Well, I bit the bullet...

Well, here it is. I bit the bullet and finally sunk in the whole fifteen minutes of knitting required to finish my Basalt tank. The reason I'd been putting it off was because I had this sneaking suspicion (okay, certainty) that it was going to come out too big. And, you know what, I was right...

This photo doesn't really do justice to how big is it (not to mention it shows off just how disgusting my bathroom mirror has gotten while I've been busy doing other things). Basically, I swim in it. And please excuse the bra escape...

The weird thing is that I still love it; it was fun to knit, the design is awesome, and I think it would suit me if I'd just made it smaller. I am still very much a fan of this pattern, and I very much intend to try it again some day (maybe in time for next summer, since in Melbourne the weather for tank tops seems to have passed...). That said, it's still going to be frogged because the yarn is too lovely to languish sadly in something that I am, in all honesty, probably never going to wear (the colour! I love this colour so much I could eat it).

I'm not really sure what happened with gauge; my swatch said it was bang on, but then again I wasn't sensible about checking throughout. I have absolutely no idea why I didn't measure the first hexagon after I finished it. Really. It was stupid to a colossal degree. I guess I'm just not long on common sense most of the time... Oh well, that's life, eh? And I suppose it wasn't all gauge either; courtesy of pizza shop drudgery and not enough solid meals, I've lost about ten kilos since I started it. So any existing gauge issues would have been exacerbated by the fact that there just wasn't as much of me for it to cover as there was when I started. Meh.

Anyway, I was having a crappy morning (splitting headaches, essay proposals that won't get written no matter how many times I order my brain to do them, and having to write kiss up letters to apply for jobs that I don't even want do not put me in a fantastic mood), and when that happens, I usually try and cheer myself up by doing something constructive. This was that constructive thing. So now the Basalt tank is finished. I can bid it a happy farewell, and go on to other things. Yay for closure! I was, after all, getting a little guilty about leaving the poor thing kicking around my study like it had been...

Insomnia and knitting

Well, still here, and still mostly sane, even though wedding is now 10 days away (it's a little scary to think of it in terms of days instead of weeks/months/>year. It's all going more or less to plan, though I'm wishing that everyone would stop trying to plan things to within an inch of their lives. I'm not so big on that kind of formal rigidity at social gatherings; I like people to be able to wander around and do what they like. Oh well, I'm sure people will do that anyway, whether they've been told otherwise or not (or all the people I know will anyway).

Anyway Anna, put a sock in it. Wedding gas-bagging is for other blog, not this one.

Decided to make a Lelah top (http://knittingforboozehags.com/freebirds/lelah-top) with my Bendigo Woollen Mills cotton yarn; it seems a pretty straightforward pattern, and some of the versions on Ravelry look so awesome. The light purple is a little bit girly by my standards, but maybe that's not a bad thing for a change (one can't live in jeans and baggy t-shirt all the time... or at least not without being mistaken for a guy from a distance when you're as tall as I am...).

Anyway, top is coming along swimmingly, albeit a little slowly since I'm knitting in a much smaller gauge. Still, I've had a bit of insomnia (probably due to wedding) the last few nights, so that's helping it along a bit. No photos yet, because my digital camera is out of batteries and I can't find new ones. So there...

Now, off to be a good girl and write my essay, even though I'm so screwed with it that it really is quite hilarious...

I survived!

Hurray, the big nasty pieces of assessment are over and done with.


Now it's just one more smaller essay to do, and I'm free...


Except I have a sneaking suspicion that freedom will involve remembering the fact that I'm getting married in two weeks from today... Yet another thing that requires me being organised. And in some ways this requires a worse kind of organised, because everyone is always asking me questions about stuff. Nobody asks me law questions, because they know I'll just bore them to death if they do...

Anyway, when I was literally running out the door to make the train and hand my essay in on time (late submission penalties and harsh and generally bitey), I nearly tripped over a parcel on my doorstep:

Yay! My Bendigo Woollen Mills yarn got here (which surprised me because I'm pretty sure I asked them to send it to my family's PO box, but that doesn't mean I wasn't happy to see it... It's an 8-ply 100% cotton yarn that I'm going to make something summery with, have yet to decide on what. They sent me a colour card as well, which is pretty and highly touchable. I'm liking the look of their alpaca yarn for when winter rolls around again...