Mind Games

I've been erging a lot this month (it's Concept 2 holiday challenge time again--I have just over 62,000 meters to go before the gym closes for the year on December 23), and I've noticed that I can take whole seconds off my split times by thinking the right thing at the right time. (For some reason, mentally yelling "FEET!" is very effective.) It feels like mental yelling is I'm doing--although the machine says I'm rowing faster, I don't feel I'm exerting any more effort. That's lucky for me, since I'm lazy about hard workouts... so lazy that after a while, I forget to yell at myself and slow down again.

Only 2 of the ergs really work, and they're right next to each other, so as soon as there are 2 of us, we have to sit right next to each other (where we can read each others' monitor screens). My favorite is when super-athletic (but non-rowing) guys notice that I'm going faster than they are. (It's not that I'm especially good--it's just that the way you're supposed to erg is much faster than the crazy way people usually do.) For some reason, they find this disconcerting--what ever would they think if they could hear me yelling "FEET!" to myself??!

Speaking of meters to finish, I'm just about done with my holiday knitting--I have about 200 meters of the original distance left to go. That should be little enough to finish without resorting to frantic marathon knitting, although there's some danger that I'll get distracted: I did finally cast on for my last holiday project earlier tonight, but over the last couple of days I also slipped in two entirely unplanned projects (hey, they were small!), started a shawl for me, and did some planning and math for a shawl for Schaefer. Babies don't know exactly when Christmas is, right?

Side Effect

Here's the thing:

Much as I love yarn shops that put prices on their yarns, there's a small danger that, when a semi-acquaintance/coworker/fellow knitter/[what's it called when you attended the same college, but it different years?] asks what yarn you're using, you'll hand her the label, and the fourth fact she learns about you will be that you spent $26 for a skein of sock yarn.

On the plus side, the yarn is gorgeous, the skein was enough for 2 socks (I may like good sock yarn, but I'm not crazy), and the socks are turning out very well. AND I'm about to bind off the second, so it probably won't happen again.

At least not with this yarn!

How Did This Happen?

I seem to have only 3 hats. How is that possible? I knit hats, and I keep other things I make--why haven't I managed to keep more hats?

Also puzzling, they're all only semi-suitable for daily wear: one is the hat I row and run in, and probably everyone who comes near me outside of those contexts would be happier if I wasn't wearing it; one is lined with a felted wool sweater (and is wool itself, of course), so I save that for when it's really arctic; and the third is knit with a double strand of wool, so it's pretty toasty too.

Maybe I'll work on that after I finish all my Christmas socks?



(This sock has gotten bigger already.)



(And this one hasn't.)

Scarf Factory

I got a little carried away on the whole scarf thing:



(Although this is less impressive than it looks--I made the one on the bottom a while ago.)

But I couldn't help myself: they were the perfect Thanksgiving knitting--a mindless stitch pattern and cuddly yarn, accompanied by the warm and fizzy feeling of doing something nice for someone.

And the scarves didn't mess up my Christmas knitting schedule/yarn mileage obsession, even though I only meant to knit one. I have about 3/4 of a mile of yarn left to knit, and 3/4 of a month left to knit it in.

Lunch

I've made all kinds of progress on my holiday knitting: I finished a pair of socks, I nearly finished the present/modeling bribe I was hoping to finish my this weekend, and I think the total yarn mileage left to knit is down to 1 mile. Plus, finishing the socks meant I didn't have a portable project, so I've moved on:



A red scarf for the Red Scarf Project. I already have a scarf ready to go, but it's not red and they're not even halfway to their goal of 3000 scarves (the deadline is December 15), so I thought I'd make another. The original 2 miles included a red scarf, but I planned to kit it from a skein of Nichole. Unfortunately, I turned covetous and wished I was making the Nichole into socks for myself before I'd even knit an inch. I don't usually feel that way, so I was relieved when some pomegranate Miss Priss appeared in the mail! As a bonus, it's knitting up about 87 times faster than Nichole--I just started that last night.

Funny Things

1. I stopped at the organic grocery store on the way to the fabric store this afternoon, and while I was checking out, someone came out of the cafe to tell the cashier that "the vegan Philly cheesesteak is becoming a reality." Ok, good to know.

2. I buy yarn and fabric (and patterns for each) in completely different ways. I buy yarn mostly because I like it, then later on I find a pattern that goes with it, and then I knit. (There are occasional exceptions, when I love a pattern and don't have the right yarn, buy some, and cast on immediately, but mostly, it's yarn first.) Sometimes I buy yarn on sale, but I'm just as likely to pay full price.

For sewing projects, I find a pattern, wait till it goes on sale, then buy it. At some point--possibly at the same time--I buy fabric (which I also almost always buy on sale), then I sew whatever it is. What's funny about this scheme is that it's sometimes hard to find the right kind of fabric for a particular pattern--I seem to gravitate towards patterns meant for knit fabric, for example, but I have a terrible time finding non-hideous, me-appropriate knit fabric--and although I know they could be adapted for woven fabric, I'm lazy (and hate installing zippers). On the other hand, there are a jillion me-appropriate yarns in the world, and when I do pick the pattern first, I never have a hard time finding yarn to match.

All this to say that I found some non-hideous knit fabric at the store today, so I'm going to do some sewing.

I Think I Told You...

...about my Lacy Baktus Scarf when I was cataloging recent projects where I've run out of yarn? (A normal person would just have listed them, but I have an MLS...)



See how close I got to finishing it? But I've convinced myself that the asymmetrical dark end adds character--and there was no way I was going to rip back half the scarf in order to start the decreasing side of the triangle sooner.

In other news, as I was starting to think about my holiday knitting a couple of weeks ago, I worried that I might be planning too much for myself, so I pulled out all the yarn I'd earmarked for presents (plus the Endless Thingamajig for me... priorities, you know), and added up the mileage: a little over 2 miles. Totally knittable in 2 months--even if an extra (small) project or two sneaks in. (My average monthly mileage for the year so far is 1.37.)

See--I knew that compulsive tallying would come in handy some day!