What this will become remains to be seen — so far it’s the back of a vest or a cardigan. It is very loosely based on something I found in an old Bernat knitting pattern book. The narrow border comes from Aran and Fair Isle Knitting. The diamond-ish pattern is my own design, based on a chart for a 1940s sweater I stumbled over while looking for the perfect Norwegian star (which I found, but it didn’t seem right for this project).

I love what you can do with stash/scrap yarn!

… is what this past week has been. Well, I think so, anyway, I mean:

Monday. Bought new DVD player #2 as #1, purchased Saturday, turned out to be defect.

Tuesday. Got baby lots of clothes on sale. Got myself slightly smaller pile of clothes on sale. Got my better half a jacket and a pair of pants on sale. Bought baby new, much needed, carseat. Found The Perfect Bookshelf at IKEA, half off.

Wednesday. Spent (almost) whole day with my family at their summerhouse. Picked (and ate) blueberries and redcurrants.

Thursday. Results of shopping: new ridiculously pink knitting notebook and practical boxes for storing knitting/sewing stuff. Made redcurrant/strawberry/raspberry pie.

Friday. Ordered new contact lenses, bought some yarn I needed; otherwise nothing, too hot.

Saturday (today). Spent (almost) whole day with my uncles and grandmother at their summerhouse.

The above list is why I haven’t posted anything since Sunday. I consider myself excused. Now behold this picture:

Yes, I finished the acrylic vest. It doesn’t look acrylic at all (to me anyway), and best of all — it fits perfectly. Let me repeat that: It. Fits. Perfectly.

There are two reasons why this is quite astonishing. One, I didn’t swatch, even though I didn’t use the recommended yarn. Two, I didn’t cast on and bind off the way the pattern specified, but instead used a provisional caston and grafted. It still fits. I can’t believe it.

Well, it’s been a busy couple of days. Sort of. I got a little tired of Forecast getting practically nowhere, and due to a certain financial problem I was unable to buy myself the right size dpn’s for the sleeves, so… I did as I always do, and started something new.

I decided on this vest-thing. Also, I’m much better off knitting this right now, since I’ll be too big for regular cardigans in a couple of months and the vest is sort of bolero-length instead. It turns out the vest-thing makes wonderful TV knitting, especially after I got my contacts this Thursday and was actually able to make out the characters’ faces without squinting. (I love my contacts.)

Yup, that’s the Dallas season three DVD that’s peeking out from underneath the creepy acrylic piece of knitting (from this cheap acrylic stash yarn) that’s destined to one day become the (hopefully) quite lovely and very practical vest. I had just finished the Who Shot J.R.? episode and was about to replay the last ten minutes of it for my boyfriend, who had missed that crucial part of the intrigue (I keep him updated), when this evil, evil piece of equipment decided to develop a mind of its own:

(Doesn’t it look evil to you?)

It stopped working. It just stopped. It won’t play my Dallas DVDs anymore. (Well, it won’t play anything anymore, but I wouldn’t be nearly as upset had this happened during, say, uh, anything but my darling Dallas.)

I’m sure it’s the acrylic yarn that finally pushed the DVD over the edge. It probably would have survived much, much longer had I used the alpaca the vest pattern originally called for.

Fortunately, there’s a computer here that my boyfriend promises will play my precious little babies, but it’s just not the same. It doesn’t have a remote, for one. I think we’ll be getting a cheap new DVD player very, very soon.

I won’t tell you how much I dislike Wordpress right now. Suffice it to say that the last post took some time and a couple of hard words to recover.

I have three questions, basically, and since the chance of any of my (few) readers being a Wordpress developer is very slim (not to say nonexistent), they will have to be rhetorical.

- Why doesn’t the damn thing give any kind of notice when you click ‘Delete’ on the post managing page? What if you click it accidentally? (Yes, yes, I did, but it’s very close to the ‘Edit’ button.)

- When trying to post again, why is the damn thing unable to save and publish a new post with the same title as the old one (i.e. a completely identical post)?

- Why, when you’ve finally rediscovered the original post in your web browser cache (or similar) won’t the damn thing publish it in an edited form (i.e. not completely identical) until you’ve RELOADED the damn post-writing page? (It just pretends to save and publish, but really, laughs evilly and deletes all text from the screen)

Arrrgh.

Oh, and Wordpress? You know you’ll always be my baby, I just don’t like it when you eat my posts and then laugh evilly about it. Be nice, and I’ll keep you.

No pictures today because the camera is located a whopping three feet away from me, on the desk, and I’m too darn lazy to pick it up and supply the world with more pictorial knitting spam.

Anyway… I’m not usually the kind of person who has the patience to sit through entire movies and actually watch them. I’m more of a TV show girl — 45 minutes matches my attention span perfectly. But tonight, I was pleasantly surprised by Walk the Line, which my better half rented. I actually did nothing of the following during 2 hours and 13 minutes:

- knit obsessively;
- sneak out of the room and telephone a friend or family member;
- surf the Net with laptop in my lap (I actually shut it down!);
- read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (or any other book for that matter);
- scatter old knitting pattern books around the room and look for something to knit after I’ve finished 2781 WIPs;
- play extremely addictive Tetris-type online games while pretending to watch the movie; or
- fall asleep.

Notice, especially, the first and last items on this list. I’ve been a good girl tonight.

Oh, and the movie was really good; I liked it. Joaquin Phoenix’s (in the role of Johnny Cash) singing wasn’t too awful — nothing like the real thing, of course, and often quite out of tune — but tolerable.

Phew.

We live in a fairly small apartment. Today, we had some people over for baby’s not-christening. We managed to fit 14 people, including the celebrated little thing, around our kitchen table, temporarily moved to the living room. It wasn’t exactly quiet…

Anyway, now they’ve all gone except baby’s grandparents who are staying the night. And the apartment is finally clean, most of our stuff is unpacked, and, well, I’m sort of in heaven. I wasn’t this past week, as we were trying to restore the apartment to some kind of working order after all the moving chaos.

So I knit. I may be crazy, but when I’m in panic and Armageddon looms, I knit. It’s the only way I stay sane (and drive the people around me completely mad). The other night I got tired of Forecast and decided to see what my greenish sock yarn would look like when knit. I found myself an old Bernat knitting book and cast on for a cabled sock. (Yes, I know, not the best choice for self-striping or variegated yarn. This sock yarn happens to be both.)

I call it Camouflaged Cable. Do you see it?

Oh, and for anyone who’s interested, this is as far as I got with Forecast before temporarily giving up on it:

I’ve gotten about 1-2″ past the row where you divide arms and body. As usual, the colors are really weird and don’t come close to the dark blue of reality. (Poetic, aren’t I?)

Actually, I think the correct quote from Pride and Prejudice is “A whole camp full of soldiers!” (uttered by Lydia).

Why is there not a single online bookstore in this rotten country that sells this book? Argh! I want it! (And preferably yesterday…)

I’ve had dealings with the Swedish post today. They’re why this is a rotten country. At least today; maybe I’ll think better of them if and when they deliver a certain package to a certain person.

Someone was very interested in his food today. Someone kept jumping up and down in his chair waiting for the spoon to enter his mouth — while jumping up and down. I repeat, jumping up and down. Constantly.

Argh.

I do not want to count the stains on the rug, I really don’t. Fortunately we’re getting it cleaned as soon as we, um, get the time and/or money for it. Or maybe we’ll just get a new one.

Anyhow, what matters is that baby’s full (of Beef Stroganoff) and I’m happy because it’s almost raining and hopefully baby will fall asleep soon so I can knit.

I really hate this weather. Here’s why:

There’s hardly any wind, and it’s so hot and humid you can hardly breathe. Much less knit. Especially when the yarn is a wool/cotton blend (why, oh why, do I knit with wool in July?) and my hands are so — sweaty? not sweaty, but sticky that the yarn sort of clings to my fingers and to the needles and I have to go wash my hands to unstick them before getting back to knitting and stickiness.

I prefer summer when it’s not this humid — I wouldn’t mind it that much if we had some kind of air conditioning at home, but alas, we do not. We got in the car today, rolled back the roof all the way to the… well, all the way, and went shopping, just to get some wind in our hair. (I doubt if anyone’s interested, but if anyone were, they would probably be happy to know that we found The. Cutest. Stroller. for the baby, and it was on sale = really cheap, too!)

Anyway, back to the stuff that really matters: knitting. I’ve managed…

[off to count bobble repeats]

a little more than three repeats on the lovely Forecast. My baby. (Well, not technically, but it will have to do since the real baby is asleep — thank Someone.) Here’s a pretty okay picture to prove it:

I really, really wanted some cookie dough last night, so I made these (but managed not to eat most of them before baking). They turned out absolutely delicious. Chewy in the middle, crispy at the edges… mmmmm. Yum. Just had to tell the world about it.