September Lull

OK, I'm back from la-la land. Just uninspired to blog these past few weeks.

But I was re-inspired when my Spinning Secret Pal, Cortney (aka Merlinthecat), sent me this wonderful second course - 4 ounces of alpaca/merino/tussah silk, 3.5 ounces of gorgeous multi-colored merino from handpaintedyarns.com, an adorable dragonfly tile, and an iridescent beaded dragonfly that Merlin made herself! And wonderful BFL roving in purples...

Which I loved so much I immediately started spinning it up! Here are the results - about 114 yards of two-ply taking its first beauty bath. Beautiful stuff, yes? Thank you, Cortney!!

In other news, I finished my first Lizard Ridge block, half Kureyon (the darker colors) and half my handspun (a pale blue merino single plied with a commercial blue/pink rayon/silk). I'm not sure I like the way these colors work together in this one block, but I'm pretty sure that over the course of an entire afghan, it'll all work out. As will the different gauges of Kureyon and my, ahem, variable homespun.

And I'm maybe a quarter done my mom's Christmas scarf, knitted in feather-and-fan from my homespun.

Here's hoping my fiber mojo is back on track. Cuz if not, there's a helluva lot of fiber in various forms around this house....

I Feel Loved

Look what I got! From my Spinning Secret Pal!

That's baby alpaca top in the plastic bags. The softest fluff you could ever want. And I love that silvery gray - matches my hair! Or the parts of my hair that are gray, at least. I don't know what I'm going to make of this, but there are 4 ounces, so once my spinning skills catch up to the quality of this fiber, I'll have enough for a gorgeous lace scarf for me, I bet.

And see that little pouch? It was knit, perfectly I might add, just for me. Nobody - I repeat, nobody - has ever knit me anything, not since I was, oh, a young teen and my mom knit me sweaters. Which often did not fit well, I might add.


Inside the pouch - beaded stitch markers! And a dragonfly pin! I have absolutely no fancy stitch markers, much less lovely purple ones made just for me by my SP. And I love the wings of this dragonfly. It's Fimo clay, or something similar, so someone (on etsy, apparently) made little tubes of Fimo, or however it's done, to make the veins in the wings. Nice! Here are close-ups...

And do you know what fits perfectly in the little pouch? My jar of Vaseline, which is what Louet recommends to grease the brake on my wheel. Now when I travel with my wheel, I don't have to worry about the lid coming off the jar and Vaseline getting all over everything. Amazing!

I love it! It absolutely made my day to get this little package in the mail! Thank you, whoever you are - you are very thoughtful!

In Other Fibery News
There's been a lot of productive fiber-working around these parts, especially over the long weekend.

First, here are yet more photos of my multicolored Ashland Bay merino roving, spun up and then plied with pink sock yarn, above.

And, when the pink yarn ran out, with purple sock yarn. I don't know what I'm going to do with this yarn, but I'm toying with the idea of using lots of different handspun yarns in a jacket for me. Which means I'll have to spin up lots more yarns. What a pity!

Second, Saturday morning I pulled out 8 ounces of Ashland Bay Pink Quartz merino roving - part of the first batch of roving I ever bought. Spin, spin, spin....ply, ply, ply...by Sunday night on a rainy weekend I had about 260 yards of heathery yarn, somewhere around a worsted weight (I gotta get me a wpi tool, or find a stiff enough ruler). I like this yarn, but I liked the roving better. The other roving I bought at the same time was a heathery purple, so I wonder if I'll be equally unthrilled with the yarn from that.

Third, I've been plugging right along on the to-be-felted striped-squares rug. I'm finding that spinning is helping my overall stick-to-it-iveness. When I start spinning a roving, I really want to see how it turns out, so it gets turned into yarn within days. I suppose if I were spinning enough of one type of roving to make a sweater, I'd get bored, but I'm not that foolish, unlike some knitters I could mention. Surprisingly, that enthusiasm for finishing a project is spilling over into my knitting. There seems to be a good chance that I will actually finish this rug - I'd estimate it's half knit now - before going on to another knitting project. And I like the switching between spinning and knitting. I spin for a day or two, then knit for a day or so, depending on my other activities, of course. I did find out that I can't yet spin while watching a movie, unlike knitting.

Finding My People
Finally, I am very, very pleased to report that I have landed among kin. Last night, I went to WEBS in Northampton for their monthly drop-in spinning evening, for the first time. I was anxious going in, of course - what if they don't like me? What if I don't like them? What if I can't spin a lick in public? etc., etc., but immediately I was at home with these spinners. There were about ten of us, ranging from brand-new spinners like me to very competent and experienced spinners (who were also very helpful and friendly - yay!). All women, all ages, and I'd tell you their names, but I'm really terrible at names and I can't remember a one. I had a ball, learned a lot about resources I didn't know (classes! websites! guilds!), was complimented on the yarn I've made, and it was all over way too quickly. I could have stayed and spun all night, really, I could have.

Anybody want to have a spinning slumber party with me?

Finally

OK, I admit it: I do not knit socks. Well, truthfully, I have knit one pair of worsted-weight socks, way back in my distant past, and there is one-half of one sock out of fingering weight currently hidden somewhere in my house. But that's it.

Which isn't to say that I don't have sock yarn around. Not much, really, maybe a total of eight or ten skeins' worth. And finally, just this week, I have found a real use for sock yarn - plying it with my handspun!

Behold! Here we have some multicolor roving (probably Ashland Bay merino, but I don't really know), perched atop a cake of pencil roving.

Here we have the roving in its awkward-yet-oddly-graceful floofed-out state - its teenage years, so to speak.

And here we have the floofiness in its adult stage - a single plied with some pink Patons Kroy sock yarn, at least until the pink ran out, whereupon I switched to a heathery medium purple Kroy.

I love it. I love it so much I couldn't wait for it to dry before I showed it off - this is still wet from the post-spinning bath.

I see more sock yarn in my future.

Done and Done

Item #1: An Einstein Coat, sized for a ten- to twelve-year-old, destined for Afghans for Afghans. The purple yarn is a bulky single from Colorado Yarns; the red is Lambs Pride Bulky. As with the women's medium I made for myself a year or so ago, this kid's coat took more yarn that what the patterns called for. Otherwise, it's a fun and simple knit. I love those buttons.

Item #2: About 320 yards of my handspun, from a dyed Corriedale Cross batt from Grafton Fibers, plied with Jaggerspun Zephyr. Destined to be Mom's Christmas scarf, probably via a Feather and Fan lace pattern. I'm getting there with my spinning.

My Whirly Gig

Whee, obsession! It's spinning all the time, all channels, in these parts! Let's see, what's happened since last we spoke:

1) Look over to your lower right. No, a little further down. See - a SpinKnitties ring code! My first ring! My first figuring-out-where-to-add-things-on-my-sidebar! I may even get a Flickr or Photobucket account [hey! I just did, because good old Blogger wouldn't let me add more than 3 photos. So there, Mr. B.] and then we can look at pics of my yarn all day, all night - aren't you thrilled?!?

2) I joined in on the Knittyboard's Spinning Secret Pal round. My first secret pal round! I've been shopping for my secret pal downstream, but nothing's gotten here yet, so I can't spill the beans. Although I will admit I ate the chocolate that was intended for giving away. That can be replaced, but this time I'll buy it on my way to the post office - I simply cannot resist temptation.

3) It occurred to me that I could spin yarn with which to make Christmas presents this year. (Next year, I guess I'll have to take up raising sheep in the backyard.) Aren't I generous...creative...nuts? Anyhoo, here's the plan: I've never knit my mom or dad anything, so this year I'm going to spin some yarn and knit them each a scarf. Mom's scarf is a-spinning as we speak - see the pretty single below? That's a gorgeous blue-green batt from Grafton Fibers (I think) that I got at the Wool Pak this week. I'm thinking of plying my single with the Zephyr you see perched on top of my wheel - a perfect match! This idea comes courtesy of Etherknitter, as a great way to stretch your homespun. (Plus, in my case, it'll alleviate the guilt about not even starting the lace shawl I had planned for the Zephyr - a present for Mom trumps a shawl for me, right?)

Dad will get a tweedy black scarf, out of Ashland Bay Black Granite merino/silk, as will a certain friend of mine, who ought to be reading this blog now and then, and who just loved the yarn I had spun out of a few ounces of the fiber I had picked up somewhere in my rovings [heh. get it?] around the fiber shops of New England in the past month. Here's what that yarn looks like - it feels wonderful, very smooth and heavy.

Patty-cakes will get a scarf out of yarn from this Grafton Fibers batt:

A strong-minded color, just like Pat.

4) A textured yarn, from roving from Crosspatch Creations. This roving is a mix of several breeds of wool, viscose, tussah silk, and silk noils. Since my skill level is such that textured yarns are all I'm producing, spinning this yarn made me feel as though I'm productive. Here's the roving, followed by the finished two-ply yarn. Interestingly, to me at least, my singles are highly overspun, but the plied yarn turns out just fine. That goes for most of the yarn I've turned out in the past two weeks or so.

5) I might very well end up going to both the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival (probably on Sunday) and the New York Sheep and Wool Festival (probably on Saturday). If I'm going to be obsessed, I might as well do it up right.

It's OK to Say No

Every August, I get the same problem - I'm exhausted from trying to do too much. And my allergies kick in, in a major way. I often spend much of August being grouchy, burdened with guilt over unweeded gardens and unpainted houses and un-searched-for rare plants and un-lost poundage and un-found world peace, not to mention inner peace.

I have to learn to foresee the consequences of my decisions and to say no when those consequences are undesired. [Editor's Note: You'd think the Linnet would have learned this much earlier in life, but remember that our Linnet has always been a tad ... slow in these matters, shall we say.]

So I'm trying very hard to resist Afghans for Afghans' call for 900 kids' sweaters and vests, due the end of September. My purple Einstein Coat, above, will be perfect for this; I don't need to organize relays of knitters to turn out backs and fronts and sleeves, with a big seaming party at the end - right? Right?

So why was there an enormous pile of bulky and worsted-weight yarns on my bed last evening? All leftovers or random single-ball purchases, perfect for knitting a multi-colored sweater or vest for 10- to 12-year-olds. I stuffed them all into bags last night so I could sleep - help me resist casting on yet another garment.

Although my friend Jess said she'd help. And I'm further along with the purple coat than the picture shows; I'm about 3/4 done the first sleeve.

In Other News...
I'm trying to distract myself here, so humor me.

Here's some purple wool I spun up and plied, shortly after finishing up the pencil roving. I'm reasonably pleased with how this turned out. There's only about 37 yards of this, though. I don't remember what kind of roving this was, or even where I got it - I have to learn to label the roving when I buy it. [one more damn thing to remember...]
Let's see, what else?

My copy of the fall Interweave Knits has yet to arrive. Annoying.

I did just get a mailing from WEBS, listing their fall classess - they have Spinning I and Spinning II (plus some other spinning classes) - yay! But the classes are on Monday nights, when I often have a conflict - boo!

I just heard about the Knitters' Retreat in November, in New York State. Now that is tempting - have any of my loyal readers ever been? Is it worth all the money? Let's see: that would be the Vermont sheep and wool fair and the Boston Knit Out in September, Rhinebeck in October, and this retreat in November - sounds about right to me.

Enough chatting - Earle just brought me coffee; I'm going to go sit in the sun somewhere and knit.

Forward Movement

Some of you may wonder if I ever DO anything with all the yarn and fiber I buy (sometimes I wonder that myself).

Why, of course, I do!

Recent progress on several fronts:

First, spinning. Here you have a perfectly lovely bobbin half-full of a single spun from pencil roving I bought at the Elegant Ewe just last week. (No, I don't remember what kind of fiber - basic wool, I think.) I'm in loooove with pencil roving!!

I'll have you know that I now have two such lovely bobbins' full, and shortly plying will commence. Anybody got any hints on how to ply correctly, other than ply in the opposite direction than the singles were spun? I'd like to know how much twist I should be putting into the plying.

Second, felting for my footsies. No, not fuzzy feet sorts of things - I've started a felted rug. Well, technically, I've started a rug that will be felted, supposing it turns out OK and that I can figure out how to felt a small rug. Anybody up for stomping on wet wool come the next heat wave, a la wine-making?

Anyway, I made up the design for the rug, based on a black-and-white photo of a quilt I love, from the book Quilts of Illusion by Laura Fisher. Here's a photo of the quilt in the book:

[Blogger won't let me post this photo; I'll try again tomorrow]

This quilt was made in Ohio in about 1925; the maker is unknown. The pattern is called Roman Square (Basketweave variation).

Here's my sketch of the rug as I envision it. I don't intend to follow this color placement exactly; these colors just reflect what colors of markers I had handy. I do intend to use dark colors as the outside stripes of each block, which I think enhances the hoped-for three-dimensional quality. I'm using various colors of Cascade 220, bought on sale at WEBS, and the rug will be garter-stitch throughout, with two strands of yarn held together on size 13 needles.

And here are the first two blocks of the rug, plus a tad. I'm picking up for the second block along the side of the first block, and so on. It'll be interesting to see what happens when I go to knit the fourth block - picking up from the third block will be easy, but I'm hoping to attach the side of the fourth block to the side of the first block as I knit, so I don't have to seam the sides together. After that challenge, then I get to figure out how to create triangles of several sizes in garter stitch.

Finally, I've made considerable progress on the Einstein Coat, kid size, that I'm making to give to Afghans for Afghans. The body is done (minus buttons and end-weaving-in), and I've started the first sleeve.

[Yet another photo censored or, more likely, ignored, by Blogger; anybody want to suggest a better blogging platform?]

Onward!

A Fiberous Trip

Ah, vacation! Yet another short one these past few days - I visited my (non-knitting, can you imagine?) friend Nancy up on Lake Winipesaukee in New Hampshire. Lots of laughing, lots of food (Nancy actually cooks!), wandering around here and there, a good time was had by all. A representative pic by Nancy:

The Linnet investigating the supply of highbush blueberries along Heron Pond, also known for its view of Mt. Chocorua in the background and the hundreds of damselflies along its shores.

But you didn't come here to hear about the luscious steaks and the wanderings after rare plants, you came for the fiber. Well, be assured, there was fiber indeed.

First, a boast: I am probably the only knitter who has ever perused Patternworks in Center Harbor without buying a thing.

As for the other three fiber shops I managed to pack into a three day trip, let's just say I can boast all right, but not about my self-restraint.

First, on the way up, I hit the Elegant Ewe in Concord, just before a killer thunderstorm let loose. I couldn't drive in that kind of rain, so I shopped, coming away with some pencil roving and some multicolor Ashland Bay merino roving, plus Deb Menz's Color in Spinning.

On the way home, I spotted by the Fiber Studio in Henniker and somehow acquired a couple of silk hankies, some hand-dyed rayon boucle, an enormous hank of laceweight hand-dyed rayon/silk, which I could not resist winding into balls the evening I came home, and various and sundry rovings. And I was utterly charmed by the Wool Room in Antrim (no website), where I chatted with the lovely owner and bought yet more rovings. Alas, Blogger won't let me load those photos - maybe tomorrow.

Finally, when I got home, look what was waiting for me. Three different rovings from Spunky Eclectic, on sale, no less.

I think I'd better go on a low-fiber diet for a month or two. The stuff is beginning to impede walking through this house, not to mention what it's doing to my bank account.

Hot Times in the Kitchen

The first yarn off my new wheel, plied two days ago.

Such pristine virginity didn't last long today.

Splotches of grape and cherry KoolAid, steaming away.

Cooling off.

Not what I expected, but it interests me nonetheless.

Colinette, eat your heart out.

Round and Round

New wheel! Woot!

Happy me, happy me....

In other news (what? you expected me to blather on and on about my wheel? why ever would I do such a thing?), Blogger is letting me post two more photos today, so here we go:
A dobsonfly. Sorry about the lousy photo; I found this at dusk, and neither the natural light nor my flash really did the job quite rightly. Be very glad these get no bigger than about 5 inches long (at least here in New England). Having searched my considerable natural history library, plus Googling, I can offer you these tidbits of knowledge. This is probably a female, because male dobsonflies have mandibles about three times the length of the head. However, the male mandibles are for grasping the female; it's the female who can give humans a nasty bite. The aquatic larvae (called hellgrammites; nifty stream-dwelling critters) of dobsonflies are predaceous; adults don't eat, which is OK by me.

The purple coneflowers, where a butterfly was a moment before this was taken. I think I like the photo even better without the bug.

The Fruits of the Earth

My friend Noah knows mushrooms. He can rattle off scientific names with the best of them. But he's not a knitter, alas. A couple months ago, though, I discovered that Noah dyes yarn with various mushroom species. Just look at these colors!
The bright yellow and the green toward the top of the pile are dyed using ferns, but the rest are all mushrooms. I'd show you more photos, but Blogger will only let me post three photos tonight, boo, hiss.

Back when Noah first told me he had dyed yarn with mushrooms (I think it was in March or April, on a vernal pool field trip), I asked if he would give me some yarn if I knit him a hat. Well, several intervening months later, as with all busy peoples' lives, Noah and I finally got coordinated. He wants a hat like Knitty's Astrodome, only with mushrooms rather than stars. Last night, on yet another field trip, this one to chase dragonflies that only come out at dusk, he gave me his collection of dyed yarn, so I can try coming up with color combos. With soft, subtle colors like these, I think any combination will work. Luckily for me, Noah wants a multi-color hat.

Major developments on the spinning front: I'm picking up a wheel on Sunday! Yay! I can't believe I'm doing this. (Good for me!) It's a new double-treadle Louet S10, from Abi's Web, in Hinsdale, MA (no website; sorry), about a two-hour drive from here out through some of the prettiest parts of the state. I'm trying to talk Earle into going with me (then I can knit along the way, if he drives).

Development #2: I tried using a drop spindle tonight. I made yarn! Yay! It even looks like yarn, at least it looks like a thick single. After I tried out a Louet wheel at the Massachusetts Sheep and Wool Fair back in May, I went to Webs and bought myself a Louet spindle, Lee Raven's Spin It book, and a half-pound of basic domestic wool roving, nothing fancy. In my usual scattered way, I never got around to trying it out till tonight. Following Lee Raven's directions, mostly, I separated the roving in half lengthwise and carefully drafted the halves such that the lengths of roving were quite thin. That pre-drafting helped a lot, as I could practice and play with putting the twist into the yarn without fiddling with drafting as well. I only quit because there was a sugar cone of chocolate moose tracks ice cream calling my name - I do plan on spinning two spindles' full and then plying the singles.

Development #3: Next Saturday, Cathy, and probably Ariel and Jenn, are coming to visit and bringing their wheels! Yay! We're going to have our own little fiber fest and BBQ. I've invited a bunch of my knitting buddies from around here, so with luck, there should be lots of fiber foolery going on around here. Y'all are invited, too!

Finally, one last photo, of pink perfection from the garden. Ain't summer grand?

A Step or Two, But Not Three

I've made progress.

This looks vaguely like yarn, not sheepyard mud, after washing. I think I'll keep it - my firstborn!
Inches and inches, maybe 20, of lovely mindless purple garter stitch have been made. Perfect for knitting in the heat wave we just had. I certainly won't finish this in time to send it off by Afghans for Afghans' July 24th deadline, but I'm getting there. I'm not sure I'll have quite enough of the purple yarn, so you can look forward to red or green or blue cuffs, and maybe even stripes on the fronts above the waist. I don't know yet.

And then we have this, my Lacy Cables Shawl.
Note the lovely little bit of cabling.
And the not-so-lovely bit, where apparently I cannot pick back up a very basic yo, k2tog, lace pattern, once I put it down for three weeks to make my Prosperous Plum Tank, even though I can still cable properly.
Why, listen! I think I hear the bullfrogs croaking now. Sigh...

In Other News of the Spineless
Since Stariel likes my bug pics, she gets one more. The squeamish should avert their eyes now.

A wasp with a bad sense of color - can't she tell she clashes with the Swamp Milkweed?

I'd post more, but Blogger is being its usual recalcitrant self.

I Came, I Saw, I Sorta Spun

Nothing like a cold dose of reality to wake me up out of a delicious daydream. You may remember that back in May, at the Massachusetts Sheep and Wool Fair, I tried spinning for the first time, on Louet single- and double-treadle S10 wheels. Loved it. LOVED it! It took considerable will power to walk away from the wheels without taking one home.

But I thought I would be good and dutiful and responsible and all that nonsense, so I said to myself that I would research wheels, try them out, check out prices, and be a good Puritan in my obsession.

So yesterday I went to a great begin-to-spin day-long workshop given by Anne Corbey at The Fiber Loft in Harvard, Massachusetts. Five of us spinner-wanna-bes gathered at 10 AM in lovely air-conditioning, each with our own single-treadle Louet S10 wheel and a goodly pile of unwashed fleece from Anne's own Romney sheep (I think it was a Romney - she also has cross-breeds, and I didn't remember everything she told us over the course of five hours or so).

Note that I said unwashed fleece. Anne thinks spinning is easier in the grease and that washing the wool is easier after it's spun, rather than when it's still fleece.

First we carded. I learned that I need to develop my arm muscles if I want to card fleece. Since one of the reasons I'm considering taking up spinning is that I think it will give my over-strained knitting muscles a break, hard-carding may not be the way I go. (I almost said it's not in the cards for me, but I spared you.) An hour later, we each had a pile of mostly clean and reasonably straight fiber, and we started spinning!

Anne came around and started each one of us off. I was first. Unfortunately, my yarn broke shortly after Anne took her skilled hands off it and my untutored ones took over. I valiantly tried to reattach my roving to the yarn from the orifice. And tried. And tried. And friggin' tried till my lower back hurt and my teeth were clenched and I was having hot flashes...nonetheless, I persevered. Eventually, Anne worked her way back around to me, reattached my roving, and I was off again!

For another yard. Maybe only 20 inches. Anne had told us to treadle slowly, and when I treadled slooowly, the frigging treadle kept stopping and reversing direction and driving me Up. The. Ever-lovin'. Wall. Eventually I said screw it and treadled faster. The yarn started behaving itself. I bet there were whole minutes where I actually calmly, meditatively, with relaxed muscles, spun. Maybe five such minutes in three hours. Five separate minutes, that is.

And I thought I was coordinated. Hah!

I will say that all this knitting and sorta-spinning is improving my character. I no longer think I'm practically perfect. I no longer think I can learn anything at the drop of a hat. I no longer think it's possible to live life to its fullest without regular infusions of fiber.

I may even learn something about myself from all this. Stubborn? Cranky? Prone to fits of self-doubt? Well, OK, I've always been self-doubting, but now I'm learning what other character flaws I have, as well.

Back to the subject: Anne also had us try spinning a commercially prepared roving, a nice, clean, dry dark gray wool of some basic sort. Pain in the fleecy butt. I think I needed to pull this roving further apart than I did, so I wasn't feeding gobsfull into the poor wheel at one go. Anyhow, some of my more-talented comrades in spinning did spin up the commercial roving. Most of us also tried a double-treadle wheel, and most pronounced it considerably easier to maintain a good treadling pace with the double treadle than the single treadle.

Finally, in the last hour of the workshop, Anne showed us how to ply our own yarns, since we'd been prompted to spin yarn onto two bobbins earlier. She also told us that we were the only - I repeat, only - class in her 23 years of teaching spinning there in which everyone in the class spun enough of their own yarn to ply it, rather than having to learn plying with commercial yarns. I began to feel better.

So, stop yammering, Ms. Linnet, what does this alleged yarn look like? May I present:

All of maybe 25 yards? This is in the stage called "put tension on the newly plied yarn overnight" and you all may admire my vaguely French porch chair, sinnce I don't have a niddy-noddy. Currently, the yarn is bathing in a large bowl on the kitchen counter. If it turns clean enough to be something other than pale-yellow-mud-colored, I may even use it in something - a felted kitty bed, I'm thinking - rather than burying the evidence in the compost heap.

And before you start commiserating with me and thinking, ah, it's too bad she had such a trying time with her first spinning, I just want you to know: I don't give up easy. And I don't let some pile of greasy fleece and my own unlearned fingers get in the way of a True and Proper obsession, no-siree-bob. Remember I'm stubborn and cranky.

I still want a wheel.

And I bought four skeins of Koigu on the way out the door, just to relieve the built-up tension. At least I know how to treat myself well.

File This Under Time Warp Needed

You remember that bi-colored hat I knit for Afghans for Afghans a short while ago? Well, I was intending to knit Elizabeth's nifty hat pattern in the new Knitty in kidlet size for them too - really, I was - but then I got an email from the A to A people, saying the deadline for receiving garments has been pushed back two days, to July 24th, and that they had enough hats - what they really need is coats, vests, and mittens for ages 9 to 18.

I fell for it.

I dug out Sally Melville's Einstein Coat pattern (which comes in kid sizes), some purple Colorado yarn I bought on sale ($24!), of which I had exactly the right amount, found the right size needles, and I set to work at 6:45 PM last night.
First, I photocopied the pattern and marked the stitch counts for the size I was to knit (age 10-12). I cast on 38 stitches, using a crochet cast-on. Then I knit. And knit. Just knit - it's all garter stitch.

The progress as of 8 PM:
Lousy photos, both of them, but you get the idea. There's no chance in hell I'll get this done in time to ship it off to meet the deadline. What am I thinking? Just how twisted is my perception of reality?

But it is lovely mindless, worthwhile knitting, and some kid will get this someday. Just maybe not in ten days.