Screech

So I'm working on a sample piece for a design right now. I can't give any details about it yet, but I don't think it's giving away the farm to say that I had ordered yarn online for it and was making wonderful progress. I was confident about the yarn order, because I had conscientiously written up the pattern, then conscientiously done up a spreadsheet to calculate exactly how many stitches were going to go into this thing (me=geek), and then conscientiously done a lot of test knitting with some stash yarn to see how many stitches I was getting per yard. From there, the spreadsheet happily calculated how many yards I would need in total, and I bought enough yarn to have that plus more to spare, just in case.

So far, so good, right?

(Like you can't see where this is going.)

Fast forward to knitting up the sample piece with my new yarn, and I hit a part in the pattern writeup where, so help me, I had somehow omitted instructions for an entire (and important) section of the knitted item. Since the spreadsheet calculations were entirely based on the pattern writeup, the calculation of how many stitches this thing would take was off. Waaaaaay off. Like, I-am-not-in-any-way-going-to-make-it-with-the-yarn-I-have-no-matter-what-economies-of-yardage-I-make, way off.

Sigh.

So, knitting of the sample piece came to a wild, careening halt as I went back and corrected my spreadsheet, figured out how much more yarn I needed, and ordered what I needed. I feel like a complete doofus for having to pay for shipping twice for this stuff.

While I wait for the new yarn, however, I fortunately am able to keep going on the sample piece until I use up all the old yarn.

In better news, I finished the bear bib:

dark side:

light side:

light side, 'in action':

dark side, 'in action':



(It is a constant challenge to NOT eat her all up.)

As predicted, I like it very much, but I'm not completely satisfied. I want to do something different with the shoulder bits, and I also want to make the side edges a little more tidy using the selvedge edge technique from one of my new books. I bought more yarn for the purpose, same blue colour for the dark shade but a solid white as the light shade. I'm looking forward to knitting it up and making the pattern available!

Also, finally...FINALLY, DD2 remembered to ask her teacher what his favourite colour was. The answer?

Yellow.

Yeah.

THIS IS NOT HELPFUL. I don't doubt that his favourite colour is yellow, but I do doubt very much that he would be tremendously pleased to wear a yellow garment. So I think we're going to go with a golden brown instead. DD2 and I have settled on Morgan by Anne Kuo Lukito, which is a terrific Ivy/English driving cap from Knitty, and I'm quite looking forward to making it. It certainly earns my husband's "yes, I think he'll like it" seal of approval (which I usually request for any projects I make for other men), so I hope it will be a success. I'll go yarn shopping with DD2 for it at our LYS - I'm hoping to find something nice and tweedy.

Speaking of my husband, I'm not quite sure whether to be triumphant or to start being protective of my stash, but lately, he's gotten back into knitting to the point where he seems to be irrevocably hooked. Before, he was just doing knitting projects every once in a while to understand me and my blatherings better (sweet man), but some weeks ago, he got back into an old stocking project for me and this time, really kept at it until they were done. It was this that did him in, because after a few weeks he confessed that now, he thinks longingly about getting back to his knitting when he's not knitting.

It's a slippery slope, folks. :)

So, to show off because I am very proud of him, here are my new stockings:




(Feeling a bit of trepidation putting my legs out there for all to see, but what the hey.)

And here is the sock project for himself that he resumed after finishing my stockings:




(Aren't the colours on that one great?)