Woo Hoo!! I finished the Mystery Shawl. It is not longer a mystery. The secret it out. It is some sort of insane punishment. Yeah. That's it.

Well, here it is all ugly and scrunchy like a new born...

Then here it is as blocked as I can get it in my living room. It is 86 inches across and doesn't fit. I have it partially pinned under my couch, but clearly you can see that it is not round at all. It has one flat side., this newborn is suffering from Plagiocephaly. The patterns are 1c, 2c, 3a, 4a, 4c, 3c, then the edging. Now the question, as always, is what to do with it?

Now what to do with myself? It is back to the Monkey...
Here is DS's sock monkey in progress. I am just going to punish myself and relentlessly crank this one out. I do have some plans for a sock and some fingerless mitts, but I will be good and make the damn sock monkey... Mr. Ben, gosh! He's like a monkey on my back...

I am becoming an yarn ordering addict. When my husband gets the credit card bill he is going to bad MAD at me! I went online and found this store in Oregon (sales tax free baby!) call Woodland Woolworks. I ordered 1 cone of Zephyr in Bottle Green and 1 in steel (which to my credit I am sharing half with Teenuh the vacation queen). I also ordered 2 skeins of black and 2 skeins of white of Panda Silk. It was on sale, how could I resist?? So I ordered on Tuesday and it amazingly arrives on Thursday of the same week. Sent priority mail for a most reasonable cost, like, you know, the cost of actual postage, were no one to "handle" it. So along with my box of crack yarn they send me 2 catalogs. 1 for knitting yarns and 1 for weaving yarns. I peruse the knitting one, nothing too special I haven't seen before. Then, I come to weaving one. Damn. There are these really nice little cones of Soy silk and others of bamboo and gee those prices sure seem reasonable. So then I make a SERIOUS mistake and I go online and LO AND BEHOLD the damn yarn is on sale. Well how the hell can I not buy it now!? " How," I ask you, "HOW!? Well, truth be told, I can't. So now I am sitting here with buyers remorse as I bet my order is already on its way.... I just have to intercept the package before the husband ever gets a chance to see it... and stuff it into a box and pretend it isn't there until I am ready to use it...

Really though, don't I deserve a reward ? I am almost done with the Goddess Anniversary Shawl. I now have 50 repeats left, that is only 300 rows to go now and, damn that thing is HUGE! Just wait until you see it...

I feel like an energizer bunny, but running on one battery with just 10% of its power left... I keep going and going and going and going but so slowly. I have just passed the half way point on the edging. I am at repeat 110 out of 192, so I am nearing the home stretch. But, school is back in session and I am the school's bitch, so I have been hither and dither all week long with no time to knit! Today I ran 1,300 double sided copies and in the mean time I managed to knit about 10 rows today. I am looking forward to Wednesday, a good day to knit!

Woo hoo!!!

I have completed the task of unending rounds of knitting I created for myself. I finished my 5th installation of the Goddess Knits Anniversary shawl, which was Clue 4-c. I entered the final phase with much trepidation as I only had a meager 28g of yarn remaining. I have since cast off with 5 repeats of my edging and am now down to 26 g. Oh, crap. Do the math folks. 6/sts decreased per repeat. Times 1152 sts. That is 192 repeats. I now have enough yarn left for 65 more repeats, give or take a few rows. So what, you may ask am I doing for the other 130 repeats/ 52 g? Well, panicking would be my usual answer and I would be near shear panic if I didn't have my helpful enabler blogless Melissa to keep me going... If you recall, she and I split a cone of Zephyr (that would be a 1lb cone, for a total of 1/2 lbs each or 227g). Well, unfortunately for her, she seemed to run out of gas and enthusiasm on her shawl part way through, uncertain if she would finish or just bind off. The question of the day is, what will she do? Can she spare a square. I don't know, we'll have to see! She has generously offered before to share more of the cone should I need it, but probably didn't realize I would need a whole quarter of the remaining cone. So now the question I ask myself is, should I just suck it and order a whole other cone or be a leach and bum a quarter? Sorry, pictures coming soon...

Still alive. Just barely. This shawl is killing a little piece of my soul with every stitch.... I seriously feel like I will never, ever , ever get through it... I am at row 13 of 48 on clue 3C for my post clue 4 size increase... it takes me almost an hour to get through 1 patterned row with 1152 sts per round. The even (all K) rounds take me about 25 minutes. Sometimes I want to just call it done and start adding on the edging. CALGON, TAKE ME AWAY!!!!

He loves the monkey in spite of (or perhaps because of) the fact that the monkey is nearly as large as he is. Because of the red baseball cap, he has named his monkey Diddy Kong. I may put a letter D on the hat at a later time. He has been carrying it around with him all day!
On the Mystery Shawl front. Here is my zephyr. Half of a cone wound on the awesome gianormous ball winder I got for my birthday. It is a giant cake. I have not been on the ball about taking photos. So here is a crappy photo of clues 1 and 2 both are chart C's. Not much to look at at this point, I was going to shift to a larger needle for better photographic opportunities, when to my chagrin I found that I do not own any other size 3 circular needles!! I have size 2's in 4 lengths.! I have of course Knitpick's options in every size from 4 - 15. But no more size 3 's (or 1's for that matter. hmm time for another order??)

Now I have realized that I ordered some in a co-order with Teenuh in 40" and 47" and the order has arrived at her house. So I just need to be patient and wait to meet up with her to get the order! So for another day or 2 the shawl will have to remain crumpled up.... In the mean time, here is a glimpse of clue 3 chart A. And thanks to the brilliance of Janet I will begin work on Clue 4 for which I plan to work chart A followed by chart C creating the same length as using B or D alone.

King Monkey is finished! 2 down, 1 to go!! DS was quite the task master. Catching me working on the mystery shawl or something else, he would say, "So I guess my sock monkey must be about done, huh?" Or" Mom, why don't you finish my sock monkey instead?" Woo, tough boss! His hat is a top down increase with an added brim. The brim was made with short rows and folded over with a piece of plastic garbage cut to size and and sewn in the middle. He weighs a ton. Being made with about 525 grams of Blue Sky Alpaca Cotton. He was filled with 1.5 bags of Cluster Stuff. So he is pretty weighty. He is about 5" taller than the previous monkey but quite a bit fatter. Here is his bald pate photo. So along with half of the internet knitting world I am also working on the Goddess Knits Anniversary Mystery Shawl. I was not smart and did not take progress shots. I have numerous photos to download from my camera and the fear is causing me to not take pictures. I know, how lame is that. I am knitting wtih Zephyr wool silk in the Blueberry color way from a cone split with Blogless Melissa. For clues 1 and 2 I have used chart c. For clue 3 I am using a and have decided to use b for clue 4. I have already fallen behind as I spent much time trying to finish off King Monkey. DS loves him quite a lot, especially since we didn't use the scary eyes! Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to that! And i f you are wondering, yes they are metallic and do reflect, they sure would like monster eyes to a sleepy imagination...

I haven't spent so much time knitting as I would like to, instead I have been doing that evil thing called housework and really trying to get ahead on all of the laundry, wash up all of the winter coats and get them stored away as well as enjoying 4th of July festivities. I could spam the page with photos of fireworks. There were so many to see. I just can't feel free on the 4th without smoke filling the air, gigantic booms filling the air and the vague smell of burning sulphur and the opportunity to be in a huge crowd that fills me with terror and a sense of forboding!
Here the kids and I are downtown enjoying the Fireworks. I have decided that since I am never in any pics I am going to start taking pictures Gina style. Me and Teenuh, we loves the fireworkz!