I have a bunch of catching up to do – I have to post pictures of the two prizes I will be giving away, I have to pick winners for those prizes, and I have 2 little FOs to share (kind of a cheat to say two, I just knit two of the same thing for a swap). I also took the concept of those two items and played a little bit to come up with something for me. Sounds much more exciting than it really is, honest.

The prizes and winners are tomorrow – I promise. I will post the pics and announce the winners in one post. I hate being so behind in it, but the past 10 days have really gotten away from me. I thought I would only take a few days off from blogging, but then the few times I sat down to post, it just wasn’t happening. Last night when we sat down to watch a little TV before bed, I finally picked up the needles again, and I knew I was ready to get back on track here too.

There is a dishcloth swap group on Ravelry that I joined not too long ago, hoping to keep my dishcloth knitting up and also to see what other knitters and crocheters are up to. It was a simple soap and cloth exchange with a short easy timeline, so I jumped in. I posted about the package I received on March 6th, and now that my partner has received hers (Lynne has no blog, or I would link) I can post a pic of what I sent to her – well most of what I sent to her anyway…

What you don’t see is a small sample of some fun teas, and a few bite size chocolate bars. I added those just before mailing and they didn’t make the photo shoot

The cloths, while it’s hard to see, are just a basic waffle stitch. I reversed colors for 2 repeats for a little interest. I ended up very happy with the overall feel of Lynne’s cloths, so I started playing around with different widths and think I came up with something I like for a towel sized version. I’m about 1//3 of the way thru and once I finish my errands for today, I will be picking it up and getting closer to finishing it. I have a bunch of things I want to knit, I just still feel too distracted to focus on anything bigger than a cloth or a towel. It will come…

So, there’s Part One of the catch up. Prizes and winners (aka Part Two) tomorrow for sure…

I so dislike the time change, but especially the spring ahead. Don;t get me wrong, I love the extra daylight and all, but my body thinks it’s 9:30 and it’s technically 10:30. Add in a measure of my current sleeping issues, and you;ve got trouble.

Anyway, it was another gorgeous day here. We spent some time outside, took a nice long walk, did some errands, and thoroughly abused each other in Wii Tennis. I also did the Fit again tonight, and feel like I’m getting back into the routine. We capped it off with our usual Sunday evening events, catching up on Netflix movies together, while I knit away. We watched Madagascar (the 1st), Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist, Max Payne, and 2 episodes of Buffy.

I am in a dishcloth and soap swap and while I don’t want to give anything away, I will say I completed most of what I want to send out.

While I won’t say anything yet about what you see, the pouch was an awesome purchase from Splityarn a while back (I got the matching smaller version too). Go check out her stuff, you will NOT be sorry!

Ah well, off to bed with me, another busy week ahead.

As if I needed further proof of just how out of it I am with this latest bout of sleep issues (because my brain fog, crankiness, and pathetic ability to construct proper sentences hasn’t been enough), I had another revelation today at the doctors office.

I checked in, and sat down for what I expected to be a good 15 to 20 minute wait. I pulled out my Thermis, expecting to finish off the last round of “setup” and start in on the pattern section, and to get an idea of what was coming, I decided to glance at the pattern. Wow. Just Wow. I spent a good hour or so knitting the other night and never caught on to the fact that I wasn’t following directions. At all.

I apparently decided to completely ignore the direction to K1, P1 for 20 rounds and just picked up on the K 1 rnd, P1 rnd. Instead of 20 rounds of ribbing, I have 20 rounds of garter.

There are times I would call it a design element and move along. This is not one of them. This ribbing is what will keep the cowl snug against the neck and garter just won’t cut it here. So, a-ripping I shall go

Not tonight though – last night was a slight improvement with the new meds, so I am going to try and take them early again and get into bed. It likely won’t be tomorrow night either since I have a meeting on Friday that I need to prep for tomorrow night. I may get in some knitting time, but right now, it’s not looking too good. Weekend’s coming though

It’s been a week. I’m tired (so what else is new?) and ready for a few days of settling down with my knitting, making a decision on what I will be knitting with the alpaca, and moving forward. Last night’s swatching kind of proved my feeling that the stitching would get lost in the slightly fuzzy (but oh so soft and snuggly) dark grey alpaca.

In order to “cleanse the palette” I started up another Tribble. I like my idea to make a matching tribble for each of the monthly KAL cloths as a way to use up leftovers, make the cloths more of a set, and to have quick and mindless knitting readilly available.

That one will be finished tomorrow after work, and I will whip thru 2 more (green and neutral to match the mid month 2 color cloth). Yup, they’re that quick!

I need to wrap this up so I can go take my meds and try and go get some sleep. I had a Dr appointment today and I’ll be trying something new to hopefully help me sleep. I adore my doctor, she is a very kind woman, who listens, and takes the time to understand her patients. She’s part of a family practice and her rooms make me smile.

She lets patients leave their hand and foot prints on the walls in each of the rooms – the one I was in today had the footprint of a 4 day old just inches from a 65 year old’s hand print. Eventually, I will leave my mark

Happy almost Friday!

I think I’m suffering from overload. There are SO many things I want to knit, so many things I want to read, so many things I want to learn – and no where near enough time to do it all. In the past, I’ve ended up getting so caught up in trying to figure out what to knit, or read, or try that I wasted all the time I might have had to actually DO something. Instead of letting that happen again, I thought maybe I should make a list of the top 3 things in each category and prioritize it.

An hour and a half of immersing myself in Ralvery later, I’m in worse shape. I think I added at least 5 things to my queue, and become even more distracted.

I did start to swatch the alpaca some but put it down when the phone rang – look how far I got!

Impressive, right? I need to swatch it in the Thermis pattern stitch to see if it will show and how it feels before I can decide what to do (although I do feel that I will end up using the handpaintedwool.com merino). I really want to make that choice soon though so I can get to the actual knitting already!

I’ll be squeezing in work between a quick dentist visit and a doctor appointment tomorrow so I will have a bit more knitting time than usual on a weekday. The dentist thing likely will take all of 10 minutes though, so it will mainly be the doctors waiting room I’ll be knitting in (am I the only one who actually hopes there’s at least a little wait?) I had a filling today (and my last dentist appointment until my follow up/polishing in May – hooray! the heavy work is now officially done!) and there’s a tiny little piece of “stuff” that needs to be smoothed out on the back of the tooth – they’re squeezing me in tomorrow morning between patients so I will be going to work at 7, leaving at 8:15 for my quick fix, going back to work until about 9:50 when I have to leave for the doctor appointment, and then back to the office after that. Should make for an interesting day – especially since I will have a bunch of stuff to finish up tomorrow in prep for a meeting on Friday.

Back to the swatching…

I spent last night watching Serenity and knitting on Malika. I had a pretty bad headache though, so I obviously wasn’t thinking too clearly. All the knitting I did on Malika last night? Rrrrrrripped tonight!

I totally blame myself and not the pattern. The pattern abbreviations say KW – Knit each stitch, wrapping yarn twice around needle. It’s no one’s fault but mine that when I came to the part that says K1, kw5, *k6, kw5; repeat from * to last 5 sts, k5 that I decided (in my infinite wisdom headache induced stupor) to interpret KW5 as wrapping 5 times around on one stitch. We won’t discuss how many rounds of this I carried out before I went to bed, it hurts less if I let the details remain fuzzy.

When I came home tonight, I looked at the bag and knew something was wrong. I did what needed to be done, and when it was over, I appeased myself with the thought that this meant I was free to split the one big ball of alpaca Mary gave me into 2 (for double stranding) and start Thermis or the fingerless mitts I promised to make her. I’m leaning towards her mitts 1st because I’m having second thoughts on the alpaca for the Thermis. It’s GORGEOUS and so soft, but then I remembered some handpaintedwool.com merino I had in stash and wondered if Thermis’ patterning might show better in that.

The stash Merino (bad lighting in that pic, it’s closest to the 2nd skein from the right)

The yummy alpaca (a little lighter in person, with a tiny bit more tweed than shows here)

They are both wonderfully snuggly and will be great next to the skin so that’s not a concern.

Anyone have any strong thoughts one way or another?

While we’re on the thinking front – I keep thinking I want to take the mid-month dishcloth KAL and upsize it into a bath mat! It is SO squishy!

Coincidentally, the new Knotions Mag has a pattern for a carriage throw in it that resembles the cloth, however after looking at the pattern for the Rainbow Chain, I don’t think it would be as squishy because of the way the slipped stitches differ. (considering we’re never going to pick a color for our bathroom, I have plenty of time to figure out the pattern!)

I think I’m going to grab some needles and swatch the alpaca for the mitts. Or maybe to see how the patterning shows for Thermis. Or something…

Really – that’s what I’ve got tonight.

Long day at work, followed by a massive scrub down of the master bathroom (I’m trying this new thing where I hit up one room a night during the week and then it’s not an all day Saturday clean up. I know some people who swear by it, but the 1st week is a killer. We’ll see how it goes) Once the cleaning was done, dinner was tossed together, and if my calculations are right, should be done in about 10 minutes.

So that’s why I don’t have much to say or show. The rest of my evening will revolve around knitting on Malika

I’d also like to try to get to bed at a decent hour. I keep saying I’m going to, but it never seems to happen. There’s just not enough hours to get it all in.