Needle to yarn

I thought my obsession to Ravelry was going to hurt my progress of actually knitting, but so far I have managed to put needle to yarn and finish off the miles and miles of straight, unshaped stockingnet stitch that makes up the bottom 2/3rds of the cotton top (front) that I'm currently knitting on. In fact, since I took the pic, I've managed to finish the cast off and decreases for the arm hole. Now, I'm at the point where I'm about to start the front collar shaping. Of course, I stopped right there and probably won't pick that up again until tomorrow.

Tonight I have a meeting before work, and then I'm working with someone I've only worked with once before, so I'll have to stay on my toes (more or less) for both events. Thus, easy minimum counting knitting is required.


I also managed to finish the right half of my shawl collar of the alpaca jacket. It's the side with the buttonholes (grrrrrr) and I do hate buttonholes. I ripped it out 3 times before I had them right, but as an excuse, the first time I ripped them out was because the pattern was a bit unclear. It said "cast off two, knit 10, cast off 2 repeat 5 times" which is what I did. However, they were counting the stitch left over when you cast off as one of the 10, and I was not. A simple failure in communication. So I was having 11 stitches in between button holes when I should have just had 10, meaning I ran out of collar before I had the required 6 buttonholes. The second and third time I ripped out was purely me trying different ways of doing buttonholes till I liked, relatively speaking, what I got. Buttonholes are bad enough, but buttonholes on rib are downright annoying.

On Ravelry, I had "hibernated" the jacket, as I hadn't planned on picking it up again until I finished a scarf for my mom's birthday. I bought some yarn at the LYS the other day to make this scarf. I found a couple of likely patterns on Ravelry. Alas, this yarn I picked up, Wendy Moiselle, is hideous to work with. It's that kind of yarn that gets fatter and then skinnier, and it splits on the needles constantly, plus it winds up stiff as a board when knit up tightly enough to make a proper scarf. I tried a couple of swatches Thursday night of the patterns I'd found, and it just went from bad to worse. Now, I'm not sure what I'll use this yarn for, but I'm pretty sure it won't be mom's scarf.

So, for the meeting and work tonight, the jacket is coming out of hibernation. I pulled the bag out today, restocked it with yarn and made sure I had all the needles I could possibly need. The left collar has no buttonholes, and while it does call for some c/o's and dec, it shouldn't be too hard to keep up with, or if it does turn out to be too much, I can work on the belt, which is simple 2x2 rib over 8 stitches ad infinitum. So, I have my long night knitting planned and organised. YAH for me.