You know your life is chaos when you look at a two-hour school opening delay due to snow and say “Great! I finally have a chance to update the blog!”

Life here has been subsumed to work, right through the Thanksgiving holiday. We managed to cook and serve a great meal, and enjoy the company of old friends, but after that it was back to what my grandmother would call “hocken shteiner” (Yiddish for breaking stones ). I’m weeks behind in holiday shopping. We haven’t a candle or a potato in the house for Hanukkah, and my annual cookie fest hasn’t even hit the planning stage yet.

But for all of that, little bits of knitting have happened. Not any of the gift socks I’ve promised this year though. I will most certainly be visited by Franklin’s Ghost of Christmas Knitting this year. But I can report some small progress.

First, on specific request, I’ve begun Knitty’s Kyoto for Elder Daughter. But I’m working it in a DK weight tweeded alpaca. I’m using Grignasco Top Print in color #29974 – a ragg type mix of soft antique pink, pale turquoise, lavender, apricot, pale brown, ecru, and sea green. The “distance read” on it is sort of fallen cherry blossom, somewhat pink/lavender with a touch of pale brown, with the natural streaks imparted by the ever changing tweed.

Gauge is hard to get with this stuff (I agree with the review posted in the yarn review collection, above). The label reads 30st x 38 rows = 4 inches/10cm on #3.5-4mm. I’m getting 19 x27 with #5. The pattern gauge is 20×27, so I’m making some small adjustments. Also, this is the most incestuous yarn I’ve ever used. It comes in evil mushroom puffball style 50g balls. The yarn is so soft and supple that it falls off that put-up at the slightest provocation, and so surface fuzzy that it twines around itself and sticks given any opportunity at all. With that level of fraternization in the bag, I’m surprised that reproduction hasn’t occurred and that I still have only 14 balls.

The other bit I’m working on is a second doodle scarf, using two more stitch patterns from the Duchrow series. That’s done in some of the leftover from my big woven diamonds shawl. It’s not exactly zipping along, given the complexity of the pattern and my limited knitting time, but it is progressing. I’ve finished the center strip, picked up all the way around the outside, and I’m on adding the edging.

Technorati : Knitting