Ah, creativity.

For those not in the know (although with all the bitching around here I don't know how you'd have missed the information), the Blue Shimmer is being knit on size one/2.5mm needles with 2/8 weaving yarn from here. It comes in six hundred and five thousand yard cones. I got a bunch of six hundred yard cones to knit the yoke with, and one five thousand yard cone to knit the body with:



So far, so good. (I've gotten about five inches of body done so far. If my hands didn't hurt like hell I'd be optimistic about finishing this in time.) The only drawback to this is, the cone is really heavy and awkward and pulling yarn off it was adding or subtracting twist to the yarn and making the stockinette uneven (and isn't that going to be fun to fix in blocking?)

I asked the husbeast to rig something up for me.

This is what I got.



The husbeast is nothing if not creative. From the bottom, we have the lid to an air cleaner from a V8 engine, a lightbulb fixture, the spool of yarn, and a wing nut. It's all attatched to a hunk of threaded bar stock from the hardware store. Total cost, less than $10 USD. And it works, well. The spool sits on the light fixture and turns while the wide base holds everything still. (The baby likes to breathe on the chrome air cleaner lid and watch her breath film it and then disappear, very amusing.) I bet I'm the first girl on my block (probably the first girl on my continent) to have her very own Edelbrock yarn spool holder.

You should see what this guy does with cars.

The doily also progresses. I swear this is a new photo and not the old one, over again. The excitement around here is... underwhelming.

I have an appointment with a hand specialist this afternoon, and in my usual paranoid fashion I am afraid he's going to ban knitting altogether when he gets a load of my kuckles. (They're a lovely, inflamed red - from too much heavy lifting, not knitting.) Or he's going to tell me to quit using my hand for a week. Or something else equally impossible. (It's more likely he'll tell me I'm doing better than average, because I am, but allow me my paranoia, huh?)

Oh, and I also found out that if you pile enough disorganized crap on your desk, the ants can't find a way across it to your tea cup. Especially if you leave a half-dozen other tea cups out as decoys. Best reason I ever heard for being a pig.