Progress...

Long time, no see, eh? I apologize for not posting... I don't really even have a good excuse, except that I've been too distracted, and too busy (read: lazy) to take proper pictures to post. I still have a whole bunch of polymer clay projects that I'd like to share, but haven't taken any pictures of, so that'll have to wait. As far as knitting goes -well, remember this cardi from a while back?
I actually did finish it. And it actually turned out absolutely horrible. I was thinking all along that the instructions weren't too good. The design is really pretty, but to get form the instructions to something that looks like garment in the photo is another matter. The construction is terrible, just a plain bad design. I'd look up the designer, if I hadn't lost the magazine, so I'd know to avoid them next time. It's not that there were too many errors, but the whole thing just wasn't going to work out. And I was wondering how it could, but thought I'd just knit all the way to the end and see. And it didn't. And I'm pissed. So I ripped the pieces apart, and I'm redoing the shoulders and the tops of the sleeves, as well as the collar. We'll see, if I'll be able to salvage it, or if I'll have to rip out the whole thing and start over. With a different pattern.

On the other hand, I've made progress on the black alpaca cardi, and I was actually determined to piece it together this weekend, so I could wear it to work tomorrow. My office is getting increasingly cold as the fall progresses, and I need to wear WOOL every day, or I'm not going to make it.

Here are the pieces taking a bath: Blocking went smoothly, since I had help again, as usual:

So much nicer, when you don't have to face a big job like this all alone! Now all I got to do, is piece it together and add a button band and a couple of buttons.

That was my plan until last night, when both the kids came down with The Flu. A nasty stomach virus that changed my schedule and made laundry and cleaning my first priority, and forced me to put the cardi on the back burner. Bummer. But I'll get there, should only take a couple of hours now.

I've also been knitting on some on-the-go projects, namely sock in sizes 3-years and 8-years:
This is the "hurts-your-eyes" colorway of some unknown sock yarn (not really unknown, but one of my helpers likes to remove the bands from balls of yarn, as you might recall.) The next ones weren't quite as bad, as far as colorful yarns go:

I actually started to like this colorway of Trekking XXL a lot, as I kept knitting. The color changes are slow, and there's always more than one color going on at once. Even when it looks like it's just one color, there are speckles of other colors in it. The socks are actually already finished, but I just don't have a picture yet.

Now back to knitting... got to finish that cardi!