So close

I'm so close to being done with law school folks!  I can taste it.  Only one final exam stands between me and a JD.  I just finished a hellish exam in partnership taxation today and I'm rewarding myself with an evening of knitting before I hit the books again tomorrow.  This is what's currently grabbing my attention at home:

This is the last installment from the Stephen West Westknits Shawl Club.  The pattern is called Cumulonimbus.  I've been making nice progress on it because it's pure and simple garter stitch and that is all my brain can handle during finals season.  

I'm going to hunker back down with my garter stitch for the rest of the night and revel in the fact that I can now forget everything I know about Subchapter K.  Only 4 more days until I'm no longer a student.  I will not miss taking finals one bit.

Vulpix

Over the past few months I've been showing you the fruits of my participation in Stephen West's Westknits Shawl Club.  First there was Sharktooth.  Then there was Arroway.  Then Oeste.  Now Vulpix.

It's definitely my favorite so far.  First, the colors are amazing.  The yarn choice for this installment was Skein Top Draw Sock.  The blend is 85% merino, 15% nylon and, while this is a very common fiber blend for sock yarn, it is some of the softest yarn I've ever worked with.  It is a little splitty and loosely spun for sock knitting but for a shawl it was perfect.

I love how long and shallow the shape of this shawl is.  It's really more like a scarf that gets a little wide in the middle.  It's over seven feet long.  The middle pannel is done with intarsia and the stripes are done with short rows so it's a very fun project technique-wise.  The blok of garter stitch in the middle was pretty boring, but once you finish it you are rewarded with more short-row fun.

The package for the final installment of the shawl club arrived in the mail on Monday and it's already cast on.  It should be fun, but I can already tell that it won't be knocking Vulpix out of the special place in my heart.  More on that later.      

Lost and Found Girl

Are you a fan of Seinfeld? You should be.  It's funny.  Trust me.  There is an episode where Elaine becomes obsessed with the idea that Jerry is "Even Steven."  Whenever something bad happens to him, something good happens to balance it out and vice-versa.  Elaine tosses one of Jerry's $20 bills out the window, 5 minutes later Jerry finds a $20 in the pocket of an old coat.  I have a similar sort of super power--I am Lost and Found girl.

I am constantly losing misplacing my stuff, but it always comes back to me.  My purse has been left in innumerable dressing rooms, or draped over the back of restaurant chairs.  Traveling there's 50/50 chance that something will be left in a hotel room.  Every time I've called and either been able to get the item shipped to me, or I was close enough that I could swing back and get it.  One time, I even lost misplaced my iPod for 3 weeks before it turned up in a bar.  I walked in (after having not been there for three weeks) and the bartender, who I didn't know, looked at me and said "I have your iPod here."  It helped that there was a photo of me set as the wallpaper.

I think that there are people in the world with certain types of luck.  My grandma wins things in her church raffel all. the. time.  Way, way, way more than probability should allow for.  My father can always always find a good parking spot.  Even if the lot is completely full, someone in the front row will back out just as he's driving by.  And, for whatever reason, I misplace things, but they're never lost for good.

Such was the case recently with my Lissajous Socks.  I have one sock finished and am doggedly working on the second.  After knit-night several of the knitters get together for dinner.  One week, we went to Red Robbin.  The next week as I'm putting my knitting bag together to get ready for knit-night my socks are nowhere to be found.  I check at the knitting shop that night and they're not there.  I call Red Robbin and the man who answers the phone tells me that there is absolutely nothing matching my description in the lost and found at all.  Liar.  I drive over to the Red Robbin and low and behold, my socks are sitting at the bottom of the lost and found where they have probably been all week.

They were wet (I think they were probably found when the floor was being mopped) and dirty but they were certainly there.  If they had really been lost I would have been out about $27 in yarn as well more than 30 hours of work.  I'm a bit steamed that the lying-liar-McJerk who answered the phone straight up told me that my socks weren't there when they clearly were.  If I were a more trusting sort of person, I'd be screwed and my socks likely would have been tossed out after laying lonely an unclaimed for weeks.

These socks are too awesome for that.

Now what?

I've been working on my Dahlia Cardigan every week at Knit Chat for quite a while (Since September) and now I'm not sure where to go.  I've known all along that I don't care for front of the cardigan as written so the plan has always been to change it.

The cardigan is constructed in a strange way.  First, you knit a lace medallion in the round.

Then you knit two long strips that border the top and bottom of the medallion.  The strips are knit out from the center, so that you have live stitches on the left and right sides.

As written, after knitting the strips, you take the left and right side stitches all onto one needle and knit flat for a long time creating the draped rectangular fronts.  The sleeves are done as afterthought sleeves.  Meaning that as you knit, you put waste yarn in where the sleeve opening will be and later pull the waste yarn out and knit the sleeves from the live stitches.

Because I wanted to be able to try it on as a worked the fronts, I put the sides on waste yarn and knit the sleeves on first.  That way I would know how the fronts hang.

Now I've got both sleeves done (and the seams across the back have been sewn since the picture was taken) so it's time to get serious and decide what to do about the fronts.  Since it's knit sideways I can't just steal the front of another cardigan that I like.  I'm thinking some combination of strategic short rows and decreases can get me to a more traditional cardigan look.  I think I'm just going to "try stuff" and see what happens.