The Knitting Pirate

If all went well, we now have threaded comments up to ten levels deep, so that you’ll be able to reply to other people’s comments in addition to commenting on my posts. Pretty nifty! (Please feel free to test the system.)

I’ve been planning to go to Stitch ‘n Bitch tomorrow, but I’ve had a sore throat for about a week. In the last few days I’ve started coughing. If I’m not feeling better by morning, I’ll have to put it off another week. Phooey. I was really looking forward to it, but I certainly don’t want to infect anyone with this cold.

Next weekend I am taking a quick trip up to Philadelphia, and I’d love to visit a yarn store or two while I’m there. Can you recommend one? Loop is already on my list. I enjoy buying souvenir yarn when I’m traveling. Later, when I knit it up, I can reminisce about my trip. And even after that, when I’m wearing the finished product, I think, “These are the socks I knit with the yarn I bought with Michael in Ottawa, in that neat little shop on Bank Street that’s closed down now,” or something like that. “This is the hat I knit with the yarn that I bought when Janis and I snuck off after dim sum to splurge at Woolwinders. This is the–”

I remember where I bought most of my yarn, actually. Even though there’s so much of it now.

New Thing the First: The blog layout! Please tell me what you think, and let me know if you have any suggestions. I am enjoying the new, wider format, and the ability to put widgets into the sidebars. Unfortunately, the Twitter widget is not fully functional yet, but Twitter does know about the problem and claims to be working to fix it. Anyone know of a better widget that I could use in the meantime?

New Thing the Second: Last night I plied the BFL and today I skeined off 410 yards of it! After a wash and a snap and a thwack, it is hanging to dry. Pirate-Husband said, “Wow, this looks like professional yarn!” The plying was interesting; one bobbin had slightly more than the other. When I found the color run that had the extra length, I snipped that single, wound some off onto a spare bobbin, and reattached the single into the ply at a better spot. I plied the extra back onto itself when everything else was done. I put a lot of plying twist in for a strong yarn, and I don’t know how that will affect the feel of it, but as for looks, it should make some nice subtle stripes when it’s knit up. Before washing, I measured 21wpi. I wonder how much it will fluff up. Pictures tomorrow, after it’s dry!

I spoke to Pirate-Husband, and he said that his cousin is unlikely to want a sweater that’s hand-wash-only, not to mention that I shouldn’t feel obligated to knit for her in the first place. As much as she would love and appreciate the sweater, she’d also throw it in the wash.

So I’m nixing the idea of the Baby Surprise Jacket. I’m okay with this decision; I’ve got two more gift knits at the top of my queue – one a quick six-hour project of a Swiffer mop cover, the other a much more complicated colorwork bag – but after that, it’s purely knitting for me, me, me! I hate to sound selfish, but most of my knitting lately has been for other people, and it’s been starting to drag on me. I don’t like working to deadlines and I don’t like feeling as if other people are anxiously awaiting my work.

Tonight I’m putting the thumb onto the first of Mom’s gloves and if there’s time, I’ll cast on for the second. I’ve made a lot of plans to go places and do things in the next few weeks, and so my schedule for these has been pushed up. I need to hurry.

In administrativia, I’ve made a change to the blog feed, by request – now the whole entry should be showing to anyone who reads via RSS. I hope this is a positive change for everyone!