I'm on vacation!

I took this week off to work on the yard, here at Chez Peepee. Not that I have grand plans, but I need more time than the weekend affords me (if I would quit knitting three hours a day, it would help. Not gonna happen, though).

Naturally enough, the weather is horrible. Cool and overcast, when it's not pissing down rain. You can blame me for the nasty weather. It's my fault because I HAD OUTDOOR PLANS.

So, I'm spending my time working on Icarus, while intently staring out the window, waiting for a break in the gloom. When I see it, I rush outdoors, do a project and hope that I get it done before the break is over.

Much as this bothers me, there is a bright (Ha! Bright!) side to the crappy weather. Some things that need doing indoors are also being done. Things that I should have done before I moved in. Things that will make me feel much better about the space and therefore improve my state of mind. Perhaps even inspire me to do more unpacking. I do miss my books.

However, here's Icarus:



I finished the last row of chart 3 waiting for the bus tonight. At nearly 500 (edited - 435 stitches sez the pattern) stitches, it takes close to two hours to knit two rows (the wrong-side rows go much faster - no yo, k2tog or ssk's). It measures roughly 67 cm (26") from centre back to the needle. I have 17 g of yarn left, including my swatch, with 28 rows and the cast-off remaining. I may just have enough. Since I began weighing the remaining yarn obsessively, I'm using about a gram every two rows (chart 3). If I don't have enough yarn, I will eliminate a couple of the last rows of chart 4 (the last eight rows are identical).

Other miscellaneous notes:

• I have not counted the stitches since the last row of chart one. At that point, I was four under, three over and then one short. Decided that was good enough. The first row of chart 2 fit, so I suppose my counting was off (I was watching teevee at the time).

• Now, I know how the pattern repeat is supposed to look, and if I don't have enough stitches to do what I need to do, or it doesn't seem like I'm supposed to purl and I want to, I look at the row beneath and see what I missed, drop the stitches and fix it. I've had to drop back more than one row twice. Once three rows down, and once four rows. Thank goodness for teeny crochet hooks and spare sock needles to hold the live stitches. Lace is very forgiving - there's lots of give with all the yarn-overs, and most of the stitches eventually adjust themselves. Blocking will fix the rest.

• I have reversed a whole bunch of the k2tog and ssk's. I just had a picture in my head of where the dominant pattern should be, and went with it. I am trained, from months of knitting socks, to k2tog first and then ssk. Charts 2 and 3 charts change the order mid-way through the chart, and I didn't catch it. I am not ripping to fix this. I bet no one will notice. Blocking hides lots of sins. Makes others apparent, but I will worry about that when I come to it. Or not.

I'm OCD about lots of things, but not whether my decreases are right- or left-leaning in a shawl. In a sweater, I would.