Totally stolen from inspired by Christie!

Knitterly things I would like to accomplish by May 1, 2006.

Finish a fair isle project. Any project.
Finish my 2nd Hourglass sweater. Pretty doable, as I've already started a sleeve.
Post more pictures on my blog. I promise, I will start doing this!
Make a scarf for my aunt. She outright told me to, and I have the yarn for it.
Use up 25% of my stash.
Calculate how much stash I have so I can come up with 25%**
Intarsia. 'Nuff said.
Make a sock. Or two.

I think I can do that in four months. That list is pretty reasonable, right?

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Bar names I have thought up:

Can You Beer Me Now? Good!
Lager-rythms
It's Ale Good

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Possible Secret Santa Gifts I Shall Give as Revenge For Last Year's Disappointing Gift (a tin of generic butter cookies) (yes, I am still bitter, why do you ask?)

Phone Card
Socks
Promotional Drink Coasters
Haggis
Cans of Bud Lite (5)
A Fimo-clay Ashtray, made by yours truly in under 5 minutes
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Smoking update: Only four cigarettes total for yesterday. One fifth my usual intake! Today I'm hoping for only three, but I don't know. I was trying for just two but when I tried to skip my lunch smoke this urge to pick up a shot gun and "thin the herd" came over me.

**Hmm...I seem to have received 11 skeins of yarn in the mail. The stash maths will be difficult.

I am wearing Hourglass to work. So far, no one has laughed at me. In fact, everyone is very impressed.

I have two theories:

1) They are telling the truth and I just have major insecurity issues about my knitting. Like, Zoloft-requiring issues.

2) They are lying to me because they know I will go cray-cray with a stapler on they behinds if they so much as think about critiquing my labors.

Tonight will be the future mother in law test. She of all people I am sure will not hesitate to break it down for me, ugly truth by ugly truth. Wish me luck!

First of all, I want to thank all of you for your reassurances and good advice. I get a little hyper and I have PMS. You all made me feel a lot better and thanks to you I didn't have to reach for the rum xanax chocolates.

Reknitting the sleeves is definitely a sound solution to the too long sleeves. I will do this in the future, but for now I'm trying to get this fork outta my booty because I am done.

So here's what I did.

Screamed vulgarities so depraved they cannot be typed here.

Then, defuzzed.

Copious, but copious, amounts of fuzz.

And brought out the iron. Introduced iron to sweater, then closed my eyes while they made hot, steamy love. The romance of the year, people!!

So, without further ado, some pictures of Hourglass. I'm not satisfied with how it turned out, but I'm kinda drained and don't want to get started fixin'.

From the front...not so bad. Except for the sleeves. Grrrr.

Here's the real problem. The flare. One the bright side, if I get knocked up at least I have a sweater to wear. I think next time I make this sweater I will make a much smaller size. Now I have to figure out how to take this in.

Oh! Some of you asked about yarn. This is Elsepeth Lavold Silky Wool. It's DK weight, so I just fudged until I got the gauge to match. That right there could be part of the whole stretch issue, since it was so loosey goosey.

I may try pinning this down and soaking it with a spray bottle, and leaving it to dry flat once I get my Sew EZ board. Yeah....that sounds good.

Tomorrow! Cheap Yarn Review #2! Stayed tuned! You will thrill, you will chill, you will...see a picture of a swatch!

I finished all the sewing on Hourglass. I tried it on a lot. Maybe I danced a little. Was happy with the fit and neck and all that jazz....but....

The yarn stretched. It didn't look bad, just sloppy. I figured blocking would do it some good. I mean, blocking is great, right? Fixes everything? Like, gauge? Sizing? Cancer?

Well, no. I am kind of mad at blocking right now. We're not talking. Well, I'm talking, but strictly behind blocking's back.

I soaked the sweater in a mixture of warm water and Eucalan. A little while later I took it out and behold! Hourglass turned into Big Ben. I mean, I should have snapped a photo for y'all to see. I thought the hunchback was bad...The Elephant Man would be embarrassed to wear this as a tumor cover. And that's the Elephant Man, y'all.

Needless to say, I was appalled. And increasingly desperate. I pressed the water out and it did not help. I laid the sweater out on the (cleanish) carpet. Oh man, it looked terrible. It looked sad and terrible, like I just told it, "You're not really my child. Your mother is actually that deranged prostitute the townspeople tried to set on fire."

So my brilliant mind came up with this solution:Air dry in the dryer. For, oh, two hours. Judging by the title of this post, guess how this turned out.

Fuzzy. Damp. But mostly very, very fuzzy. My brand new sweater turned into a brand old sweater. Here's how it looks after a day of air drying on a sweater rack:

I mean, god, LOOK AT IT.

They call me "Chim Chim" and feed me ripe bananas. FOR I AM A GORILLA.

Here we have some lovely flare. Not 19 pieces of flair, I'm talking "flat ass accentuating" flare.

My speciality: Yarn Abuse. I've taken the liberty of highlighting some of the more outstanding pills. Oh, and, the deep crease that blocking did NOTHING for.

So, for the pills I figure I can use a fabric shaver. But what do I do about the arms? The aaaaaaaaaarms!

...But it was Halloween! Sadly, we had no trick or treaters. I guess that happens when you live in a second story apartment. Not that there were any kids walking around in our neighborhood anyway. Damn you, neighbors! Breed already!

In the meantime, I watched Bram Stoker's Dracula  and while watching that I knit on Hourglass. I knit, and knit, and knit, and I was done with all the pattern decreases by about the time Keanu is all, "Dude, it's TOTALLY a good idea to have my Dracula lusting wife...hunt Dracula with us! Cha!"

I also came up with an ingenious (for me, that is. Remember? The girl who can't read?) method of decreasing some more so I can actually wear a bra with this sweater. Because trust me, you don't want me to not. You see, the pattern says to work the decrease row, then knit even for one row, then repeat. Once I was done with the pattern decreases, I just worked each row as a decrease row. I AM A GENIUS. ALL HAIL MOI!

So now I am whip stitching the hems in. At least, I think it is whip stitching. I don't know. For the purposes of this blog, we will say whip stitching. It's kind of fun (lie). Oh, and I ain't doing that "sew the live stitches down" BS either. ALL the stitches will be whip stitched down. Then it's off to block. Then we're going to Chicago.

Pics of the in progress Hourglass and maybe even a cheap-ass swatch coming soon!