Startitis

So even though I've got three very good projects on the needles right now, in the past couple of days I've started two more and I know that I'll be starting a sixth (and maybe a seventh and eighth...) before anything comes off the needles. I blame the fact that I just recently went through my entire stash and cataloged everything. Normally I keep my stash secreted away in various hiding places (and various states) so that I'm never actually confronted with everything that I have. (This is probably the reason I have so much...) The yarn was calling me in so many directions that I had to begin just a few more things... The first is a pair of basic socks. I decided that I needed to have some car-ride knitting since when I'm in New Mexico I do quite a bit of ridding and almost no driving and every car ride is at least twenty minutes long. All of this has been done away from home, riding in the car or in spare minutes waiting for various errands.





I'm just following the Sock Recipe pattern from the Yarn Harlot's book Knitting Rules (rav link). The yarn is Knit Picks Felici in Coney Island which is a colorway they no longer make. I love how bright and happy the socks are and every three to four rows I get to knit with a new bright happy color.

The other thing I started is a blanket. This may sound weird since the temperature has been in the 90s for most of the time that I've been down here in New Mexico, but the fact that in two short weeks I'll be hunting for my first apartment has me majorly home-oriented right now. I keep thinking of how I'm always cold in the winter and how I'll have to keep the heat low because of my poor-law-student budget so I have recently been attracted to a lot of blanket patterns. I resisted the urge to cast on a wool blanket (barely) and settled on acrylic. Not exactly luxury, I know, but it pretty "good" acrylic (it will definitely serve the purpose of wrapping around my legs in the winter anyway.) I'm following the pattern Op Art from Knitty.com. The pattern makes a largish baby blanket, but I'm hoping that by knitting it with bigger yarn and bigger needles I'll get a smallish adult sized blanket. It's knit from the center out, so right now it feels like I'm flying along. (I only have about 130 stitches.)





In the end there will be 888 stitches (I know that sounds like a number I just pulled out thin air but it's not a exaggeration!) The yarn is Carron One Pound in Rose and Off White (creative huh?). I had these two balls in my stash from way way back. I think one of the big box store had it on sale for $3 a ball so I bought these two on impulse and they've been sitting around ever since. I love this patter because it's mindless; long rows of knit or purl with four increases thrown in per round. I'm using it to catch up on all the TV and movie watching I missed during the school year.