Progress

I've been trying to get things done lately. I've finished everything which I've cast on in the past year (and desired to bring to completion. We'll include that exception since there have definitely been projects that were not meant to be.) This includes, of course, Wakame, which I finished on Tuesday much to my delight. This is the first pattern in a long, long time that has been error free and modification free, and that is enough to make me sing its well deserved praises.

Not that the finished product is anything to sniff at, either. I happen to think it's quite fetching.

I ended up blocking it like it was a synthetic yarn, even with the high bamboo-to-rayon content (I was a little worried the rayon would melt. It didn't). Gentle steaming evened out the cables, let the arms hang appropriately, and helped the lower lace hang like the bodice lace, even though they are moving perpendicular to each other.

So, it was time to go through my project bin. It took about an hour. Multiple moves had tied multiple knots in and between multiple skeins and the resulting web of stress was a bit of a headache to untangle. Once everything had been freed from its neighbor, I started sorting into piles--stuff that would be finished and stuff that would not. I also rewound several balls of wool, including some of the left-over fisherman's wool from Yggdrasil (I have plans for this. It would not be in the box of projects without a purpose.)

Upon evaluating the two piles, I discovered something very interesting about myself.

I knit a lot of single mittens and gloves. and by a lot, I mean there are probably 10 different hand warmers in various stages of completion. Most of them are going to take a trip to the frog pond, but three sets will be completed. The first, herringbone gloves, come from a pattern written entirely in Japanese that served as a lesson in reading charts written in other languages and a reminder that Google translate may not be helpful when it comes to technical jargon. They needs 3 fingers and a thumb on the left hand, and then about 10,000 ends woven in. The second set is a Jared Flood design called Green Autumn (or the Druid Mittens, depending on who you ask. like, say, the designer...). They need thumbs. Actually, they need one and a half thumbs, but they were put aside for reasons which became obvious the moment I pulled them from the box. The yarn had tied itself into knots involving at least 3 layers of the inside. It's bad. The third set is a pair of Snapdragon flip tops by Ysolda Teague. I need to knit the 2nd mitten.

The others are all too small, suffering from yarn deficiencies, ugly as sin when worn, or the result of bad decision making that combines any number of the aforementioned issues. There are even 3 different mits made from the same yarn as I was desperately trying to figure out how to make it play nice. There was also something weird in the box that I had forgotten about:

A Dale of Norway kit for a houndstooth bag which I inherited from another knitter's stash upon her passing. I have mixed feelings about this bag, and they really boil down to me thinking this bag is ugly, but having a kit with all the bells and whistles from Dale makes me want to finish it regardless. (Oh gosh... it's so ugly, though). I'll finish it like a good girl. I'm sure I can find someone who wants it, as it's clearly well engineered.

So the next few days are going to be all about the mittens.