Still At It

Beading-wise, I'm still making little things, earrings mostly, with the odd beaded bead thrown in.

The close-up shows all flaws, unfortunately. I think I need more powerful glasses .

I wish I could photograph these better, but white things are just impossible.

With the pink sweater still not blocked (I have other priorities. Like knitting the next one), it's even odds as to whether I'll get my cardigan done in time to overdye it. I'm using up all sorts of oddments and left-overs, yarns that were spun from batts comprised of SOAR samples and other odds and ends; invariably ugly, even to this lover of the sludgey colours.

Endless drain-sludge greys.

Hence the need to overdye.

On the other hand, I'm basking in the smug virtuousness of the frugality relating to using up those odds and ends. (I am coming to realize that even if I never spin the fiber I have or buy more yarn, it's going to be awfully difficult to get that much use out of the so many potential sweaters represented by the yarn I already have. Still, there's nothing like a challenge. I should buck up a bit because I'm also realizing that I may not live long enough to make them all).

Right now I'm a couple of inches from the armhole on one sleeve and the body, and an extra couple of inches away on the second sleeve, so it's looking doable.

The thing is, raglan yokes alter the very physics of the universe: they make time glacial. Top-down sweaters take forever to get started, but once you hit the Great Divide and stop the raglan increases, the rest of the sweater is complete almost instantaneously.

Conversely, working bottom-up it may feel as if progress is brisk until Three Become One, and then even though you're decreasing eight stitches every other round, your children grow up and make you a grandparent before you can even begin to think about neck shaping, and you start looking into retirement homes, and then suddenly (those last few decrease rounds at some point make a significant dent in the total stitch count) you've used up all the sleeve stitches and you realize you haven't decided how to finish the neck or what size your buttonholes need to be and oh yes, it's not quite tea-time just yet after all.

Time dilation.

Weird.

I was recently rebuked for Lack of Kitten Pictures.

Isis broke the thingy that keeps the mirror upright so that you can see how that necklace sits. Now it's only good for lying on the floor and confounding kittens. Does pretty well at that.