My God, it's full of stars.

I feel very accomplished. I finished one whole sleeve of my cardigan! I actually knit four inches too long because I was in a groove. It's all big and squishy and pretty and wonderful. And I have almost three hundred extra yards of yarn and I really hope it'll be enough, because I used one whole skein (of seven) for one sleeve. I will probably be fine. Hopefully? Yay.



I cast on for the cardigan after finishing the centre triangle of the Neverending Highland Shawl of Epic. Are you ready for this? It's like you dropped on of those grow-a-robot things into a coke bottle full of water. From the begining, one pattern repeat at a time, drumroll please:













Yes, that's a DVD case. The centre triangle is larger than my finished Shetland Triangle. The finished product is going to be the size of an afghan. I am so excited to see how it finally turns out.

The Briggs & Little has the right crunchiness and weight, it's going to be very warm and it has the right look for the project. I don't think it's something I would want to wear next to my skin for a long period of time, but I haven't had any problems with it yet. The next challenge is going to be picking up the stitches for the border, which will be an adventure. I'm leaving that to when I have a nice chunk of time to myself to sit down and figure it out.

Last bit of knitting news is also creative writing news and school news! As my final project for creative writing class, Maddie floated the idea of doing a series of poems that mirrors the creation of a sweater, using all the knitting (choosing the yarn, casting on, ribbing, stockinette) as metaphor. It's an interesting idea, I just don't know if I can pull it off. Playing around with verses and lines now.

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The Great Flood

Okay, so I had this big long entry about my Christmas knitting half-typed out with spaces for pictures, and the draft got scrapped somehow. Ugh. So I'll skip it for now. All the sock-angst, the scary old Chinese lady who taught me how to knit continental barely speaking a word of English, the success of my X-Ring shawl, all of it. Skipped.

My apartment building flooded on Friday night. None of the yarn was harmed! I know that was everyone's first thought. But it's all safe. Only the living room and kitchen was affected, and the yarn lives in the hall closet at the other end of the apartment. But right now it lives with Caitlin. Because of the extent of the water damage in most of the building (we got off lightly), almost all the students have been moved to another residence on campus. Small, crappier, sketchier. No kitchens. We had to pack everything - everything - and move, in the space of a few hours. It was . . . an ordeal. People keep calling it an adventure.

Anyways, I've been doing some stress-knitting. It's good to have the needles back in my hands after having to give it up for so long because of papers and thesis. I've finished a repeat and a half of my Highland Triangle Shawl in the last few days. I only have one more repeat to go (24 rows) on the centre triangle before I start on the knitted border, which really will be an adventure. I've been taking pictures of it every time I finish one repeat. This thing is going to be huge. It's already larger than my completed and blocked Shetland Triangle.



That's after five repeats. I should have put something in for scale, but each of those floor tiles is one foot by one foot (if you can see the lines for the tiles).

I also started Maddie's Rose Wristwarmers for what feels like the thousandth time. This is the cursed project, I swear. Something is always wrong. The yarn (I'm on the third one I've tried), the needles, the gauge, the cables . . . I frogged my latest attempt this morning, but I know what to do for next time. I'm going to use Sapphire2001's mods for the pattern, and loosen up the cables along the sides - four or five rows between cables instead of two. The Cascade 220 seems comparable to the Creative Focus Nashua Handknits Worsted I'm using. I love the colour, though:



I got a skein pretty yarn for Christmas that I want to turn into wristies for myself, but I don't know if I'll even have enough. Definitely don't have enough for Knucks, which was my first plan. Think I might just do a big squishy rib with a thumb slit. It's Noro Sakura, which apparently is discontinued. It's so funky and different and awesome, I wish I had more!



Just seems so full of promise . . . I want to fulfill that promise before all my time is taken up with school again.

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Vacation Away

December? What was that? I have no idea what you're talking about. Pssh. December. Crazy talk.

(Read: It's been almost exactly two months since I last knitblogged. Trufax.)

I was eaten by thesis (rawr advisorsuck drama, ended up with a decent mark and ditching the advior) and exams (I rocked them) and then Christmas (whoo!) and now I'm back here at school and hiding from the looming cloud of thesis over the horizon. I will now use a cluster of images from the last two months to distract you from the fact that I failblog:















Next time, on Denise's Incredibly Sporadic Knitblog of Fail, actual talk of knitting! Stay tuned. Wildly different bat-time, same bat-channel.

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