Splice Splice Baby

Today was a day for tying up loose ends, so to speak.

A few days ago, I looked down into the craft bag that I keep beside the chair I knit in , and was appalled at it’s sorry state. Needles everywhere, half-wound balls of yarn, torn up ball bands, color cards, DPNs everywhere – it was a mess. So today, I dumped it out and cleaned house.

I pulled out the straight needles and put them in a vase (I’ll find something better later), threw out a LOT of useless ends and scraps, made sure all the right circulars were in their correct bags, organized my DPNs, and put together some things to donate. This mess you see here is not neat and tidy and only 1/3 full. Maybe now, Kate won’t be tempted to stick her nose in there to see what she can find.

Which leads me to project number two and this post’s title. Last winter, when Jeff and I were out of town, Kate got into some of my knitting. Some of the stuff she ate I didn’t really care about, but she did manage to mangle a hank of Lorna’s Laces in a one of a kind color. Seriously, the color number is 000, but strangely, it has a dye lot number of 34…  I started to toss it, but it had a pristine mate, and knowing that it was irreplaceable made me a bit more dogged (so to speak) in my determination to fix it. So I put this sad shredded mess on a swift, and spent a few hours gently teasing out the pieces and splicing them together. It turns out there were only about a dozen pieces, and two sections were quite long, so I think it was worth it. I’d kind of forgotten about this yarn, but now I’m already thinking of possibilities.

And finally, progress was made on the Pavement Scarf over the past few days. It’s a satisfying pattern, easily memorized within a few pattern repeats. The numbers 6 and 7 figure in the pattern a lot, and it’s clever how it’s reversible – a handy feature for a scarf. Unlike most cabled figures, there is quite a bit of purling into knit stitches and knitting into purl stitches, but once you see where things are going, it does make sense. It is a bit lacier than I thought it would be, and the whole thing could be done on smaller needles, but the drape will be nice and I’m hoping it will fill out when blocked, which this garment sorely needs.

This was to be my over-the-winter-break knitting, but I may finish this faster than I expected. I’m really digging the color.