I finished the yellow hemlock blanket, except for blocking, but I decided I hated it and didn’t want to gift it. I may still, after blocking, which I need to do this weekend, but we’ll see. The shower was the day before my birthday, and since I have a long history of being pretty down about then, I was not in any mood to do baby shower things. This probably makes me a bad person, but oh well.

Since I last posted I also finished dashing, which as I remember I was nearly finished with. Pictures will have to wait until after Sunday, because that’s when I’m planning on gifting it. I had picked out some nice stash yarn to knit with it for myself, but I must have made a gauge error because the cables made them a little too tight for me. And since I’d been planning on making something similar for my mom, they will go to her. It’s a good color for her anyway.

I also cast on for I do, which is turning out quite pretty with the finer yarn, although I’m not sure if I like the how the pattern alternates knit and perl sections so it has a striped stockinette effect. I usually like lace like this to be all knit side stockinette. I had to rip out a few times before I got the pattern established, but now that it is it is not hard, mostly decreases followed by a section of 4 k or 4 p and a yarn over in a 12 st repeat. I think it will work out well, I just have to make sure I finish it by mid May! I think now that I look at how the pattern is constructed, it wouldn’t be very difficult to design something similar with a different lace pattern. I’m also thinking about knitting Jellyfish, I think it would look gorgeous in something like handmaiden seasilk or even the handmaiden silken in some luscious colorway. Since it’s unlikely I will ever not need a pretty shrug for a sleeveless sundress, I might as well have a collection. I found this, just now, that Mary-Heather from rainydaygoods wrote, and it should help my nascent pattern design ambitions.

I’ve been knitting a bit less than normal due to lazyness and also the acquisition of some new toys, mainly a ninento ds, and an asus eee which is an itty bitty computer. I’m hoping to use it for more blogging, since it has a built in sd card for picture uploads, and is also very portable, which will hopefully entice me to actually post. I’m forever writing posts that get outdated before I can actually post them.

I did manage to find out what was going on with my swift as well, apparently joann charged back the money to my account and didn’t tell me, instead of replacing it. So instead, the husband and I decided to make one, which will be a fun weekend project in the near future. We’re going to follow the directions over at Crafty Diversions, which I would link here, but I think it’s currently down for maintenance. I’m printing the google cached version just in case it doesn’t come back up!

Another reason I’ve been knitting a bit less is that I finally decided how I’m going to paint my hitchhiker wheel. Since I haven’t found any tutorials online on how to take it apart and paint it, I’m going to document it and post it here too. I’ve been trying to learn on it, but I haven’t been able to figure out the tension so it won’t actually drawn the yarn correctly. Also a pain. I’ve been focusing on the drop spindle instead, and am just barely starting to get the hang of it. I got a couple new books with birthday money, Shannon Okey’s Spin to Knit and The Whole Craft of Spinning by Carol Kroll, which are helping. I also got the Knitters Guide to Yarn, which is really awesome, and I’m planning on knitting the Morning Maine fingerless gloves once I spin some beautiful blue grey roving from pigeon roof studios on etsy. So that project will take awhile.

Right now I feel like I have done very little thus far this year (except not buy yarn) and am forever planning to make things. I do not like this. I am very anxious for spring to arrive. I’m always more productive when it’s warm out.