Polgara Knits

First, let me say that I’m coming to adore crochet.  It’s so much faster than knitting, that I can finish a baby blanket in a week with double crochet, when it takes me three times that (if not more) to knit a Big Bad Baby Blanket.  That said, however, it uses more yarn than I expected–I’m about five rows from finishing Grace’s log cabin blanket, and I ran out of yarn!  Ok, so I didn’t run out of *all* yarn, but I ran out of the pink Plymouth Encore about halfway through the last pink stripe.  Not fair!  I mean, sure, it’s a great color, so even if (when) I buy another ball of the pink, I know I’ll use the rest of it in another project, ’cause it’s just too cute not to.  But I was so close to being finished, and now I have to wait until I can find time for a trip into the Valley to get another skein.  And you just know I won’t be walking out of there with just the one skein.  *sigh*

 Just as well, I suppose, as I have to stock up on the right colors for Noah’s blanket, which will be my next project.  And no, I still haven’t gone back to my ribbon tank top.  Sadly.

I’m on a massive cleaning mission.  My sister and her husband are visiting next week, so the place is getting it’s semi-annual clean sweep.  My bedroom is the scary task this year, which is very rare, because generally my bedroom is where I sleep and that’s about it, so it’s usually easy too clean, but this year it became the storehouse of my yarn/wip overflow.  Boxes and bags of yarn, including yarn that used to be my mothers, are stacked chest high by the windows, and canvas bags of wips that I’d long since forgotten about where lying nearby, waiting to be rediscovered.  I found pieces to a teddy bear, a barely started blanket, sample squares, two purses waiting to be seamed and felted, three blankets that were finished but never washed/blocked, and a fibonacci scarf that I’d knitted too far on and still needs about ten rows de-knit.

Yikes.

Sadly, I have no time this week or next to do anything about these items, so they’ve been repackaged to look neater; some boxes even fit on previously emptied shelves.  Poor, sad works in progress.  *sigh*

I’m taking a break from the evil tank top, mostly because I’ve reached the part where I’ll have to take copious notes to keep track of where I am, which makes it less mindless knitting, my preferred method of knitting.  So instead, I’m working on another log cabin blanket, again crocheted, again from Plymouth Encore (specifically, the yarn I purchased when I went to Handmade) in shades of orange, yellow and pink.  It’s nearly finished–double crochet is SO MUCH QUICKER than single crochet, I tell you!  I’ll post pictures soon.

In other news, I wanted to share this comic.  The dialogue is from a conversation that occurred on one of my other posting boards; the graphics came from the really nifty web app at stripcreator.com; and the two were joined in blissful, hilarious harmony by one of the members of my posting board. I think it highlights the differences between knitting and crochet rather perfectly, don’t you?

And if you decide to create something yourself with StripCreator, please post a link here, I’d love to see it!

I feel terrible that I haven’t updated in awhile, but to be honest, I’m still working on the same project–the ribbon-yarn tank top from Vogue Knitting.  I went away for a week to San Francisco and didn’t pick up the needles once while I was gone (bad Polgara!), so I’m still working on the back side, but I’m getting there–only half an inch more before shaping for the straps, then I can get started on the front side.  I know it’s taking me forever, but to be honest, I’m not a big fan of stockinette when it’s not in the round, largely because I’m not a big fan of purling.  My fingers have never really gotten used to the different position, so it takes me about half again as long to purl a row as it does to knit it, and I’m more likely to pause and put the project down when I get to the next purl row.

I want to be finished, though, so I can start a new project–probably another baby blanket, as I still haven’t touched a single skein of the cotton I bought when the twins were first born.  (They’re doing very well, btw–still in NICU, but growing nicely.)  But I also want to do another crocheted project, so we’ll just have to see where my mood takes me when I’ve finally finished this tank top of DOOOOOOM.

Ok, that’s all I’ve got.  Sorry for the scarce post, but I figured a little post was better than no post at all.