With the baby blanket off being snuggly with the cutest baby ever and my sock pal socks safely finished (and still not photographed or mailed, because I SUCK and had a crap day today and so didn't go to the post office), the pressure's off the knitting for a while. I've got a baby sweater that needs to be done in a month or so, but given that the last one took about three days I'm not too concerned. I started another baby blanket in the hopes of avoiding the panicked "the baby is here" knitting, which I thought was quite intelligent of me. It's a Pinwheel, a pattern I'm enjoying immensely, knit in Swish in a variety of colours. No photos of this one in progress, though, as certain impending babies have nosey mothers. It's very cute, though.

Monday, Karen and I went to see Music and Lyrics, and after a lengthy bout of indecisiveness on my part, I blew off Stitch n Bitch (sorry, SnB people, but I was too grouchy for small talk. You were better off without me.) and we went to the early show. However, that meant I had about fifteen minutes to eat and be ready to go when Karen picked me up, which meant I had about three minutes after I ate to figure out what knitting to bring. Because let's face it, despite the immense delightfulness of Hugh Grant, that's the kind of movie that needs knitting. Pan's Labryinth? Not so much. The Queen? Could go either way, but I survived without it. (I have seen a lot of movies lately, for whatever reason.) But Music and Lyrics reeeeally needed some knitting.

Unfortunately, all that was on the needles was the baby blanket, which has just enough yarnovers to totally screw you over in the dark, and Rogue, which still needs a hood and sleeves. But if you've seen the nineteen page pattern for Rogue, you know those pages of charts are not meant for movie theaters. (I could barely keep track while watching American Idol tonight, but I'll get to that in a minute.) I had my Gryffindor yarn already wound into a yarn cake, but guilt got the better of me. You see, I gave Rachel a skein of yarn for Christmas with the promise that it would eventually be socks. It is now almost March. I should really knit her some socks. So I grabbed the yarn and flung it up on the ball winder (incidentally, HOW did I ever survive without my winder and swift?), and was winding furiously when Karen called to say she was three minutes away. I posted Jamie on window duty and kept winding. She pulled up, I wound the last little bit, grabbed some needles, and dashed out to the car.

The movie was pretty mediocre, but I got the entire cuff of the sock knit, so I feel it was time well spent. (Plus it only cost us about four dollars each because we had several coupons.) Since then, I've made it to the heel of the first sock, which is pretty good for two days work. (I had book group last night - prime knitting time.)

Tonight, though, I actually had a free night, and after an insane day of work I decided that what I needed was American Idol and knitting. This plan was interfered with somewhat by Jamie's purchase of Rayman's Raving Rabbids for my new Wii. My god, that game is just obscenely fun. So I played that for several hours when I got home, showed Erin and Ashley how to play, and felt much better after shooting rabbits with plungers for a while.

Once my wrists were starting to give, though, I decided to really make my tendons suffer and pulled Rogue back out again. It's been on the back burner for a few weeks, since finishing the body on February 6th. (Wow, I didn't realise it had been that long. Sigh.) I left Jamie rampaging against the rabbits and went to watch last night's AI.

I knit through the whole thing, got the hood stitches picked up and figured out what I'd screwed up (pretty minor - just cast off two too many stitches, so I just picked up two extra.) I was happily knitting away while zipping through Idol (which doesn't take long - that show is all filler), when I realised I'd miscrossed a cable about four rows back. Again.

This time, though, I noticed, and it was only a little wee three stitch cable. I glared at it for a round, then, sighing about not learning my lesson, lined myself up over the offending cable, took a deep breath, and dropped the stitches.

I tell you, this Bartlett wool will take a serious beating before it loses its stitches. It's perfect for cabling without a needle (which is all I do any more), and it made it quite painless to drop the stitches and recross the cable in the right direction. Man, that was satisfying. I was feeling pretty darn impressed with myself, let me tell you. I got up to the tenth row of the hood when I realised something was weird. I counted stitches several times, consulted the chart repeatedly, and finally gave up and tinked. (Progress for me - I would usually ignore it and work out some way around it. I hate tinking.) When I got back the two rows to where the problem started, I realised what I'd done. I'd slipped the two stitches to be cabled, knit the next two, and lined them up for cabling, but I forgot to knit the stitches that I moved.

Whoops. So much for my so-called cabling mojo. Oh well.

Pictures of the sock pal socks (SORRY, snowdrop!) and Rogue's progress to follow soon. I'm taking my poor tendons to bed.