I’m not going to finish the OpArt blanket in time for tomorrow’s baby shower. It’s getting pretty big, and I’m up to 668 stitches total. I’d probably have pulled an all-nighter and finished it, anyway, but then I remembered that I’d still need to block it, and it definitely wouldn’t have been ready in time for the shower tomorrow at noon.

Still, no worries. I decided to use that old baby shower standby, the booties. Not just any booties, though. I am using (what I hope will be) leftover green and white from the blanket to make booties that are reminiscent of old school socks. I’ve made enough booties that I don’t really need a pattern at this point, so I’m just kind of winging it, and throwing in a short row heel because I hate myself.

aim-less |ˈāmlis|adjective

I was able to go back and change all the pictures in my posts from those on the Blogger servers to those that I uploaded to WordPress. In general, it doesn’t make much of a difference, but in reality, I need every bit of space that I can wring from Google without ponying up extra cash, and now I’ll be able to delete that album. Here’s what I’ve been working on lately: one mitten (Subway Mitten pattern), finished, and horribly oversized (now palmed off on my dad, or will be whenever I finish the second); a pair of socks using my lovely Brooklyn Handspun (prettier to look at than to knit with, although I no longer loathe it); and the ever-present OpArt, which is growing, but not nearly as quickly as it should be, given the kid is expected somewhere in the next 3 weeks.

I finished Satanski’s scarf, and it came out great! I love this yarn (Malabrigo Worsted, in Oceanus), and Satanski loves his scarf. That picture to the left shows what the scarf looked like last night, when I was about 60% of the way finished. I’m going to get started on matching mittens tomorrow, with a hat to follow soon thereafter. I need to block the scarf, as right now all it wants to do is roll itself back into a ball, but that means that I might as well block all the other stuff I’ve been ignoring for a while. Block party tomorrow!

Sorry, I’m groaning over here, too. 

This is what the OpArt blanket is looking like these days. That kid is due nigh on two months from now and I still don’t know when we’ll be having his dad’s baby shower at work, so I should definitely get the lead out and start doing a lot of work on this again. Even after I’m done knitting, I’m going to be weaving in ends forever, so I should just do it already.

I had high hopes for the scarf that I was going to make Satanski. I sat down, thought of a pattern, and charted it. All was well, until I realized that my chart was not taking into account the two decreases I need to work on each row to even out the two yarn overs I was including. I think I tried to get too fancy, too fast, and the whole thing just annoyed me. So I decided to modify a baby blanket pattern from Debbie Stoller’s Stitch and Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook and make it into a scarf instead. I’ve made the Big, Bad Baby Blanket a couple of times already (and I’m pretty sure I have a third one somewhere on a set of circulars), so by now the pattern is pretty much dead easy for me. I’m hoping that I will have enough yarn left over afterward to make the kid a pair of mittens, or even a hat. I can’t remember what the name of the yarn is, because I bought and had it wound in Vermont, and cannot find the label at all. I just started it yesterday, but it’s kid-sized and knitting up quickly, so I will upload photos once I get home from work.

My OpArt is coming along well. I’m up to 132 stitches in each section. I need to pay more attention though, because a couple of rounds ago I dropped a stitch about six rows down, and that was super annoying to fix in pattern.

I’ve taken a bit of a break on my OpArt blanket. I’m up to 116 stitches in each section, and I’m still doing one or two rounds per day, but it’s kind of boring me right now. This is exactly why I started four months before the baby’s due. My nephew saw me seaming some booties that I made for our baby cousin, and asked me when I was going to knit him something. I have been meaning to do so for a while, and I do need a break from the blanket, so I decided to make him a scarf. At first, I was going to do something basic and maybe practice my Continental knitting, but then the stylista in me won out. I do not put my nephew in boring clothes when I’m buying them, so why would I do it when I’m making them?? Plus, I still have this idea in my head for the sweater, and I kind of want to see how my designing goes on something child-sized, before trying my hand at anything as involved as a sweater. I will get back to Continental knitting again at some point in my life, but not now.

I worked out my pattern in Google’s spreadsheet program, using letter abbreviations. Then I looked online for a pattern generator and found a good one, but it didn’t have all the symbols that I wanted. So I made and downloaded a printable chart from here, and entered my symbols myself. I’m pretty tired and I figure that there’s no point in starting this so late and doing a bad job, so I’ll get cracking on this tomorrow.

I somehow acquired a large hole in my knitting, but one that I can fix when I’m cleaning up and weaving in ends. I also somehow only had 88 stitches in one section when I should have had 90. I fixed it using an invisible increase I learned of on knittinghelp.com, but it should not have been necessary. I’m trying to decide whether I want to start using safety pins to mark 20s of stitches, so I have a better idea of how many stitches are in each section. I think I may. I’m up to 94 stitches now, and it’s such slow going. I’m motivated, though, because I can now see the blanket’s square shape in a way that I couldn’t before.