I’m just planning ahead for April, you understand. I mean, it’s March 32nd already – April’s just around the corner!

I decided to call April “UFO Month.” I have three fairly substantial Un-Finished Objects that I’d like to see make some progress.

Look – there’s one now! That’s my Hundertwasser socks, in the clever knitting pouch a friend gave me.

I’m not sure if those count as a UFO or not. It’s true they are unfinished, but I still think of them as being actively in play. I set them aside for Charity Knitting Month, but once Charity Knitting Month is over (March 34th or 35th or so) they will go back to being my Sims-playing knitting.

There’s another one! Oh Celtic Cabled Scarf; so beautiful, and yet so hard on the fingers to knit. (And so mysteriously covered with cat hair.)

And who could forget Liz Lemon’s Scarf? I tried to forget it, but I could not.

Look at how sadly the various items of the project have taken on the shape of the box they live in. If I flipped the box over and lifted it up, I’m pretty sure the scarf and all the little balls of yarn would be left on the countertop in a single piece, like a trapezoidal Jello mold. Yarn aspic, if you will.

Tags: Celtic Cabled Scarf, Liz Lemon's Scarf, UFO Month

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Upon hearing that I had finished Liz Lemon’s hat, several people inquired about the status of Liz Lemon’s Scarf. Well, fair enough.

I decided that Jennifer was very perceptive. She pointed out that I had called it the “first repeat,” which presumes the existence of more repeats, correct? A fine and accurate point.

(I have heard that there are people who knit without the assistance of knitting blogs and knitting blog commenters. No idea how they do it.)

The end of the first repeat is the green zigzags at the far right. When I look at this picture, I see that I have been making some excellent progress. Which is a surprise, because it certainly doesn’t feel like it. Except for the way that it has been getting more and more difficult to cram into its project box.

Every morning I watch last night’s Daily Show and Colbert Report on Hulu, while I drink coffee and wait for the wood stove to warm the place up. I call this “my commute,” since I work from home.

I have been striving to knit at least one repeat during my commute. Just like I would if I were riding the bus. Which I’m sure sounds completely bizarre to non-knitters. But we knitters know that these funny little cognitive gymnastics are just par for the course with big projects.

Do you follow Sockington on Twitter? I adore Sockington. Ages ago he posted this update, which I saved to show you:

Brady and Kimble have endorsed this sentiment. I went into this winter with the determination to be the Badass Queen of the Cold House, and I have succeeded.

So far I have used less than half as much wood as I had last year by this point. (I have a shitload* of firewood, but it’s just like money. Just because you have a lot, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be thrifty.)

For the last few months, they have been swinging between two modes:

1. Bristling, crouched, and glaring.

2. Sprawling, dozy, and stoned with heat.

Here’s Kimble in mode #2:

* The “ton” system is decimal. 10 craploads = 1 shitload. 10 shitloads= 1 fuckload.

Tags: Firewood, Liz Lemon's Scarf

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I spent some quality time with the scarf last week, and finally finished the first pattern repeat. I’m thinking of this scarf as “inspired by,” because the more closely I looked at the original, the more I saw patterns I wanted to substitute.

The first pattern repeat is 33 inches long. Stop here, or work a second repeat for a 66-inch long scarf?

As you can see, I’ve left it on the needles, because I haven’t made my decision yet. This would make a fine tuck-in scarf. And since it’s essentially four layers of yarn (knitting / yarn strands / yarn strands / knitting), it’s quite warm.

Also if I stopped here I could start knitting something else, which would be nice, because this scarf is getting boring.

This is my most favorite motif. I call it “flecky triangles.” Flecky triangles are deployed in several motifs, but I’m particularly smitten with the combination of green flecky triangles and yellow zig zags.

This is my least favorite motif. It’s one of only two motifs which breaks the overall “colored pattern against white background” pattern. I picked it at random out of my Vogue Stitchionary, and it looked a lot niftier on the page.

Every time I look at it, I do a double-take because I think I see a swastika. Please tell me you have the same experience?

Someone asked if I was making effort to de-jog the stripes at the end of each round. The answer is, “Pfft, no.” This is a bigger problem with some motifs than others. (Yet another reason to like Flecky Triangles and Zig Zags.)

This is a photograph of the best page in the colorwork Vogue Stitchionary. That pattern is named “Kang and Kodos.”

Tags: Liz Lemon's Scarf

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I’ve been making pretty good progress on my Liz Lemon scarf. It’s about 20 inches long, and I’m 3.5 pages into the first repeat of the five-page pattern. Crazy, right?

I have a ton of tiny changes to the pattern, but I’m waiting to revise it until I’ve gone through one full repeat. Then I’ll publish the chart, if anyone else in the world could possibly be interested.

Tags: Liz Lemon's Scarf

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Just as a refresher, here’s the original picture again:

A lot of people commented that it could be double knitting. I can see why – a lot of the pattern blocks have the colors reversed. But considering the time crunch of a knitter working for a television show, and considering how FREAKIN’ AWFUL double knitting is, I think it’s more a matter of… some pattern blocks having the colors reversed.

There is NO WAY I’d knit a six-foot scarf in double knitting, so it’s a moot point anyway.

I started out by spending hours with Excel’s “Fill Color” tool, to put together a pattern. This turned out to be three pages long. Then I copied and pasted it at the bottom, and reversed all the colors, and it was six pages long. Yikes!

After knitting, I had to go back and revise the spreadsheet several times. I’d finish a pattern block and decide that it just didn’t look quite right. I don’t half think that after I finally get the pattern the way I want it, I’ll have to rip back this entire tube of knitting and start over.

Egg-wise, I’ve gotten a 2nd and 3rd egg! They were all tiny – about 40 grams – a grocery store Jumbo egg is 65-70 grams. So cute!

Tags: Lemon Party, Liz Lemon's Scarf, My Peeps

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