Laceweight alpaca, yum

It occurred to me that I have a WIP that I haven't shown here yet:


The day I got my Fall 08 IK, I grabbed some Misti Alpaca laceweight from my stash and cast on for Eunny's Biased Eyelet Stole. I figured this would be a good anti-project for the Kilt Hose That Won't Just Knit Themselves. Something soft and lacy and lightweight for the time when I need something other than heavy black wool. Alpaca makes me swoon. :)

Anyway, about a week in I got a message from someone on Ravelry asking where I'm weaving in all the ends. See, the lace rows are done with one strand, but those garter ridges are done with three strands. Carrying them along the edge presumably gives too much bulk there, as the pattern specifically instructs to join two strands for the garter rows and then cut off two strands. That's 4 ends to weave in every 16 rows.

My solution:


The two ends from joining are knit along with the first 3-strand garter row. The two ends when I'm cutting off the extra yarn are being woven into the second 3-strand row (the one that I've just finished knitting). Short of leaving all of the ends as-is and declaring it all to be fringe, that's the best solution I can come up with. You can see the ends on the most recently-worked garter ridge in the picture here.

Anyway, send good vibes to me and my extended network of coworkers over the next couple of days. They're deploying a big software upgrade today which goes live tomorrow. We said our goodbyes to our old circ software last night; one coworker took pictures of a couple of the icons (we all agree that we'll miss the Angry Claims Returned Guy icon, who is being replaced by Even Angrier Claims Returned Guy)

Chic on the Halfshell

There I was last Wednesday, happily raiding Mount Hyjal with my guild, ready for a try on Kaz'rogal... when my internet went kaput. Checked my TV... no TV either.

I went to call Comcast, and apparently they have a different definition of "24-hour customer service" than I do. I think it means that a customer can call 24 hours a day and receive service. They think it means "If someone's in our call center, your call may be answered eventually. If not, we'll automatically disconnect your call." This was one of those pesky "auto-disconnect" periods. After the tenth time my call got disconnected by Comcast, I decided to find something better to do with my time.

I started going through the patterns I've downloaded from Ravelry, and there was Drew Emborsky's Chic on the Halfshell bag just begging to be started.

A week later, and here it is all seamed up:


It still needs a lining. I have the fabric, I just need to figure out how to line something that's shaped vaguely like a TIE fighter. This was a fun FAST pattern, and I think the end product is cute as heck.

Pattern: Chic on the Halfshell by Drew Emborsky
Hook: 5.0 mm (H)
Yarn: TLC Cotton Plus Solid
1 skeins = 178.0 yards (162.8m)
Colorway: 3643 Kiwi

Yellowstone

More at my Flickr set

Yellowstone was amazing. I wish we'd had more time to see it, because even with spending a full day there, we had to skip a lot. You can't really plan how long it will take to get from one place to another, because you never know when you're going to get stuck in an hour-long traffic backup caused by people taking pictures of a bear (which will, of course, be gone by the time you get to where everyone ahead of you stopped). We saw tons of bison and elk, and even saw a couple of moose on our side trip to the Grizzly Bar in Roscoe, MT; I found a picture of the place here. I probably would have taken a picture myself, had I not left my camera sitting in my car in the Dulles long term parking lot. All of the pictures I have are off J's camera, but I did at least take some of them.

After Yellowstone, I camped out at J's house for the week. I found plenty to occupy myself with while J was at work. I met him for lunch every day, got my fleischkeuchle fix (German for "greasy but fabulous fried meat pie"), played WoW, knit... he's such a sweetie, he even found the one place in town that sells yarn and made sure to take me there. The one day that he had to work late, he called me to come out to the job site with him rather than have me sit around at the house for another hour and a half. He gets gold stars. Lots of them.

Anyway, once I got home I needed some retail yarn therapy...


Yes, I'm trying to accumulate enough of the Jimmy Beans monthly Lorna's Laces colors to be able to Do Something. I have big delusional dreams of a sock yarn blanket.

Where have I been?

Montana!

Just got back Sunday night, and there will be pictures just as soon as I'm done sorting through what I have (I had to use J's camera since I left mine sitting in my car in the airport parking lot... it was 5am, I was a bit out of it).