A Little Yarn On The Side

there has been crafting.  The brioche scarf is almost done: as is a 440-yard ball of lace weight yarn in one of my favorite color ways of all time.  The second sock is at the heel turning, and I'm beginning to think I'm going to make it to 20,000 yards of yarn for the year after all.  WHOO HOO!!!! I've been resting and exercising mostly, but today I did venture into the sewing room for a bit.  As a break from movies, books, and audio books, I've been watching "Sewing With Nancy" videos online.  It's been nice, as I've gotten new ideas for sewing and ornaments for next year, though the unfortunate side effect is a "wish list" at Nancy's Notions of over $100.  I suppose if one is going to make a living having a show on PBS, one probably has to have a sideline income and one that you can integrate with your show is really clever, but thank heavens for the buying ban! I decided to experiment with a technique she called a "pizza...

*  One finished sock! (which looks a bit odd, but does actually fit) *  Sport weight sock yarn! *  No Valium needed since last night! *  The invention of Valium (since it really was needed last night) *  Having NOT done anything stupid which would set my recovery back *  Being on a spending ban while laid up and bored with access to the internet *  That we never feed our cats tuna or anything else that results in a sidekick with bad breath. *  Theo leaving his "get well" gifts on the floor rather than bringing them onto the bed *  All the get-well gifts from Theo thus far have been dead *  Having a hobby like knitting that I can do to entice myself to rest my back muscles--probably preventing me from going completely and utterly bonkers.

I spend most my days knitting right now.  This would be a more enjoyable state of affairs if it wasn't because my back is fried, but as weird as it sounds (considering I've spent most of the day laying flat), I think I'm finally on the mend. What I have is called "sacroiliac joint dysfunction."  I'd provide a link to something helpful if I could, but while it is the first thing I've ever looked up on Web MD that didn't say death was likely or even eminent, I don't recognize anything they describe.  In layman's terms (and thank heavens I was referred to a specialist who speaks Layman fluently), this is the most common cause of back pain for women.  If you look at your pelvic bones (which is sort of impossible, I realize, so maybe visualizing the bones would be better) there's not really anything to hold them in place except muscle.  Because women often have children, our pelvic bones are designed to be more prone to movement.  It makes s...

There is a finished Fun Fur scarf: I almost added another yarn to it to double the yardage (awesome suggestion, Gaidig!), but couldn't think of anything cool to put with it that I could find without lifting bins, so plain it is.  Nothing like a little back strain making crafting decisions for one. Because I ran out of the nonscary pain pills while Andy was gone, I resorted to the massive dizzy/sleepy ones, so the socks got a LOT of attention: and are now ready for the finishing end weaving AND gave me "all used up" Ravelry stash entry number seventy.  There may be a party at 100.  The chemo cap was finished a couple days ago, but seems to have not earned a picture yet, but it's done, and I need 1079.35 yards of yarn by the end of the year to reach 20,000.  Meet new project number one: Magic Stripe plain socks with size 3 needles and sport weight yarn.  When they're done, another stash entry will be gone AND 330 yards of yarn will be used up, and I...

The good news:  I've made some great yardage progress in the last few days. The bad news:  This has been achieved because my back hurts and knitting is one of the few things I can do while laying on ice packs. The good news:  I think I've figured out why my back muscles keep getting inflamed and swelling. The bad news:  I found this out the hard way. The good news:  Once my back feels better, I think the hip/back progress will be steady and this whole mess will soon be a thing of the past The bad news:  That doesn't help me right now The good news:  I have an amazing store of pain pills that DO help me right now The bad news:  The pills also make me tired, dizzy, and slightly nauseous The good news:  I have a simple sock project I can do while tired, dizzy, and nauseous. The bad news:  The sock involves size 1 needles, which make very slow progress. The good news:  I'm just a sock leg away from crossing the 19,00...

I have no idea why this matters so much to me, but if I am ever to knit 20,000 yards in one year, this is it.  I am so close, but in order to get there I still have to have one of my best yardage months, which I explain in order to somewhat justify this: It's the Running of the Fun Fur!!!!!!!!!!!  One of the Christmas parties I will be attending is a Secret Santa gift exchange involving things we already own.  Personally, I'd probably just wrap up the Fun Fur as a gift at this point, but I am trying to encourage my friends to knit--not provide them with justifiable reason to run screaming from the room.  So, scarf it is.  Would two be overkill? Of course, being me, what I really wanted to make were ornaments, but the pattern doesn't state yardage used, and my original thought was to keep making these until I used up the skein, which was only 100 yards.  But after making this yesterday, the skein wasn't looking depleted enough for this to seem like...

So yesterday, I was thrilled to use up the first ball of yarn on the new yellow sweater, but it just seemed really WIDE.  "Impossible!" I kept telling myself.  I had checked gauge very, VERY carefully because I've been on pain pills all weekend and was being very careful to double-check anything I was doing.  The TOTAL circumference of the sweater for a medium should be 41 inches.  Maybe a little bigger than I'd like, but doable.  So I measured.  MY sweater would end up 45 inches around.  ??????? Just on a whim, I decided to check the pattern.  The required gauge was 25 stitches to 4.5 inches in the chevron pattern stitch.  Fine, that's what I had.  Then the pattern calls for 127 stitches cast on.  Now I'm on drugs, but I have a calculator.  By my figures: 127 stitches divided by 25 stitches is 5.08. If you multiply that by the 4.5 inch gauge, that makes each piece 22.86 inches , for a sweater circumference of anyone ge...