Wrapping up loose ends

First off, just on the general random coolness of having a blog – a few posts back I wrote about the sadness of missing Lady Marian at the jousting at our closest Renaissance Fair. And she commented on the post! Now I don’t know if she was ego-searching, likes to read knit blogs, or what random reason she found the post, but how cool is it that she did? I had to go wake the Kid up and tell her Lady Marian left a comment – she was delighted.

I wrapped up all the crocheted patterns that were due, so that brought a sigh of relief – Iw as running out of tv shows on DVD. I really like the sweater I did for the yarn company, but haven’t heard back from them yet whether they like it too! I had a problem with a magazine earler this month in that the sample I made didn’t look exactly like they expected it to, so they rejected the piece even though they had said they were going to publish it. I understand why it happened, but now I am panicking whenever I send out a garment.

I also wrapped up all the half finished magazine articles I had floating around – now I only have two on my plate, and neither one is due until the end of the month so I can focus on books. Which is good, because I now have four active book projects, which is two too many. So I have to get the two closest-to-finished jobs done and out of my life before my head explodes.

Over the weekend, I came down with an incipient case of Startitis. Probably from reading knit blogs and realizing this one hasn’t had any actual knitting content in forever because I haven’t had any time to knit. And I REALLY wanted to have something new to wear to Rhinebeck, just because. So I fought the startitis by rooting through the stash closet and reacquainting myself with WIPs from the dawn of time. I found this giant scarf/shawl that I started two years ago and got bored with.
So I decided to finish this instead. It was more than halfway done, and would not only be cute to wear to Rhinebeck, it would free up another zipper case for the stash closet, so it’s all good.
This is from the Vogue On the Go knitting series, Scarves Two. I subbed Aurora 8 for the specified yarn, and I had forgotten just how yummy that stuff is. The other thing this scarf provided is an abject lesson on the importance of gauge. I tell people all the time that gauge is important, but when I bought the yarn for this piece I decided it was just a scarf – how much could gauge matter? So it was a little big – no big deal, right? DAMN this is a large scarf. If I do the complete color block pattern it will probably be about 7′ long. I am tall, but not tall enough that I need a 7′ scarf. But for some reason this project is really appealing to me right now, so I will keep going until the pattern is finished or I run out of yarn. One of the joys of this random geometric pattern is that if I end it at a different place than the designer did, no one will notice. It will be lovely to finish something that wasn’t one of the instant gratification things I have been banging out over the last two hectic months.

I am going to go swear at my laptop now. It is soon to be replaced – the funds I have earmarked for a new one are in the mail to me even as we speak. No mail today though, so I will continue to yell at this one for another few days.