Time to Get Moving
Here it is a year later, and Fire Dragon Year is still languishing--in large part because I have inexplicably lost1 the notebook in which I made all my careful notes about sizing, gauge, and pattern and I'm just too disheartened to try to pick it all up from the actual knitted objects. I suppose I could at least sew the front and back together, but without sleeves I'm not sure how much info that would actually give me. Though it occurs to me, literally as I am typing this, that sleeves are not hard to fit and I could just knit a couple of sleeve caps for the body-fitting part; they'd make the armseye sit right without having to be full length.
Baby Goth still sits in concept stage, but I have some time before I need to start panicking there and hey, baby sweater--that's what, three days of actual knitting? So I'm OK.
I went a little overboard at Elann a few weeks ago and ordered a bunch of their various DK and worsted wools in green and brown to swatch for Twining Ivy again, because I love alpaca but I'd like the thing to be wearable when the temperature's above 0°. I got a couple of colors that I think will do nicely, so it's just a matter of swatching and number crunching, and then I get to play with cables.
A picture on the Yarn Harlot's blog made me think of a skirt. In a soft wool, maybe even cashmere if I can get cashmere that I don't feel guilty about. A shape much like my couple of fabric skirts (maybe not that full, since I'm also picturing laceweight yarn and that would be a lot of knitting) would take care of the saggy-bum issue that's so common with knitted skirts and pants, and the shaping could all be hidden in a pattern of some sort--I love the lace on the one in the picture, but I prefer to not have to wear slips. Because I really need another design project to take up my limited creativity, yes I do.
Also I'm thinking of using Elann's hemp yarn to make myself the cover dress from last summer's Vogue Knitting (the one the model on the yarn page is wearing, in fact, though hers appears to have an altered neckline), though probably not in white--I'm thinking either Raspberry or Pecan, because I don't really need more country blue in my wardrobe and black and chocolate brown are right out for a simmer dress. And the Modern Lace Henley from the Winter Knitty's "surprises" makes me intrigued, if I can find a yarn I like to do it in.
Meanwhile, Easter and the Spring Equinox approach, which means it's getting to be pysanky season. It's tough to do the pysanky thing with the cats; Ares could be counted on to just lie there and purr, but Viola managed to singe her whiskers on the candle last spring and Sebastian appears to just not grok that the dye is not something kitties should taste2. But this year I have a dozen free-range eggs to use, which will be awesome as the shells are much sturdier and I don't have to be so paranoid about cracking them. Now all I need is some sand to weigh them down after they're blown, as it is tedious to hold them under the dye and doing so means I can't dye one while drawing on another.
This is also the time of year I would normally get the urge to pick up the Epic Tablecloth, but I'm discouraged by my inability to find the first half. As I've said, I know I took it out of the Aspinwall apartment, but it's not in the bag I remember putting it in. Scary.
1: The current theory is "took it to the bookstore, set it on the table, put books on top of it, left".
2: Pysanky dye is poisonous--poisonous enough that, if you blow them after dyeing, you can't eat the contents because some of the badness seeps through the shell. I doubt he'd get enough to cause problems in what he could get into before I stopped him, but you never know; licking the surface of an egg wouldn't even damage a human who only did it once, but cats are smaller and have different biochemistry.