WIPs? I got 'em.

It occurs to me that, for a knitting blog, I don't write about knitting, so much. This may be because lately I've done relatively little knitting. The items from the last post? The coffee cup? Last summer. The Dog? Maybe a year and a half ago.

And she's still not finished. To wit: the big ridickerous flap under her chin, which I need to just saw off and then sew her up.

But she does have a tutu.
Still, I've been stuck for a long time, because she needs more extensive plastic surgery. See how her arms and legs are splayed just a bit too far out? My plan is to cut wedges from her armpits and ... what is that place? Legpits? Anyway, I need to draw her extremities in toward the front a bit. Then perhaps a spot of nipping and tucking so as her bottom is more flat, so she can sit more comfortably.

But I'm so stuck. I had the BEST time making her -- knitted all in one piece in Lamb's Pride, then when I guessed I was about at her neck I added in the purple frufru stuff, then where the tutu would probably be, orange and fuchsia eyelash, and so on, and then sew her up except at the neck, and gather the edges of the ears, then the hot wash in the lingerie bag. She was actually cuter, more interesting, before I stuffed her -- her face had more structure, more personality. Lately, I've been working out in my head in more detail what I need to do, and then I'll give her another hot swim. That will be a delightful day, I know. For now, though, she lives here:
(Look carefully, and by her butt you'll see another WIP -- a scarf from the Scarf Style book, the Vintage Velvet cable thing in Muench Touch Me, which my Darlin' Husband gave me for my birthday in November and which will be delicious but is like knitting with wet spaghetti and makes me want to shoot myself. [But not so badly that I failed to kind of enjoy my first foray into cabling.] A worthy challenge, indeed.)

Basically, I have this problem -- I'm pretty swell at beginnings, but I suck at follow-through ... although it helps if it's on a deadline for some outside entity or person. My first sweater, for myself? 10 months. Now, mind you, it was endless miles of stockinette in COTTON -- this great, tunicky, long-sleeved THING in this marvelous tomato color. (More on this later.) My second and third sweaters, both for my sister? A couple months each. (1: Teva Durham's Weekend Unisex pullover thing in Noro Big Kureyon, the subtle blue-purple colorway, and 2: a very simple Oat Couture pullover pattern -- front and back are the same -- slip stitch ribbing? Pattern written for both chunky and worsted weight? -- in Linie Iceland, the fuchsia-cranberry colorway, and I was happy to find that those little plicky things do not shed. Both sweaters were delights to knit, and no, I don't have pictures, and they're in Pennsylvania. Maybe next year.) Christmas before last, a couple pairs of Bev Galeskas' felted clogs, one of them for my husband, and I managed to do it (and a variety of other knitted gifts) without him knowing.

But since last Christmas, I realize, I've been on a long, slow slide into that knitting fug. More WIPs:

This is my in-laws' Christmas present. LAST Christmas ... six months ago? The WIP is under the yarn tornado, which is the result of my chihuahua-poodle mix Bogart having spiderwebbed the downstairs one day in my absence. Eventually, this will be a pillow cover, intarsia in Lamb's Pride like the coffee cup, a rendition of an oil painting by my father-in-law, a landscape with fields and a barn in the foreground, the Blue Ridge and a threatening sky in the background. See the threatening sky in the bag? I'm actually almost halfway done -- through the fields and part of the barn (thank you Jay-zus -- I needed that crazy red after all those earth tones). I pooped out at Christmas, knowing I'd never make it, and hoped to get it done for Dad's Feb. birthday. Oh, well.

I did, however, finish one pillow cover -- this one for my brother-in-law.

I like this right much. It's roughly 13 x 13, and I had a blast working it -- and no, I don't know what the hell I did -- no pattern. Looks finished, right? The back is even sewn on and all that. But astute readers (craft nerds) will have picked up on the difficulty here. Which is that there seems to be no such thing as a 13 x 13 pillow form.







You see my problem.

There are 12-inch pillow forms, which don't work. This is a 14-inch pillow form. Now, my mother-in-law has given me a perfectly logical solution, which should take all of about 20 minutes: Rip open the pillow form, remove filling, cut an inch strip off two adjacent sides, refill and sew up. But that involves FINDING the sewing machine. So.

(Yep, that's the Bogart. I want it known that, while I generally dislike small dogs, I like Bogart. The Boge rocks.)

And then there are these.

On the left, with the CD perched on top, an example of severe Second Slipper Syndrome -- these will be for my aunt in Canada but were originally for her friend she is visiting in Germany -- I didn't get them done in time because it wasn't humanly possible, so she's giving the slippers I made for her to her friend, and she will take these. (I gotta get cracking -- she comes home in about a week.) To the right, behind the weird chocolate-smelling lotion that DH bought by accident, a random hat thing out of gorgeous Manos (knit round and round for a while, get bored, start ribbing, get bored, learn how to bobble and make a bunch of warty bobbles, get bored, do a raised zigzag thing, etc., until I have a long Dr. Seuss hat for next winter).

And, last but not remotely least but ... well, I guess it depends on your perspective:

Hard to see, and this may be very sad, but this is my duffle from my Easter weekend visit to my mother in Georgia, and it remained thus until a couple days ago, but with more and more laundry piled on top of it. If you look carefully, toward the upper left you see a ball of glowing, chocolate brown Rowan Calmer, the yummiest cotton anything I've ever touched -- one of several, bought by my sister to be knitted by me for my mother into a vast, sleeveless tank thing. Mama is not small, and she needs to be comfortable and she's a little partickler ... yeah. I'm swatching, and I've picked a couple stitch patterns from Barbara Walker. But you know? I'm having a hard time.

A baby step this last weekend, though -- on Saturday, I taught myself how to yarn over. I don't know why, but I have been crazy-daunted by that.

And I find myself wondering what a wiggly rib would look like felted in Lamb's Pride.

So there.