Yesterday's 'knitting'.

Was this:



Okay, and I did a couple rows on the wrap while resting my brain in front of the TV at the end of the day. (Even alternating yarns on different rows, the color is pooling, damn it. But at least I'm not getting lightnong bolts or anything. Yet.)

After this, I think I'm gonna chuck the knitting, move to Switzerland, join CERN, and spend the rest of my days chasing Einstein's Grand Unification Theory. (Actually, I don't think the GUT exists, but there are worse ways to spend a life - rebuttals welcome in the comments.) At any rate, between the line drawing and all the little jotted numbers and the percentages and whozits, I think I know where I'm going on the Blue Shimmer. (And if I don't, I sure as hell don't want to know about it.) The most pitiful thing of all is, I found it all kind of fun. (Fun like a crossword puzzle, not fun like sex with Hugh Jackman and Chocolate Lava Muffins after.)

Now I have to gird my loins (figuratively speaking) and cast on those 207 stitches and get started. (Was loin-girding something women did? Or was it just for men, to protect their, uh, dangly bits, in battle? I'm afraid to do an internet search on it, for fear of the porn sites that will pop.)

Anyway, I wanna enter a scarf, a doily, and the Blue Shimmer in the State Fair (due October 2, and I really need to get off my ass and enter), plus finish this wrap and get it in the mail before cold weather hits Connecticut (which will be, uh, the start of the next Ice age in five thousand years, right?) so Friday Night Me Knitting may not be happening for a while. At least until I have a handle on these projects. (We never saw that coming, me canceling ME stuff to knit for others, no siree, that never happens.)

As always, the situation is complicated by a trip out of town. We're headed to Ohio for the baby's first birthday (and a HS reunion of sorts for me) the last week of August. And since the Blue Shimmer is a gift for someone for Christmas (that's right, I'm GIVING IT AWAY - though with the way the coned yarn is working out, I'll have enough yarn left over to knit another one for me if I can stand it), I can't work on it then. So I wanna work on it now. I figure if I get the color yoke done before we leave, that'll give me a month to do with solid light blue arms and body when we get home. (Hopefully I'll have more than the yoke done before we leave, but if not, I'd still have a month.)

I'm babbling. I'm drugged. Ugh. Gonna take a nap. Maybe my brain cells will fire after that.

Oh, yeah, and for those who like books and learning and stuff:
*The yoke increase percentage system is from "Knitting in the Old Way" by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts and Deborah Robson. (Though their version is from the waist up, not the neck down, math is math and it works either way.)
*The specific lines for increases and the color pattern itself are from "Poems of Color" by Wendy Keele, which contains a pattern for the Blue Shimmer, just at the wrong gauge and not big enough. I used the color chart (which has built-in increase rows) and added my own numbers.
*The idea of doing a line-drawing on graph paper as a starting point is from "Designing Knitwear" by Deborah Newton. I think she does 'one square equals two inches' and I do 'one square equals one inch', but the concept definitely came from her. I do most of my design work that way (I should scan in some more pages from the notebook, you guys would get a kick out of it). Plus the rest of the book is educational.

Anyway. Babbling. Nap. Cast on 207 stitches. Arg.