Knitting content guaranteed

Once again, thanks for all your well wishes for my health. Except for the occasional coughing fit (which sounds like I've been smoking for 30 years) and a serious lack of energy, I'm feeling much better.

The lack of energy could also be due to the fact that I am on a cola prohibition. I have a serious Coke addiction (no Pepsi thank-you - and yes, I can tell the difference in a blind taste test) and since I've done so well with cutting down on the amount of fast food and processed food I'm eating, I figured it was time to tackle the fizzy problem. I did manage to get myself down to one a day (as opposed to three, or four or five or ten) but I still had the odd day where I'd go a little nutty. But as of Wednesday, I'm off the juice - and since it's my only source of caffeine (I despise coffee and only rarely drink tea) I think it could account for lack of spunk.

So the the zombiesque attention required to knit Dad's F-day sock has worked well because I've just been chilling out on the couch watching movies after work, and haven't had the get-up-and-go to do anything requiring more exertion. As a result, I'm past the heel and about one third down the foot. No pictures, because it's just not that exciting.

But that doesn't mean I don't have knitting content to entertain you all.

I stopped by Mom's after work today with the intention of over-dying my Zetor and getting it blocked out, but I didn't even have the energy for that (Dave said he may go to the cottage for more shed-building fun this weekend, so if he does, I think I'll opt out and head up to Mom's to break in the new dye studio). Instead I left Zetor there, and picked up a couple skein of yarn:These are Top Cat from my last dye session. The colour is Magnolia and it's slightly more purple than the picture shows. You will see Magnolia in the shop (with better pictures) soon, because it's such a pretty colour.

I didn't even get a chance to tell you about the rest of the yarn from that dye session because shortly after Mom put them in the shop, they were gone! All that is left is two skeins of Jiminy Cricket:This is one of my new favourites too! The idea for it actually came from a test skein Mom did when she was trying out some new dye. I have a little scrap of it and knit it in to the Crackghan. I liked it so much, I recreated it for the shop.

Even though I've been knitting steadily on Dad's sock, I've been feeling kind of edgy about my projects - I want to start 10,000 new projects, and I really have no inclination to work on anything already on the needles.

I'm sorely tempted to frog the Starry Zetor - I'm just not loving the yarn. I think I'm going to try to knit one more repeat on it this weekend and see if that gets my heart beating any faster for the project. If not, to the frog pond it goes!

I'm also resisting the urge to whip out the credit card and buy a bunch of new yarn for this:She's had each square up individually on Ravelry and finally released the whole set for sale today for $10. I had $10 in my paypal - so into my library it went.

Now those of you that know me are going, "But Valerie, you HATE colourwork". Yes. I do. But this is so damn adorable, and it's an afghan (we know how I LOVE afghans), and it's faeries, and its done as individual squares.

I figured it would be a good way to practice colour work. The only real problem I have with colourwork is that my tension sucks, and everything gets all bunchy and too small... with a blanket, that's not necessarily as much as a problem as it is with say... a hat!

And, I can't wait to see Dave's face when I finish it and put it on the bed! Of course, she also has a pattern for a beautiful fish blanket - so I could make that one for him to make it up to him.

I'm thinking of using something from Knit Picks ... any thoughts, reviews?