's two yarns (the Berocco Merino DK from the Trilobite Hat and the Shiubi (sp?) Baby Alpaca DK from the Sharp Shootin' Mitts COMPLETELY used up. And STILL at 49 UFOs heading into 2010!! **PHEW!!!!**

Okay, no YoT this week, because most of last week (and Thanksgiving weekend) was dedicated to earning this:


As of Saturday, I had (officially) 51,098 words, which was enough to be verified, and I've spent most of the time since actually finishing up the first draft of the book (looks like it will clock in around 60k when all is said and done. I'm very happy to have "won" again this year, and had a lot of fun writing my book. For the last day of writing, I even donned both my NaNoWriMo t-shirt and my NaNoWriMo hoodie. Woohoo!


Oh, FINE, I do have some yarn to show you. I didn't actually hit the Black Friday sale at Fibre Space, since I was worried they might not have yarn by the time I got there. (There were Tweets about quite a line, and yarn frenzy...!) So, the Monday before, since my husband had to work late (we commute together), I headed to the store to score enough black and red yarn (Louet Gems, if you're curious) to make some Eclipse Socks (and matching mitts). There was yarn! Yay! I also picked up two balls of Berocco Merino DK in Charcoal Grey for aforementioned husband's Trilobite Hat, since the Eco Alpaca, while totally lovely, wasn't really working for this particular hat.


And, since I was in a yarn store, I just had to get something shiny and new, and I found SIZE 1 9" circular needles! NINE INCH!!! So cute! So tiny! So much more likely to work on socks for my freakishly small feet! Woohooo!


There, I showed you some yarn. Feel better now?

A quiet bit of knitting.

Well, I got to sit quietly at my friends' Kat & Ned's house over the weekend, and in the course of sitting quietly, I got to knit some on the Serenity Stroller Snuggie. Now, I've been "winging it" pretty fiercely on the edging, trying to keep it kinda lacy, but with a coherent pattern that I can replicate all around the border, and still manage to finish off in a nice, square blanket-like object. Here's a shot of the edge as it is now:


It's getting close enogh to done now that I'm going to have to figure out how/where I'm going to block it. None of the houses I have access to are both pet-free *and* have carpet! I'm going to have to break down, eventually, and get some floor-mat blocking boards!

Crossing the line to the Swatch Side of the Force...

It has recently come to my attention (okay, yesterday) that promising myself that SOMETHING will get posted every day M-F, unless I'm unavoidably ill or on vacation, the latter of which will be announced in advance), I'm... actually getting something posted here every day, Monday through Friday. I'm quite proud of myself for this. And, what the heck, it gives all y'all something to read. On to today!!

So, I was getting ready to block my swatches Tuesday night, and I noticed that, for the most part, my stockinette swatch sucked. It had kinda lumpy rows of stitches on the front:


... which meant there were gutters on the back.


Having read a lot written by people doing the Master Levels, I know that Gutters Are A No-No. (So is having holes in your seed stitch, but I seemed to be OK there.) So, I reknit. This second try resulted in fewer gutters, but man, oh, man, were my first two rows loose. Really, really, horribly, badly, loose compared to the rest of the swatch.


Yeah, this one looks like it should have gutters...
but they're really evenly spaced on the back.
Sigh.
If the first two rows weren't so danged loose, I'd turn it in.
So, I frogged that one, and began to reknit a THIRD time. (I figure this is practice for the Masters. Getting everything passed on the first time is rare, and since there's a limited amount of pre-research I can do that I haven't already done, I'm not expecting that I'll be one of the lucky few.) Finally, third time, I managed a swatch with very little guttering. Trying to achieve perfectly smooth stockinette while knitting flat is *not* easy for me! I'm such a knit-in-the-round-whenever-possible sort of girl.

In between all that, I also started to knit up my Extra Credit swatch. It was the "Twisted Rib" (from p. 147 of the Barbara G. Walker Treasury #2), but I changed it up a wee bit, because knitting to a pattern doesn't seem to work well for me, unless it's Gryphon's socks (and even then, I tend to wing some bits). But it looked pretty in the book, and since I'm using the identical yarn and needles I did for it and my FINAL stockinette swatch, I could give both gauges in my directions. Made me feel very professional. Of course, I started thinking of an entire sweater done in this, with the twists staggered every two rows so there would be a "swirl" effect going up and around... until I looked at the second pattern repeat of the first attempt. There was just something WRONG with the first knitted stitch of each twisty-bit. (See photos of KarenK's twilled socks, here [Ravelry link]; that's how it's supposed to look.) It should be a pretty swatch, too, but... it just wasn't working!! By the end of lunch, I'd started that three times, too!!

So, I either had to find another cable to try, or give up on the Extra Credit idea. (Hint: I'm stubborn, and don't give up easily.) Thus, I cast on one more time at home, and FINALLY it worked!!


See, it is pretty! Hopefully, the pattern I write to go with it will make sense. After that, I tried Swatch #2 a final time, this time making sure my cast on was nice and even (and tight), and making sure my stitches were nice and even (and tight), which made this swatch a good bit smaller than the others - but there are NO gutters! It's a nice, even, rectangular swatch of perfection!! (Well, as close to perfection as I can get with my knitting without going mad.) Look!


front
back
After that, everything got carefully pinned out, sprayed, and left to dry. They should be dry by tonight, so I can write up my answers, my pattern, and otherwise get everything ready for mailing early next week. (I still have a few loose ends to weave in!) But the tricky part - that's done!


Six little swatches, all 28 stitches wide and 32 rows tall.
The stitch/pattern you use REALLY makes a difference in what your gauge is gonna be!!
Thus, I grudgingly admit: Swatching is important.