Winning at Yarn Chicken...

So the Secret Project deadline has been pushed up. No stress here. Nope. Nada. (Ha) 

Like pushed up by MONTHS, not just weeks. And here I am, blogging when I should be knitting my fingers off. To be honest, I've been knitting on this project since I came home from my haircut and a grocery run (about noon)... so there's that. 

I was already playing yarn chicken with the second section of StSt (stockinette stitch). Thankfully, this time, I won the Yarn Chicken game, seeing as this yarn was custom-dyed for this particular project. I'm not sure that the person who did it could duplicate it if I needed another hank of the same. 

For non-knitters, "Yarn Chicken" is when you have a specific amount of knitting and you're not sure whether you'll have enough yarn to finish the knitting. Sometimes you do, which means you've "won" the Yarn Chicken game. Sometimes, you don't. Then, you've lost. You have a few options here: you can tink back and re-tweak the pattern so that it works (say you've got a shawl and you lengthened it -- you can take it back a bit and just have a slightly shorter shawl). Or you can order more yarn, hoping that what you get is the same dye lot (this is where your LYS can be helpful more than the online world). 

In my knitting history, I've usually lost Yarn Chicken. I came close twice - like, literally had 3" of yarn left on a project. And I've had to do my share of tinking (a knitting term, which is "knit" spelled backward: to rip back your knitting). 

As you can see from the picture above, I clearly won Yarn Chicken by a pretty huge margin. Since this is sock-weight yarn, that little bundle will go into my "Oddments" bag for an eventual pair (or two) of FrankenSocks. Otherwise known as Scrappy Socks. 

I'm on the last section of the Secret Project, all Seed Stitch, which is mostly a pain in the butt. And it was worse because I had kept the seed stitch borders, as you can see in the picture. So I had to make it work when the seed stitch went all the way across - which it sort of didn't. Luckily, the colored yarn is so busy that unless you're right on top of it, you won't notice the two odd rows it took me to get the border straight. 

Once I block this out, I'm going to see if I need to line the StSt parts; right now, the border is causing it to curl like a sausage. And I didn't use a border on the ribbed part, which curls as per normal. Then the question becomes "what do you line it with?" I can't imagine this project being regularly washed, so I could use a silk, but I need to make sure that the fabric I line it with is stiff enough to hold the StSt part flat-ish. I mean, I want it to drape a bit, but not so much that it curls. And I don't want such a stiff fabric that it's hard to wear, or needs to be ironed and starched. You don't want to steam this to iron it! 

The Rest of the Knitting...

So after this, I want to do something totally different; a Baby Surprise Jacket. Remember that yarn that I showed you in the Bag of Yarn thing? Well, I got a darker blue which is kind of the "accent" to that. I could do a BSJ holding sock yarn doubled, and that would be cool. Or I could use the Baby Regia in another Breathe and Hope Shawl. You can see at the link that the pattern calls for yarns that are pretty opposite. I've done this with a deep blue and a fluorescent pink - and it looks great! It seems that the more opposite you go, the better this looks. 

I'm also going to start another pair of socks; I have singletons, but they're in patterns where using them as a "carry-along" spare-moments project wouldn't be a good idea. The spare-moments socks are the things you can jam into a bag and just mindlessly knit. I have at least 4 balls of Opal that's self-patterning. Those are the "spare-moments" kinds of yarns - you knit and the yarn does the work. 

And - I want to finish the Copland shawl which is about 1/3 of the way done. It's huge, so it's one of those "doesn't leave the house" kind of thing. I also have a Reyna on the needles. That's in a gorgeous silk-blend yarn, and I can't wait to see how that looks. 

I have so many shawls-in-progress...I have to figure out whether or not I'm giving them to people because I can't wear them all. Well, I probably could. If I wore a shawl every day. Which I could, technically. 

The Garden...

It was nice enough that I was able to move some pots around. Lately, winter hasn't been inclined to leave; this morning (April 1), there was snow on the ground. That's no April Fool's joke. 

Anyway, I was concerned that Hubby had put a pot on top of The Monster Bleeding Heart. Turns out I was right: so when I hauled that pot over on the other side of the house, I found this bit of The Monster coming up!  I was so happy and so relieved! See the bits in the circles? Those are the beginnings of my baby! Unfortunately, that larger bit was growing more than I thought, and it's a little bleached. And then we had snow...so I need to check to see if it's ok. 

The Icelandic Poppy is coming back nicely, as are the hyacinths. Everything else will come back as per usual, and I have to figure out what we're doing for vegetables this year. I think the usual herbs, and also tomatoes, romaine lettuce and perhaps radishes or carrots. Maybe this is the year that we get radishes instead of just lots of greens!

Honestly, I'm not sure how the summer will go. Will we be able to get out on our bikes? Will my hip cooperate? Will COVID cooperate? 

Random Picture...

Awhile back, oh, about DECEMBER, we got a notification that we were going to get a few Christmas cards, and a notification about Hubby's emissions test. And they never came. 

We'd been having a lot of difficulty with mail delivery: days when the computer showed we were getting things, and mail just never showed up. Days when mail didn't come till after dark. We missed at least one medical bill that I know of. 

We used to have a regular delivery person. But lately, they've all been random people. Look what showed up in the mail today...Merry Christmas! We honestly thought it was a joke. The envelopes looked like rabid bats had been chewing on them, and it's a good thing that one of the envelopes didn't have a gift card in it - because it was slit all the way open. 

Now, I get it. I want to blame the idiot that TFG put in place who closed post offices, removed drop boxes and was determined to just decimate the Postal Service. 

But I also know that in the US, 980,000 people died from Covid. Dead people can't work. So I'm trying to be patient. 

I don't know the solution to this. But something has to happen. We are at least in an urban area. Folks in more rural areas really are impacted by sketchy mail delivery, and of course, if you're one who relies on the mail for your prescriptions? Yikes...

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