I am soaked right now, and the cats are tearing around the house like crazy. It’s pouring right now, and has been crazy rainy these past few days. I worked from home yesterday, and around 11am I looked up and said “whoa.” It was extremely dark right before it started raining. An hour later it was sunny and happy and looking less like an impending apocalypse. No fireworks us on the 4th - it was soggy the whole day, and I wasn’t really in the mood to sit outside. I went shopping instead, and bought some super cute hooks from Anthropologie to hang my poor, unused scarves in our study (aka the Cold Room).

Green Gable is trucking along, and I’m up to the waist increases. I’ve completely abandoned the pattern after the lace part - I’m winging it myself to get this to fit Kelly, rather than the crazy, random measurements in the pattern. I’ve discovered a new, quick way to try it on as I go: I slip the stitches on to a couple of other circular needles. It sure beats threading the whole thing onto waste yarn, trying it on, then putting all of the stitches back onto the needle.

Knitpicks Shine isn’t the most durable yarn. It tolerated Blackie’s laying on it pretty well, but Silver snagged a bit with her nail, and that part looks poopy. Good thing the snagged part is on the side of the sweater. The yarn is sooo soft though, and so very cheap.

Orangina is done, seamed, and looks great. Photos to come, I need to to take a nice, non-bathroom-mirror shot. In the meantime, back to working on Green Gable, which has languished as of late. I needed to rip back a bit because it was too big, so I’m back to where the body joins together. I also need to figure out some waist shaping - I learned from Orangina that I don’t need to be quite so agressive with the waist decreases.

Silver - so cute!

A macro shot of the unblocked mess that is Green Gable. I started this on the flight to London, because I needed a somewhat mindless knit for the looong flight (although a direct flight from Houston - bonus!). Somewhat mindless means that it’s easy to not pay attention and completely forget little things like raglan increases and pattern rows when you’re half asleep watching Walk the Line. Even worse is actually falling asleep watching the movie, which loops over and over again, and I spent the first half of the trip with Johnny Cash songs running through my brain. Regardless, the sweater is super cute so far. I’ll probably put it aside to finish poor Not-Orangina, which is knit to the waist and half-seamed up.

I’m knitting Blue Gable using Knitpicks Shine sport. First, the good: The yarn is incredibly soft and works up very nicely. Very, very soft. Not something you would use for crisp stitch definition, but it does the job for this sweater. Also, it is damn cheap.

The bad: I have found messy breaks in the yarn in four out of seven balls that I’ve rewound so far. WTF? I know it’s cheap, but this is just crap production of the yarn. Really crap. Every time I find a loose bit, I swear Knitpicks’ name. !@#$! Also, the yarn is put up on the most loosely-balled balls that it falls apart by just looking at it, hence the rewinding. The balls below are survivors after the surgery - one of the little guys is 10 grams, the other 5 grams.