Enough About the Heat

All you people complaining about how ungodly hot it is where you are, stop it right now. I am freezing my ass off here. It is 55° and drizzling. It has been cold and gray and blah for days. And it's going to continue for days. We had to turn the heat on.

My brain is about to explode. I have so many projects going right now and so many that I want to start. I keep uncovering yarn that I'm dying to work with or remembering a pattern I want to try. I'm losing it. I told Wes that he has to start knitting too until I can get on top of this. He smiled and nodded but I don't think he meant it...

So to try to straighten out the jumbled trash heap that is my brain right now I'll try to list it all out here.

Currently knitting:
1. Chutes and Ladders socks. I am almost at the toe shaping. I should be done by the time I go to sleep tonight. Thank goodness.

2. Martha. What a crappy knitalong hostess I am. I just keep pushing her to the bottom of the bag. I don't know why. The pattern is pretty simple. The yarn is lovely (Dale of Norway Baby Ull). It's stretchy and soft. The needles are tiny but that's okay.

3. Faroese Shawl. This is pushed down under Martha. I need an entire cleared off table and total silence to work this one. Ripping the Alpaca Cloud is really hard to do. I'm on row 7. It's pathetic.

4. Mountain Colors Shawl. A new project. I'm making the Colinette Making Waves shawl from Vogue but I'm using Mountain Colors 4/8s wool, Mohair, Moguls and Merino Ribbon all in Ladyslipper. It's a gift for my best friend's birthday which was last month. She selected the pattern and we choose the yarn together. I just got rolling on it today. It is a dead easy pattern except it doesn't tell you the color/yarn order or stripe pattern. It just says to randomly stripe it. Which makes me want to find the pattern writer and say, "Look idiot. I got the freaking pattern so I wouldn't have to figure the damn thing out by myself. Why don't you at least tell me what you did? I mean, what the hell kind of lazy pattern writing is that? The pattern is an 8 row repeat so I guess the designer took the afternoon off that day. Anyway, I'm trying very hard to be random. But as my co-worker Kristen just said to me the other day, "Random is hard." Patterns always emerge. So I'm making myself a little tense trying to be random. No fun.

5. Sam. That bitch. The snap that happened last night was the yarn I used to seam the sleeve breaking. This is aran weight cabled cotton that you could not break with your bare hands if your life depended on it. And it broke. With a little tug. So I'll have to unseam that sleeve--again!--either a little bit and have 83984703873287 ends to weave in or a lot and have to seam the entire sleeve again. And there's a zipper too. Don't expect to see me in Sam until some time in late summer 2008.

Other things clamoring for my attention:
1. Mystery Stole Knitalong. Tonight I wound my Grignasco Merinosilk that I got on my trip to Portland. I have my needles. I have my waste yarn. I am ready to begin. Does starting yet another lace shawl seem like a good idea right now? Frankly, I don't know.

2. A new sock design. I have a pattern I would like to create. This will take time.

3. More socks. I have so much sock yarn. I have Knitting on the Road. I need to make a lot more socks.

4. Cash Iroha sweater. I bought a small boatload of Cash Iroha on New Year's Day. I wanted to make the Curry Cable Cardigan from Fall 2002 IK. But then I really looked at the pattern. It's just not good enough. No shaping. Huge boxy sweater. No detail or elegance to the cuffs or the bottom edge of the sweater. Bleh. My yarn deserves better. I'm toying with making Lace & Cable Sweater. But I'm also thinking about making the Knot & Cable Jacket. Just can't decide yet.

5. Dulaan knitting. I have a box that is really full and ready to ship off but I had hoped to make more.

6. Wool Peddler's Shawl from Folk Shawls. I want this one bad. I have some Llama Seta that I want to use for this but I only have 616 yds. I'll have to monkey with the pattern.

7. Ene's Shawl from Scarf Style. I have two yarns that I bought for this. I still haven't decided which to use. And there's no way I'm casting on another lace shawl until I get all the other ones done.

8. Handspun Bolero. I want to make as much of a sweater as I can with some of the slubby/fuzzy handspun I made a while back. I am slowly amassing handspun yarn and haven't knit anything with it yet.

9. Second Retro Prep. I got yarn at the Fiber Gallery sale in April. It's staring at me.

10. Felted Floral Tote. I actually said out loud last night, "I'd really like to work on some intarsia." What? No one in their right mind says such a thing. Not to mention that I have this intarsia project rotting in exile in the back of the closet. Like the Faroese Shawl this is another nobody speak while I spread my crap out all over the entire dining room table to work on this.

11. Clapotis. I can't be the only knitter in the universe without a Clapotis! I have yarn. I want to start.

12. Fiber Gallery projects. I'm working on a baby sweater at work but there's a million other samples I want to knit for the shop.

13. Sweater for my friend's baby due in September. It's a girl. I never get to knit for girls.

14. Leaf Lace Shawl. I have the yarn and the pattern and suddenly everyone and their brother is knitting this shawl. And they all keep saying how easy it is.

Should I go on? I could. I haven't even started in on the spinning. But I won't. I think you get the idea. If you hear a loud popping sound in the next few days, that would be my head bursting.