we are travelers, only passing through

Thanks to CH, my yarn will be well protected as it heads 3000 miles west and relaxes in storage while awaiting a longer-term home. 

I have four projects that aren't headed to storage: a Paulie that now just needs sleeves, a Rocky Coast cardigan with Plucky rustic, a baby-sized sylvan afghan, and that celebratory project that I mentioned weeks ago.  Any southside knitters interested in a summertime KAL?  I'm hoping that focusing on these four will prevent me from buying yarn in every state along the way, and would love company on whatever knitting strikes your fancy!

so get your hands dirty

Where are you all knitting-in-public for Worldwide Knit in Public Day?  As you can see, I didn't make much progress on my cardy between the corn and the roast clam special.

and I envy their consistency; it seems so priceless

As will probably surprise no one who knows my knitting, all my spring knitting plans were put aside on a whim as soon as I put these skeins next to each other.  Thanks to a long weekend where I had plenty of knitting-on-transport time, I've made quite a bit of progress on a Paulie that I plan to keep.   (I'm not following the paulie stripe pattern because I don't have enough of any of these colors to do so.  And I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I won't run out of the gray, but I think it's likely that I'll be ISOing on Ravelry for more.)

But my current dilemma is that I am a little smitten with the reverse stockinette side.  So I have *almost* decided that I'm going to make it the front side.

But then I see the stockinette side from a distance, and I think maybe it should be the front after all.

Since I'm not doing a very good job of deciding myself, any and all input is welcome!  I don't have any long weekends coming up, so I probably have a while yet before I really have to decide...

the ones who wear the walking shoes

It's time for a lot of spring cleaning for this southside knitter, and I'm consequently destashing some beautiful yarn, including the skeins above.  Find the details at my ravelry stash if you're interested.

the future was wide open

As I near completion on Christmas 2011 gifts, I'm letting myself daydream about some upcoming knits.

This yarn is destined to be a celebratory wisp of a project, which I'm very much looking forward to knitting.
And I've got a design in my head for these beauties.... Here's hoping I can translate what's in my head to reality! I also need to come up with a plan for completing some long-lingering WIPs. (My current thought is that I may take a break from all Christmas knitting this year, and focus on long overdue years, but we'll see if I can stick to that plan.)

And, just in case you were longing for a shot of my poor continental knitting, here you go:

It's not a trick of the photo: those stitches really are that wonky. They're getting better as I go along, however, and I'm hopeful that they will all block out in the end.

What are your spring knitting plans?

until I'm proven wrong

So I have one Christmas gift (yes, 2011) that's ready to be shared with you all. It's a Paulie with a few mods, which I made for my mother.

I made the sleeves long instead of three-quarters length. Of course, I ended up making them a little too long so perhaps I should have stuck with three-quarters....

I left off the shawl color because I thought my mother would find it fiddly.

And I added a second color to the stripes, knitting it with Plucky Knitter Primo Fingering in Flying Monkeys with stripes of Dandy Lion and Faded Grandeur. In the skein, these colors were much more distinct, but I enjoyed how they blended together once knit. Flying Monkeys is an incredibly interesting gray-brown and I may have mentioned before that I think Dandy Lion is the perfect yellow.

I really enjoyed this knit and my only complaint is that I started it in September with the expectation of being able to finish it for her birthday in October. When that failed, I still thought that I'd easily finish it for Christmas. Well, at least she was able to wear it as driving me to the airport after Easter.

PS: Thanks for the advice on continental knitting! After taking a look at my sister-in-law's hands during knitting, I've concluded that I was wrapping the yarn around my fingers too much. It's been easier going since I cut out a few wraps, but it's still pretty sloppy.

leave me out with the waste

This is not what I do.

So far, I hate knitting continental. Anyone have any tricks to make me like it more?

It's supposed to be 70 degrees tomorrow and I've still got three (relatively wintery) Christmas gifts to finish. Two are almost done and then there's this one....