12 Rounds To Go!

I've been working slowly and steadily on Somewhat Cowl, although I have started Avast for my husband AND I'm working on my Deep V Vest. But when I'm watching a movie or TV, I get out the Cowl, and I'm up to 42 rounds completed! I need to finish 54 to say it's done, so I'm getting VERY close. Since the weather is supposed to take a turn for the cooler (finally!), I think I'd like to finish this very soon. I'll put all my focus on it today and who knows? Maybe I can get it blocking tonight or tomorrow morning? Thursday is supposed to be the coolest, so it will be my goal to wear it then.

My weekend was pretty quiet. I did show up at Rebecca's on Saturday but no one else did. I guess, in the future, if I haven't heard from anybody during the week, I'll assume that no one's going. Luckily, I was able to do a little knitting at the Grove, so I wasn't sitting there all by myself, but it wasn't the way I'd planned on spending my Saturday.

I've been reading grumperina's meme on various blogs and it's gotten me thinking that I'd like to see if I can think of 10 knitterly things about me. Some of you who know me may already know these things. Here goes:

1. I LOVE tweed yarn. I have many sweaters' worth of tweed yarn of various colors and textures stashed away. My very first sweater was made out of Tahki New Tweed. I'm basically a Tweed Ho. When I see tweed yarn, I find myself drooling and feeling deep longing sensations.

2. I hate silk yarn. I don't like the way it feels, don't like the way it knits up, don't like the way it behaves once it's knit up, don't like the way it pills, don't like the way it wears. I guess there's not much left to say about that.

3. I have issues with the weight of yarn. Unlike pretty much any knitter I know, I'm constantly checking the density of new yarn I find in order to determine if it will make a heavy garment. In my mind, there's almost nothing worse than knitting something that weighs a ton and then having to wear the damn thing. I don't know if it's claustrophobia or the heat we frequently have here, or what.

4. I also have issues with a yarn's ability to wear well. I get really annoyed when I've spent hours knitting something only to find that the yarn pills like crazy or fades in the wash or something like that. Even if a yarn is soft, cheap and comes in amazing colors I will bypass it completely if it has an inability to wear well.

5. I'm going to make a confession that will make knitters everywhere gasp with shock and horror. I don't like Blue Sky Organic Cotton. See #3 and #4 for reasons why. 150 yds per 100 grams. Get serious! Besides, my Fitted Tank looked like my cats got a hold of it after one washing. Yuck!

6. For some reason I can't quite figure out, I find heavily patterned things more tedious to knit than stockinette. For the first repeat or two of a stitch pattern, I'm intrigued, but after that, it's just plain dull. The problem is, even after the honeymoon is over, you still have to pay attention, even though you're incredibly bored. With stockinette, you don't even have to look. You can chat, watch TV, talk on the phone, read a book. Whatever. It's totally relaxing.

7. Ditto for cables. Besides being tedious to knit and sucking up an incredible amoung of yarn, heavily cabled items look clunky, chunky and busy to me. I do think that a strategically placed cable or two can be a lovely accent.

8. I have a problem with finshing things I start. In knitting terms, this means I have A LOT of WIP's. The older a project gets, the more of a block I have about finishing it. It's really bad and I wish it was something I could change about myself.

9. I think knitty is the best source for patterns out there. Period. I've made more things from knitty than I have from anywhere else. I have years of IK's and Vogues, TONS of knitting books and other misc. patterns, but the bulk of what I've made comes from knitty. Pretty much the rest comes from amateur knitwear designers, i.e. bloggers such as knit and tonic, zephyr and Eunny. There's a lot of great talent out there.

10. A logical progression from that is that I'm not sure I like the trend of the amateur bloggers becoming published knitwear designers. It's sort of like a local restaurant chain being bought out my a national conglomerate. I liked the grass roots quality of purchasing a single pattern from a non-professional for $5. I'm hoping the quality doesn't suffer, but how can it not? The pressure of having to come up with enough designs to fill a book sure MUST mean that each design will be that much less brilliant, doesn't it? I hope not. Nonetheless, I'm awaiting a few of these books with much anticipation and hoping I'm wrong.

There. I'm sure to J, none of these things are a surprise, but to the rest of you, I hope they are. By the way, I've got 8 balls of Debbie Bliss Cotton DK yarn in a seafoam green color that I'd like to get out of my stash. If you're interested in it, leave a comment by Wednesday, and I'll announce the winner on Friday and ship it out to you.