Right, then. Christmas.

Christmas knitting commenced at approximately ten AM, Eastern Standard time, this morning. I finished the gauge swatch for the Lustkofen and gave it a swish through some soapy water. There was measurement done before and after (thank you, Bells), and there's good news and bad news. The bad news is, I'm knitting two pullovers at six stitches per inch. The good news is, I'm not knitting them at seven stitches per inch, because the yarn relaxed once it hit water. (This is a difference of sixty or more stitches per round, so yeah, that one stitch does matter quite a lot.)

After telling Bells, what's it been, two years ago now? that she didn't need to measure a gauge swatch before washing it, well, some attitude revision has gone on. You see, if you measure BEFORE washing, then you can also measure while the sweater is in progress, before IT is washed, and have some idea what in hell's going on. Yes, yes, I know that's really nitpicking, but the sweaters I knit usually fit their intended victims.

This afternoon at about six-thirty PM, Eastern Standard time, I sort of finished the Crumb Cake yarn. I say 'sort of' because about four hundred yards of it is still on the bobbin, waiting to be wound off, skeined, washed, dried, and labeled. Then it gets posted to Etsy. More good news/bad news: I've wound up with about seven hundred yards of the stuff, but it took two freaking months to spin (never doing lace weight again... someone remind me of that later), and unfortunately I'm going to have to charge like it took two months to spin. Plus the materials weren't cheap, either.

For those of you wondering about Cameo, it's been ditched indefinitely. I'm nearly out of yarn and am DEFINITELY out of time. I'll probably poke around Ravelry and see if I can beg a couple balls of the yarn off someone. Assuming someone HAS any of it.

---

That Neighbor came over today to visit, and we talked spinning and knitting and weaving and beading and scoring fresh fleeces at the county fair on Saturday morning this week. Not sure I'll go wild and bid on one, but it's REALLY nice to have someone to talk story with. I know I've got a lot of on-line friends (Hi!) and I adore them, but That Neighbor is really cool to talk to. (She's going to let me watch, the next time she warps her loom. Or make me help; that's okay too.)

---

Sorry for yet another long drag between blog posts. Without belaboring the point, there were a few nights in the last week I was considering just sleeping in the bathroom. Yay. Love nights like that.

---

The how-to-dress discussion is still warming up. I've been working on the silhouettes (and deciding some of them suck and finding alternative images). At first I intended to do one big blog post, but I think I'm going to do it by decade instead. One, it'll keep Google from crashing when I try to do a hundred-thousand-word blog post with fifty photos. Two, it will keep any of you from killing me when I do a hundred-thousand-word blog post. Third, it'll give me something to talk about on these days when all I've done is knit little white lice into a black background while drooling and babbling.

I'm also brooding over the idea of a blog post on the Punic Wars. You've been warned.

---

Photos, photos... hmmm. Oh. The Goob spilled sand on her feet and the husbeast thought it was really cute:



And I think this one should be titled "Chico, you fucker." (Chico being my mother-in-law's cat):