Sheep On My Stuff

Guess what I finished last week?

Yes! Erica's Shawl is done. :D :D :D It's just waiting for my new blocking squares so I can block it, weave in the ends, and send it off. \o/

Pretend it's March 26th. Okay, it isn't March 26th, but pretend it is for a second. On March 24th, my sweater looked like this:

More or less. What was wrong with it? Well, the thing people say about flat gauge being different from in the round gauge turned out to be really true on this project. I stared at the different yoke and sleeve gauges for a couple of days trying to decide if I could live with it, and eventually the answer was no.

So I ripped back, went down a needle size for the yoke, and voila! It looks great. I just wish it'd looked this great the first time around.

This is the part where I repeat "I'm a process knitter, I'm a process knitter" and that I like the act of knitting every bit as much as the finished project... but I'm awfully glad to be nearing the end of the sleeves/yoke part, I have to say.

This time around, on vacation, I bought 200g of yarn (which means I'm still under where I started at the beginning of the year, yay) and one crochet book: Hawaiian Lei In Crochet by Roberta Wong. (It's even signed! :) I got it at a local independent bookstore.)

I worked on just one project: Erica's Shawl, which got to this point:

I hope it's about 33% done, but it's impossible to tell right now. I'm just going to keep going until I run out of yarn. :)

How ready am I to be back to normal life? Only so ready. We're unpacked (except, I guess, for our carry-ons), almost all the laundry has been done, but oh God, I don't adjust to time changes well! I went to bed around 11 last night and woke up around 7:45, and while that ought to be plenty of sleep, internally I have no idea what time it is. It could be 5:30. It could be 8:30. It could in fact be 3:30pm, and I would not argue the point.

"Knitting In Public Day" always seems very odd to me, as it wouldn't occur to me not to knit in public. I take my knitting everywhere, and I knit at restaurants and in cars and while on tours (really! I did that today). The most common place someone will ask me about my knitting is at restaurants; invariably the waiter or waitress will ask what I'm doing, if they have absolutely no idea what knitting looks like, or what I'm knitting if they're more familiar with yarncrafts.

I was relieved when I saw a quote from the Yarn Harlot (and now I can't remember where I saw it; perhaps on her page-a-day calendar!) saying something to the effect of "No matter how big a sock you're knitting, people will always ask if it's a baby sock." I was once knitting a sock for Grant in navy blue, and when I told the waiter who'd asked that I was knitting a sock, he replied, "Oh, a baby's sock," as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. I boggled at him. This was eight inches of ribbing and a turned heel the size of an adult man's foot. A not-too-small adult man's foot. What baby has feet like that? But apparently people are just crazy, and assume that all knitting is for babies or something. It wasn't just me!

Lace mystifies people, but most people take it in stride once I tell them I'm making a lace shawl. Now that Erica's Shawl is big enough, I can hold it up and people see what I'm talking about. They do ooh and ahh quite a bit -- and deservedly so; the yarn is lovely and the pattern is clear even before blocking -- but most people just get it and don't keep at me about it.

(It's about twice that long now, and I seem to have finally begun to make a dent in the yarn.)

Today's waiter was... a little more aggressive. He said it looked like I was almost done -- dude, I have a foot and a half of shawl! I said no -- it was barely started, and it'll be six feet long (I hope) before it's done. I held up the ball of yarn I was working with.

Waiter: How many of those will it take to be six feet long?
Me: Just the one.
Waiter: *jawdrop*
Me: *smugly* That's why it makes such great vacation knitting -- it packs up really small.
Waiter: *grabs bag of yarn, gauges weight* *to my UTTER SHOCK AND HORROR, attempts to GRAB NEEDLES OUT OF MY HANDS to feel weight of shawl*
Me: AUGHN NO NO NO NO STOP!!!
Waiter: *still pulling, oblivious to fact that I am in the MIDDLE OF THE ROW* Oh, I just--
Me: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! STOP! *tries to keep stitches on needles, grabs back*
Waiter: *finally lets go* Oh, I was just trying to see...
Me: *desperately checking needles and praying I haven't lost hours of work -- guess who doesn't work with lifelines?* I need to take care of this now.
Waiter: Oh! Sorry! Sorry! *departs*
Grant: Ack, sorry about that.
Me: Whew. Didn't lose any stitches. Sheesh!

What on earth do you guys do when that happens to you? Does that sort of thing happen? I tell you what: I have shown off lace shawls to many people, and nobody has ever attempted to yank knitting out of my hands before! (The waiter was very lucky Grant tends to pay for meals, I'll say that.)

It's strange to be an introvert who does such attention-getting things. Knitting garners a lot of attention. Reading on my Kindle garners a bit of attention. People see me doing unusual things and get really excited and interested in them. I don't mind explaining it, and I don't mind answering a few polite questions about my knitting. But holy cats! Just because I'm showing you my lace does not mean you can grab my needles out of my hands! Crazy! o_O

Tomorrow I'm going on a trip to the summit of Mauna Kea, where there will be stargazing. The trip's a long one, so I plan to bring my knitting. I'm not sure how much attention I'll get, but I do know I'm not going to let anyone close enough to grab my needles. It had never occurred to me I needed to keep a close grip on them before -- no one's ever done that before -- but now I know.

So what it is you guys do when people ask you about your knitting? What would you do if someone tried to grab your needles out of your hands? How do you answer people who are just saying crazy stuff, like asking if your gigantosock is for a baby or insisting that you're crocheting when you're knitting on five dpns?

At Quilt Passions, Kailua-Kona, HI:

QP: Ooh! Decided you needed a little sock yarn?
Me: Yes! *sheepishly* Well. I don't know if I needed more sock yarn...
QP: Oh, but it's here! And you're here!
Me: *relieved and excited* Yes! Yes!
QP: And this is your Hawaii sock yarn!
Me: EXACTLY! Yes! Yes! You get it!

Actually, Quilt Passions was full of some really wonderful yarn I'd never seen before. This being Hawaii, it's mostly silk, bamboo, and cotton blends -- all really gorgeous. I didn't want to go overboard, though, so I picked up a couple of (large) balls of (very very nice) sock yarn from Cascade (I didn't even know they made sock yarn other than Fixation), which will probably be a shawl and not socks at all.

I do like to get yarn when I go places. When we were in New Zealand, I got some yarn. :) I've gotten yarn in California and yarn in Texas, and here I am in Hawaii with more souvenir yarn. I love the idea of knitting something out of it that I can look at and remember how wonderful this trip was -- and it has been wonderful!

Still nearly a week before we have to leave. I hear it was snowing in Seattle yesterday. The weather's kind of cloudy here, but we'll take it!

Sheldon the Turtle is finished, and almost unbearably cute!

He's very cuddly. Getting him in and out of his shell wasn't too tough, and I'm extremely happy with the mattress stitch right now, which is how I attached the legs -- it's a fairly seamless look, and mattress stitch is quite easy. I have the pattern for the Super Sheldon costume and the Officer Sheldon costume, so at some point I may end up making one or both of those -- but I'm pretty happy with him as he is.

Luckily for me, he seems very tolerant of the sheep:

Since my goal is to destash and not to finish a certain ratio of projects vs. starting them, I've felt free to start the occasional project when the whim takes me. Even so, I wasn't expecting this to be my post for today--

--but he's really very cute, even if his shell and legs aren't done!

I'm doing him in Swish Worsted (a couple of balls I had lying around to compare colors), size 3.5mm needles. It's turning out nicely, although I have my doubts as to whether I'll actually have enough of the light green to follow the pattern exactly -- I may end up using some dark green for some of it. No harm done, though!

I also have some other single balls of yarn sitting around, some in the adorable leopard tortoise colors. I might have to have more than one turtle!