Odds and Ends

It's been a seriously crazy week. This is our busy season at work normally, but it seems like this year there's twice as much work and not enough hours in the day to get it all done. I'll admit my crafting has been suffering, because by the time I get home, I'm so mentally exhausted that I can't think well enough to count or examine my knitting critically.

Today, though, I'm getting a little bit of a break. I'm having an upper endoscopy later today (we're trying to figure out what's been going on in my stomach for the past nine months so we can, I hope, solve the issue), and I'm not allowed to eat or drink anything leading up to it, so I'm hanging out at home until it's time to go to the hospital. As soon as this post goes up, I'm popping The Help in the DVD player and breaking out the projects. (I managed to get in a cup of tea this morning before the ban on liquids went into effect, so I should at least be focused enough to do some stockinette.)

I've been working on a little bit of this and a little bit of that this past week, pretty much changing projects every evening. Last Thursday, I finally cast on for that baby blanket I need to knit, though in all honesty I haven't touched it since.

This is the Chasing Rainbows pattern, though I'm using only the three colors of Cascade 220 Superwash you see here. I'm working 10-round stripes for each color, and I'm making it even easier on myself because I'm not even bothering to count rounds -- I just know that when I reach another multiple of 10 in the stitch count of each section, it's time to change colors. This is a super simple knit, so it's good for those days when my brain doesn't want to work. I'm just going to knit until I run out of yarn, which should result in a decently sized baby blanket. The baby in question is due in about another week, I think, so I've got to get on this now.

I've also been giving my Breezy Cardigan a bit of attention, and the body is actually moving along at a good clip. I think I have only about 2 1/2" to go before I start the bottom ribbing.

I tried this on at one point last week, and it looks like it's going to fit perfectly -- if only I can finish the darn thing! I do love knitting with my handspun, but I'm really starting to doubt my sanity in choosing to knit a large-ish sweater in laceweight.

In all honesty, I may abandon this project for a while in favor of other sweater knitting. I'm going to be participating in the Fall for Tosh knitalong with the Madelinetosh Lovers group on Ravelry starting on the first day of fall. I've decided on another Hannah Fettig pattern, the Calligraphy Cardigan, for my project. It's a pretty simple, classic-looking sweater that will be great as a layering piece at the office, and it calls for tosh dk -- and, as it happens, my LYS just happened to get a tosh shipment in last week, so I may have treated myself to some last weekend.

This is six skeins of tosh dk in Silver Fox. I debated several colors but ultimately decided this was the most neutral and thus most likely to go with most of my wardrobe.

I also picked up two skeins in Cousteau to make a baby sweater (likely another Gramps Cardigan) for my cousin's baby, whose gender is going to remain a mystery until s/he is born early next year.

It's supposed to be considerably cooler this weekend -- around 70 and rainy -- so is it any surprise that I want to knit All The Sweaters?