Fortune cookie from Bon BBQ Buffet in Columbus, IN:

"Every excess becomes a vice (in the yarn shop)."

Hmmm.

What a lovely Christmas celebration we had this year. I knitted for hours on a
Multidirectional Scarf out of Noro Silk Garden #39, and then CH and I met Matt and Rob for a Traditional Jewish Christmas, i.e. Asian restaurant and a movie. We had half an hour to kill between the sushi and the movie, so we all got some knitting done except for CH, who still hasn't learned to bring along a contingency project on supposedly non-knitting excursions. Alas, poor Rob ran out of yarn halfway through the film, but he seems to have survived. We also met a college-age (and, incidentally, Jewish) crocheter in the theater who crochets scarves for profit and has been trying to teach herself to knit. Rob gave her a business card, so we'll see if she turns up at ThreadBear.

Oh, and I smirk: The pseudo-Starmore sweater I bought for $30 at T.J. Maxx fooled Rob, who asked me when I had knitted it. Bwa-ha-ha-ha.

Merry Whatever, everybody.

I LOVE to shop. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me from buying more clothes than I can wear before changing sizes is to hold up the garment under consideration and ask myself, "Do I want to buy this more than I want to buy more yarn?" We all know the answer to THAT question, most of the time. I've placed two orders to elann.com in the last two days.

The Manos shop model goes well. The pattern is "Evergreen" from Design Source Collection 2: Serendipity. The body is completely knitted and joined at the shoulders, and I've got a sleeve started. I have quite a list of gripes about how this pattern is written, most of which are related to the sizing calculations, but my biggest complaint has got to be the sleeves. The cuffs are the same circumference (7.5", although the schematic says 8") for all sizes. That's probably okay for the smallest two sizes, but not for the finished 44" bust size I'm knitting. I really didn't want to make any significant changes to the pattern, since this will be a shop model, but I just had to add a pattern repeat to the sleeves in order for them to fit.

Alas, I had a sock-tastrophe yesterday. I discovered that the sock-in-progress I had been keeping in the back seat of CH's car was no longer attached to a ball of yarn. Apparently at some point, the ball rolled out the door. As an extra annoyance, the working needle was stuck in the ball. So if you happen to find half a ball of brown Trekking with an aqua #1 Pony Pearl dpn lying around anywhere in Indiana, it's mine. Meanwhile, the sock was only about 40% done, so now I haven't got enough yarn to finish the pair. I mourn.

At long last, I have FINALLY managed to brew a drinkable pot of cofffee! Thanks for the early Christmas present, Mom.

Since I have only seven hundred and four projects-in-progress, I started a new one yesterday: the Aran Sandal Socks from the Knitter's Magazine sock contest book. In my defense, they are intended to be a holiday gift, and since sock-knitting time is rarely interchangeable with sweater-knitting time, they shouldn't interfere with getting the Manos model done. I keep making mistakes in the Mirror Cable (even after downloading the errata), which is aggravating, but it's still a very entertaining pattern. I particularly enjoy the cross-stitch cables, and look forward to each round #3.

In spite of the rain, I'm off to ThreadBear, with Hope's shopping list in hand. See ya after lunch, boys.

I didn't actually get the fringe put on until after breakfast this morning, but the Eros scarf is finished. Looks real good with my purple nightgown. :)

My MIL has recently rediscovered knitting thanks to a co-worker who gave her a ball of Eros to play with. She was cheerfully cranking out slinky scarves while I was at her house in Minnesota over Thanksgiving weekend. She took me on a jaunt to an area yarn shop to get more Eros along with my BIL's wife, Karen, who formerly did not knit. But, we fixed that. She got the hang of it immediately and knit two-thirds of a nice warm cuddly scarf (two strands of Plymouth Encore) in less than two days. She's probably finished it by now.

What I'm really itching to start right now-now-now is the Manos model I'm going to knit for ThreadBear. My favorite dealer says he has a kilo waiting for me. But I can't go get it for another day or two.

I've been reading the latest Knitter's Magazine and I just have to say that I feel terribly sorry for Perri Klass. Apparently the opinions of strangers are more important to her than knitting. She wrote an entire tedious column about places she doesn't dare knit, almost all of which are places that I do knit. She "doesn't want to be anyone's eccentric." I guess that's her choice. I have had a lot of delightful conversations with people who found me interesting because I was knitting in some atypical situation, and I don't give a hooping funt if someone thinks I'm eccentric.

I used to have a blog. But then, I got distracted and neglected it for weeks and weeks. Funny, the same thing tends to happen to my knitting projects.

I did manage to knit myself an entire sweater from the Beatrice I bought at ThreadBear in October before losing focus. If you don't believe me (and there's no reason you should) you can see my pic wearing the finished item on Rob's blog, if you rummage around in the archives a bit for November's Third Thursday wrapup.

Today I am knitting a scarf from Plymouth Eros in (big whopping surprise) pinks and purples. I thought I wasn't interested in novelty yarn, but I decided I wanted an entertaining accessory to wear with the lush but plain black velvet outfit I bought for choir concerts. I need to finish it before I go to bed just in case I'm out of the notion when I wake up tomorrow.