Three on Thursday - Rambling Rows

First, there was a snafu.

Slight snafu on my Rambling Rows afghan

Argh!  That multi-colored square attached to the yellow rectangle and blue square was not supposed to be attached to the blue square.  It was supposed to just hang down under the yellow.

Snafu removed

Second, I tried to fix it the easy way.  Although it would make the mitered angles go in the wrong direction, my plan was to cut off the offending square, leave the white and brown blocks hanging and work backwards from there.  It was late at night when I made this decision and that's never a good time to make decisions.  I didn't notice that I was pulling on live stitches while I was yanking on the bits of multi-colored yarn trying to get them to separate from the brown and white squares.  By the time I realized what I was doing, I had messed up most of the stitches on multiple rows.

Starting over

Third, it was easier to just cut off the white square and start the whole section over.

I hope that you are having better luck than I with your knitting and that you'll join me for Three on Thursday.

Knitters ADD

I'm suffering from Knitters ADD.  I have way too many projects OTN.   Too many projects that I want to finish.  Projects that I want badly to finish.  So of course, I can't decide which one to work on.  I've spent the past few days rotating through them, knitting a row or two on one, putting it down & picking up the next.  I'm making no progress.  I need to just pick one & finish it.  But instead of doing that, I'm sitting here immobile, unable to choose.  I'm also sitting on my hands trying to ignore the impulse to go browse Ravelry instead.

One of those OTN projects is the mitered square "thing."

It turned out to be a lap robe.  It could easily have been an afghan - I had plenty of scrap yarn & I was enjoying working on it.  Wasn't getting bored in the least.  But I was super excited about the Dr. Who shawl & wanted to be done with the miters so I'd be free to start the Tardis's (Tardi?)  The miters are almost done, I just have to finish the border.  I'm struggling though because I know when I finish the border, I'll have to deal with all those loose ends on the back.

Oddly, the loose ends don't look all that dramatic in the photo.  Maybe I'll have to make that picture my screen saver until it's done.  Just a little something to remind me that weaving in the ends may not be as bad as I imagine.  Obviously, I'm not a big fan of weaving in ends.  Thus, the project languishes.

Next up is the Bigger on the Inside Dr. Who shawl for my daughter.  The yarn arrived on Friday & I promptly got busy knitting.

Wow!  Have you ever seen a dirtier computer screen?

Not a lot of progress has been made on this shawl but I keep reminding myself, it's bigger on the inside.

I also want to knit a Color Affection shawl but I can't decide on the colorway.  I may have to knit five or six of them.  I keep rearranging yarn & coming up with new colorways.

On Saturday, this appeared in my mailbox.  And it's so much prettier in real life!  Not sure exactly what it will end up being, obviously a lace shawl of some sort, but I don't have a specific pattern in mind.  Yet.

There's a pair (or two or three) of socks OTN, as well as five or six other projects I have absolutely no interest in finishing.  Maybe one day...

Luckily, I did finish the twin baby blanket set.

For a closer view of the detail...

I very much enjoyed knitting these baby blankets & I understand the twins' momma was happy to receive them.

Meanwhile, it's homeschool bowling league day.  I better log off Ravelry & go get dressed.

Twins & a Doctor

Just a quick update...  The twin set of baby blankets is finally finished.  No photos yet but as soon as they've been blocked I'll take some.  I'm quite happy with the way both blankets turned out and hope the customer will be as well.

Meanwhile, I've returned to the mitered square item.  I'm still calling it an item because I can't decide if it's going to turn out to be the intended afghan, a lap robe, or a table runner.  I'd really like it to be an afghan, but an afghan knit in fingering weight yarn on size 2 needles really will take a lifetime.  It will most likely end up being a lap robe because I think it's past table runner size.  Maybe a small table cloth or table topper.  We'll see how the patience level holds out.  So far, it hasn't gotten the least bit boring because I change colors so often.  If it wasn't for patterns I keep seeing on other blogs that I want to knit, I think I could probably be happy working on this one item for the rest of my life.

One such pattern that's recently caught my attention is a Dr. Who shawlette.  Actually, it's called the Bigger on the Inside Tardis shawl.   Sadly, I have to admit, I'm not a big Dr. Who fan.  I've only watched one episode & I was so confused I couldn't get into it at all.  One of these days I may try again.  But my daughter, my daughter is a HUGE fan.  And she's been asking me to knit her a shawl.  I am SO excited to have found this Tardis pattern.  Sarah will absolutely love the pattern & knitting it for her may even make me likeable to her teenaged brain.  I just hope I can contain my excitement and keep the knitting a secret.  Luckily, a knitting blog is the very last thing she would ever read so I don't have to worry about her finding out here.  It will be interesting to see if she notices that I'm knitting something in Tardis blue.  Meanwhile, I await delivery of the yarn.

For now, I'm off to bowling.  Counting today, only three more weeks of homeschool league bowling left.  Zack's Saturday morning youth league ended last week.  Which means I now have Saturday mornings free!!   Of course, summer leagues start up the day the homeschool league ends.  But that's okay.  The summer leagues Zack will be bowling in are all at night so I won't have to get up early.  Not getting up early is always a good thing.

Oooh!  The mail is here.  I wonder if the Tardis blue yarn magically arrived in one business day instead of the expected five to fourteen.  I better go check.

Operating Heavy Machinery

Please pardon my insanity today.  I started a new antibiotic for my rosacea last night and all I can say is, phew!  Last night, I took the first pill in the middle of drinking a pot of coffee (fully caffeinated of course) and within 5 minutes felt like I was stoned out of my mind.  I read the warning label & all it said was that I shouldn't operate heavy machinery until I knew how I'd react to the medication.   I couldn't imagine trying to operate heavy machinery - I wasn't even sure I knew my own name!  About 20 minutes after finishing the full pot of coffee and about 3 hours before my regular bedtime, I decided that I was not sleepy, but too stoned to function & I went to bed.  Fell asleep instantly & slept through the night.  In fact, I slept better than I have in years!

This morning, I took my pill and immediately felt like I'd had a shot or two of morphine.  Every sense is dulled & I'm not positive I can feel my fingers.  And then the manic thoughts kicked in.  Good Lord!  My brain is in manic overload with thoughts of what I should do, what I can do, what I'd like to do... whirring through my head while my body refuses to budge and doesn't even realize I have a brain.  I'm starting to worry that I may spontaneously combust due to the friction of the two.

So that's my condition today.  Please pardon me while I ramble madly and make thousands of typos with my non-working fingers and a brain that's struggling to read.

Yesterday's trip to the dermatologist was .... interesting, I guess you'd say.  The doctor has been hoping to get me off the antibiotics for quite awhile but the topical medications just don't work for me.  I wish my rosacea was just the red face people associate with rosacea, but it's not.  Nope, I'm special.  A few rosacea suffers get, on top of the redness, giant sized zit type things and their face swells and their eyelids swell closed and it's quite painful.  It stings/burns like a bee sting and you get the sensation of bugs crawling across your skin (always pleasant!) and your skin feels like there's ground glass imbedded in it when you touch it.  So, each time you try to swipe away one of those imaginary bugs....  Ouch!

So, I walked into the dermatologist's office yesterday after being off the antibiotics & on the topical for two weeks with my face exploding.  All I could think was that I was going to have the opportunity to show her a big, gigantic, "Told you so!"  But I didn't even have to say it.  She walked into the examining room, took one look at me & said, "Honey, you look awful.  Does that hurt?"  Then she proceeded to give me a prescription for a new antibiotic (they stopped making the old one I'd been taking,) a second prescription for another topical lotion and a coupon.  A coupon for $50 off the topical.  $50!  Fifty dollars off, not five.  Yeah, that was a fun trip to the pharmacy.

Meanwhile....

I started a mitered square blanket or table runner (depending on my patience level) last week.  I'm not sure what I was thinking but I'd decided it was time to use up some of the scrap & stashed sock yarn that was lurking all over the house.  So, sure.  A mitered blanket made out of fingering weight yarn on size US2 needles.  No problem!  I should be able to whip that out in a week, maybe two if I'm a slacker about working on it.  Right?  Sure.  No problem.  So far, after a week and a half of obsessively knitting without taking time out to even wash dishes, I have this:

It's looking much more like a table topper than a blanket.

I set the mitered square monstrosity aside yesterday to start on a new project.  Two baby blankets for twins. Twins that have already been born so the pressure is on to knit fast.  So far, all I've accomplished is

I'm blaming the lack of fabric on that new antibiotic.  Sure hope my body adjusts quickly & I can soon return to operating heavy machinery!

Hard knocks

Hmph!  I learned something the hard way today.  I learned that when you have two blogs, each one assigned to a different email address, when you are signed in to email address "A" & you go into blog "B" and type a post, when you hit "Submit Post," the post automatically shows up on blog "A" because that's the email address you are currently using instead of it posting to blog "B" where you thought you were.  Argh.

Anyway....

Here's a link to the post that was supposed to be here.  It's about a favorite pattern of mine - mitered mittens.

Minnie says, "I would have told you that would happen, but I was too busy scratching."