Scarfitty scarfage!

Hurrah, Wavy scarf is finally finished. And to celebrate, I finally got off my arse and walked down to the shops (in the rain, I might add, which probably account for the state of my hair in the photo) and bought batteries for my poor abandoned camera. Oh, and chocolate. I also bought chocolate. Because.


Anyway, behold the scarfage. I am very happy with how it turned out, although I would like to have made it longer if I'd had enough yarn. Meh. What are you going to do?

I look like a fish, and the towel behind me needs to be washed, but the scarf looks awesome and that's the main thing! More scarfity scarfing:

Yeah yeah, I know I can't take photos to save my life. But I can knit apparently. And that's more important anyway...

Felt like it took forever to knit this, just because as previously mentioned, I don't have a great deal of knitting time at the moment. However, I get a few days off work this week - with me going back to uni on March 3rd, we want to make sure that the shop/staff contained therein will be able to function okay without me - so more knitting shall happen then.

I've started knitting a fair-isle style hat for my younger brother - partially because I've been itching to make something for someone else, and partially as a show of big sisterly get-well-soon type concern - he's been in hospital the last week due to some strange and so far unexplained seizures.

But yes, not so much with the actual knitting lately. Lots of thinking about it and designing in my head, but not so much with the physically picking up the needles and making stuff. Basically, in Anna's crazy head, there is always a constant jostle, with all of the creative things that I want to do vying for my attention. Knitting used to win hands down, but currently writing has suddenly gotten opinionate and bossy and is demanding the lion's share of my free time. And I think I'm going to humour it. Writing (and the ability to do it at all - quality aside for the moment) is such a fickle thing, it ebbs and flows. So I don't want to set it aside when it's actually grabbing me by the hand and saying "Come on Anna, let's go!" On a related note, I hit 80,000 words yesterday, so it's time to start winding up on this project. I can't wait to write the last word; it has been indescribably awesome to actually apply my short attention span to a sustained project and have it actually happen.

Knitting's turn will come again, I'm sure. Probably when it stops being summer and all of my creative energy is sucked away by law school. But for the moment, there is scarf. I like my scarf.

My poor brain...

Well, still no photos, because I've been too lazy/broke/tired/leprous/purple to buy batteries for my camera, and it's not like a whole lot of progress has been made on the knitting front anyway (oh golly, gee whiz, my scarf is ten centimetres longer, how exciting!!!!!! *sarcasm*)

Been beavering away on my Wavy scarf when I have time, but unfortunately that is not often, what with nine hour work days, six days a week and all. Tuesday-Sunday currently looks like this:
8am: Get up and go for walk
9am: Shower, breakfast, write and write some more
12pm: Lunch, attend to husband type creature (ie. actually spend some time with him that isn't at work), knit a few rows on scarf, do dishes
2pm: Leave for work. Vend many foodstuffs, wash many trays, shred mountains of cheese
11pm: Home from work. Lie on couch, ingest a beer if have sufficient energy, sleep.

Occasionally, morning has also been used to bore unsuspecting people with my presence in an attempt to prove that I still have some kind of social life. So, not a great deal of knitting time, unless I sacrifice writing time, which right now I'm not wanting to do (the writing is kind of keeping me sane in this time of pizza shop drudgery, because drudgery it is, no matter who owns the business). But, the knitting is still happening, and I'm still enjoying it, and that is the main thing. This is just the reason why it's a little quiet on the FO/WIP front at the moment. We don't really need to see endless blurry photos of my scarf. We just don't...

On a related note: I AM LIVING THE KNITTER'S DREAM (albeit in probably the least exciting and grossest way possible)! Chris has always asked that I not knit anything for him, because he doesn't like the way knitted fabric feels. This is fine by me because I know that it's true, and has always been true (I don't think that there's a single knitted thing in his entire wardrobe - which to be fair, consists mainly of tracksuits - grotty boy!), so I don't take it personally, and spend more time making things for myself (a good system). But the other day I found some really cheap thick cotton yarn (Cleckheaton Fiddle Di Dee), and I made a tea towel/clothy thing out of it. Now, it gets very hot near the ovens in our shop. Hence, the boy has a tendency to sweat a little when he's working near it. So now my beloved tea towel has a new occupation: sweat mopping cloth of doom! Husband type creature is actually using an item that I knitted.

One word: Victory!

Okay, granted this victory would be somewhat sweeter if said knitted item was used for purposes other than the soaking up of bodily fluids, but hey, I'll take whatever I can get. It's being used, right? Err... right?

Oh dear, I just spent several paragraphs talking about my husband's bodily fluids... What was I just saying about how writing was helping me to keep sane? Maybe it's still too early to tell whether or not it's working...

Um.... oh no *sarcasm*

Finally a post where the poor bloggo is not forced to showcase my amateurish attempts at photography; camera is momentarily out of batteries, and at any rate I haven't made a great deal of knitting progress over the last few days.

The main reason for this is that shop is now up and running: today is our first day of actually being open (rather than messing around in there trying to set things up). So that hasn't left as much time for knitting, and all the other random stuff I like to do.

Writing is the exception to this. I've actually found it a very useful outlet for all the stress and anxiety that's come with getting shop going, so I've now sailed merrily past the 50k mark. I am pleased with this.

Anyway, so in minor knitting news, Wavy scarf is still coming along nicely, and I'm trying something out with my Moana yarn... And that's about it... Can we say uninteresting?

Camera vs Anna: I win today...

Well, this photo may be a little blurry, but it proves that the Wavy pattern is indeed present. Which is what we were unsuccessfully going for last time. I'm happy with how it's coming. If nothing else, it's definitely going to make the Upfield trainline a little brighter on the winter days that I'm commuting on it.

I'm trying to get the alpaca cardigan I've been working on happening a little faster. I want to find out whether or not I need to buy more yarn for it. The problem is that I'm not getting work done on this quite as fast, because it's my own design, kind of being calculated as it goes. It's that much harder to motivate yourself to finish a half completed project when it actually requires you to think, plan, be sensible, and work calculator mojo. Still, I'm trying to do it a bit on it every day, just to get over the hump. Here is one completed left front, and one mostly completed right.

Photo doesn't really do justice to the yarn; the colours are absolutely beautiful, shifting blends of colour. The main colour that looks light blue is actually a pale bluish green with flecks of deeper blue, and the frilly edge bits (which seem thoroughly determined to look crap in every photo I take) are a greyish brown mixed with small streaks of blue. Shiny.

And, here is what happens when Anna has to return a knitting book to the local library and is too tight arsed/too lacking in small change to make a photocopy of a pattern in it that she wants to make:It's good for me I suppose; have to get back in the note taking swing of things before lectures start again on March 3rd. I always leave the first week of classes feeling like my hands are about to drop off at the wrists, but maybe if I just keep on like this, that won't happen this time around... Or, maybe I should just be a normal person and save up for a laptop like all the other law students seem to have done...

Anyway, off to go write. Just cracked 40k this morning... it's getting there, slowly but surely.

Haha, got it!

I'm on to you, digital camera! I was thinking it was doing a pretty bloody good job for what I paid for it (Anna = broke tight arse at the moment, so what I paid for it was not a lot), but now I've found it's weakness.


I've started knitting the Wavy scarf from Knitty in that shiny pretty rainbow merino yarn I was spamming pictures of a few posts ago. I wanted to make a scarf with it, but I needed one that was interesting to knit without any pattern being totally lost in the varigated colour. So far, this pattern has been living up to this requirement admirably... except when it is having its photo taken anyway.



Behold! In real life, the wavy pattern is showing through perfectly. But after about fifteen attempts, I've been totally unable to take a photo that demonstrates this. In photos, it looks like someone ate a ball of rainbow yarn and then vomited it up in a scarf shape. Maybe it's flash issues, I don't know. Point is, photographic evidence aside, I am happy with how it's coming along.

It's not scarf weather yet of course, in fact it's about the opposite. Though that said, Melbourne summer is treating us remarkable gently so far this year: the last two weeks the temperature hasn't strayed too far north of 30 degrees, and most days it's actually been cooler than that. Then again, as Chris points out (pessimist!), February is always the month that's bastardly hot, so I guess we're not out of the woods yet. Anyway (tangent alert!), back to scarf; I'm looking forward to having something colourful to crank out when it does start getting cold.


I still love my Greenjeans, though it's still languishing with a badly sewn button for I am lazy and easily distracted. It's not like I'll be able to wear it for months anyway. I am so feeling the internet love on this one too; someone had favourited (is that a word?) it on Ravelry about ten minutes after I'd put it up, and now five people have, and several of them wrote really nice comments as well! It is truly, truly embarrassing how excited this makes me. I suppose it's because, as I've lamented before, in real life I don't really interact very often with people who knit, so nobody really says, "hey, you made that? How awesome!". So, I'm very grateful that there's an internetty way to let me interact with people in this way.


The only downside of all this is that yesterday morning I was far too excited about my cardigan to be able to write much of anything; I scraped out a few thousand words eventually, but because I was a little, shall we say, hyperactive, my idiotic sense of humour kind of leaked out into passages that weren't really supposed to be funny. Idiocy clean up, aisle four! Still, I've beavered my way up to 38k this morning, so that's a good thing. Time to get back to it, too...

One blocking and embarrassingly bad button sewing later...

I am so in love:

(also, guess who was too excited about her new Greenjeans to bother brushing her hair before the photo was taken?). I can't say how pleased I am with this; I started it and was working on it with the feeling that it would turn out okay, but not something that I was jump up and down excited with. I was wrong. The photos don't really do it justice (due mostly to my appallingly bad photography and my cheap and nasty camera), but it fits really well, and the yarn worked perfectly. *drools with happiness* Now I just need to resew the button in a way that doesn't suck mouldy donkey arse...

Here's another gratuitous picture or two:

Love, love, love, love, love. I am so wearing this the moment March comes around.

On the other hand, my over-enthusiastic love of my Greenjeans has led me to reconsider a couple of things I've had kicking around for a while. I've decided to frog my Lelah. It was more or less finished, but due to huge gauge accident, the half is far, far too big (as it, you could nearly fit two of me in there). Now, all this is fixable, if I just reknit the top half. But really, I don't think I can be bothered. I'm just not into it enough to go to the trouble. The design is lovely, as are lots of the FOs on Ravelry, but I picked a colour that just isn't me. It's a very light purplish pink; a 'gelati' colour, as Christina put it. What clinches it is that even if I reknit the top bit to fit, I can't really see myself wearing it anywhere. So, I think it's time to say goodbye *cue funeral march*. Methinks I'm going to try dyeing the yarn a darker colour and making something else out of it.

On a more positive note, I've diagnosed my problem. Every time I finish one project, I seem to have a compulsive need to start two more. But more on that later... right now I have writing to do - on 34,500 words and I want to crack 35k already!

By the way, I love my Greenjeans...

Greenjeans is NEARLY there! Just have to finish the left sleeve, and I'll be done. I picked up the stitches for the button band in between sleeves, because I was getting bored working in the round and needed a change. I have an announcement to make:


I PICKED UP STITCHES AND I DIDN'T DIE! THE UNIVERSE DID NOT IMPLODE!

(damn right....)


I've always had an irrational terror about picking up stitches, mainly because I was appalling bad at doing it. But this... wonder of wonders... actually worked! Behold:

Granted it isn't the neatest edge I've ever seen (piece is badly arranged in this photo, to be fair). But there aren't any holes that you could drive a ute through, so it's a vast improvement as far as I'm concerned. My secret, you ask? *looks embarrassed* I read the instructions and actually paid attention to them for once. One reason that I think that knitting is very good for me indeed is that in a lot of areas, I've always been the person who glances quickly at manuals, then promptly ignores them and tinkers away in their own way. Sometimes it works that way, but often it doesn't. Knitting teaches me the value of paying close attention to instructions and following them properly.

Oh, and proof that knitting has infested my brain. I went to a belly dancing class day before yesterday and my teacher was telling me about how the rectangular shaped coin belts were much better than the ones that narrowed at each end. This then sent me into a merry little train of thought about designing coin belts... My poor brain, like there isn't enough crap in there already...

In closing, just what the world needs. I've now figured out that I can take photographs of my own feet by using the self-timer on my camera. We can all sleep soundly at night now...

Feel the wrath of my size 11 1/2 feet!