Scarf and things

Well, it's just not in the cards for me to join a knitting group, I think. I did get an email from the Del Ray Knitters - their group met last night - and I did go up there. But once I got there, I realized - no, I don't really want to sit around with a bunch of strangers and knit in uncomfortable chairs. So I went home. Unfortunately, to cover for my embarassing retreat, I spent the last three dollars of my gift certificate on the absolute foulest concoction ever dreamt of by man or beast. (They advertise it as "chai", but that seems to be shorthand for "completely unlike chai in any way".) Bleah. I poured it down the drain, it was so bad, and I'm someone who will go to nearly any length to avoid wasting food. But it was that undrinkable.

Shoulda stuck with the coffee.

At any rate, I got very little done. I mean, I'm almost done with the scarf (wish I'd remembered to take a picture, I'm really happy with it.) I should finish it today or tomorrow. And I didn't have time to figure out the pattern for the gloves (although I dreamed about them all last night) so I didn't want to take them, so I gave myself permission to play with the Recycled Silk.

Now, night before last I was having some serious insomnia issues, so I balled up a couple of skeins of the silk. The first was way overtwisted, although only a couple of spots were so thin that I'll probably have to cut them. The second skein was mostly a good tension (or whatever you call it) with a few really loose unspun parts and one perplexing knot (I untied it, and it wasn't two pieces of yarn - just a random, but obviously hand-tied, knot.) The second skein was also very tangled, and took me over half an hour to ball, which was a bummer, but the colors... reds and pinks and purples and gold and really quite beautiful. I didn't notice a lot of foreign matter in either ball - a couple bits of hay and one small piece of plastic, but nothing like some folks have talked about.

So I pulled that out last night. Started a bag. Didn't like the way it looked. Frogged. Started doing it differently - liked that less. Frogged. Decided to try an openwork fingerless glove - miscalculated gauge and wound up with a few inches of something that fit in the wrist but ballooned to Godzilla-sized when it got to the openwork part. So. Frogged. Which means I knit for two and a bit hours with nothing to show for it except slightly more frayed yarn. Ah well. I learned, right? I'm going to change the openwork I did and go with the gloves on this ball. And do them in the proper gauge.

And then I'll still have 900g left over! Joy!

Memo to self: ask mom about scarf. Because it would be a really good idea to knit her a scarf for Christmas and a matching hat for her birthday. More cables!