Lanam Facio

(It isn't actually lopsided; I was just balancing on the edge of the couch, trying to keep from falling and landing in my guitar and trying to catch some of the late afternoon light. Ahh, the joys of New England. At least the chances to wear wool make up for it.)
Pattern: Basic Chic Hoodie
Yarn: KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in a heathery green so lovely people kept coming up to me and petting it. (Forest Heather). Also3/4 inch La Mode Buttons in Style 2918.
Needles: Size 8 dp and circular
Size: 36"
Amount of yarn used: Thirteen grams less than eight skeins. I did leave off the hood, but her estimates seem to run on the generous size, I've noticed.
Source of Yarn: Knitpicks
Modifications: I left off the hood, replacing it with ribbing, and didn't change to smaller needles.
Thoughts: I used the two row buttonhole on it. This is a really nice pattern.

It's my Rhinebeck sweater, even though I'll never wear it; I got it finished by then.

A meme I've seen around:

I'm thinking about what I'll knit when the sweater is done. This is such a fun part of knitting; I love planning these things out.

I finished ball seven, just shy of the end of the cuff. I guess each sleeve takes a healthy bit more than one ball of yarn.



I'm a lot more hopeful about getting this in on time than I had been. It now needs an inch of cuff, the collar, the front bands, ends woven in, and buttons sewn.

I've finished up the sixth ball of yarn. Apparently one ball of Wool of the Andes is about exactly as much as is needed for one sleeve:

I finished up ball five at a meeting today; the ruler on the sleeve shows where the changeover occurred. (It was not the time to lay out the sweater on the table or have someone else hold it up for a picture.) I'm now about 40% of the way through ball six.




It is coming along rather nicely, I think. The ribbing is a bit deep for my taste; I'll change that if I use the pattern for myself in the future.

Well, the Bug Guide (Thanks, Fillyjonk!) leads me to think it was the larva of a black carpet beetle. It's at least a different species.

Instead of my chic rice basket, I know have a sealable plastic tote. The stuff from the bottom (which was also under a cotton dress that needed hemming until last Sunday) is in bags, the freezer, or going to go through the wash.

Yaaaaaagggh!

Rice baskets do not repel creatures who like to eat yarn.

On the plus side, though, I no longer have those pairs of socks to darn.

I got this funny feeling and ended up emptying out the rice basket where the Orange Aran, the Summer Shawl, the Providence sock yarn, my still-being-sewn red sweater, and many other things were all hanging out. It seems they came up from the bottom and were stopped by the brown Simon and Garfunkel socks. (I feel a dreadful joke about feet coming on, but am repressing it.) I threw those and the Spirit Trail socks and some small bits of yarn out. Everything else is in bags so I can examine; it all looked OK to my paranoid glances.

On the plus side, these are not the same critters who have given me trouble in the past. I couldn't find them at bug guide, but they looked like some of the critters that you sometimes see in corners of old buildings. I'm hoping they were just annoying little opportunists.

I can't believe I didn't cotton onto the baseball-themed pun earlier!

So, here is the hoodie after the fourth ball of yarn:



I'm leaving out the pocket. I forgot to change to the smaller size needle for the ribbing. At this point, I have the rest of the ribbing, the sleeves, the bands, and the collar left to do.

This has been pretty much the only knitting I've been working on; I really want to get it done for the Afghans for Afghans drive. I have the Clapotis all wound up as a reward for when this is done.

It's interesting walking to run errands with the whole sweater tucked under the crook of my arm as I knit while walking. It's definitely doable, but makes me look forward to having socks on the needles again.

Here it is after the third skein:



It's really starting to look like a sweater now.

Well, I got tired of how iBlog was no longer being supported, crashed randomly, didn't display pictures if it didn't feel like it, and decided that it no longer needed to generate an RSS feed to feel fulfilled as blogging software.

Its second to last crash, though, did not seem entirely random; I was going to double blog (as you can see I've been doing) and talk about how I was tired of its foibles. As I started the second sentence, it froze up the computer. I think it realized that the end was here.

So, now I have this new address and, wonder of wonders, a working RSS feed. I'll be playing with the new software for a while.

 The second ball of yarn got me to the division of the sleeves:
The current tropical storm is nowhere as near bad as Isabel was when it blew through while I was in grad school, which is good.  Lots of rain, though, and the wind seems to be having fun making howling noises.  

My parents gave me this gorgeous yarn for a Clapotis.  I haven't started on the knitting, but I did wind the yarn.    
I'm still working on the sweater for AfA, but am only about halfway through the next ball of yarn.  The green did turn out to be even nicer than in the catalog and in the pictures.

 I'm knitting a ChicKnits Basic Chic Hoodie without the hood for Afghans for Afghans.  I know that I don't usually post progress of charity knitting, but I thought that it might be useful to someone to see how far one skein of Wool of the Andes would take you.   That aside, here's the first ball, knit at a baseball game (PawSox v. IronPigs) and while relaxing and reading before school starts: