Blocked, not blocking

The depressing thing about keeping a knitting blog is how dependent it is on pictures to keep it interesting. When all your projects hit a dead end, and there are no new pictures to post, it becomes painfully obvious that you are making no progress in your various endeavors. At least, such has been the case for me this week.

Sahara ground to a halt when I decided that it needed short- or elbow-length sleeves after all. The yarn (Louisa Harding Kashmir Aran) was far too heavy to really work as a sleeveless tank. However, I don't have the DPNs necessary to finish the longer sleeves. The lovely Kate sent me several at Christmas, but apparently the package is taking a detour through Kathmandu on its way to me, as it still has not arrived. The poor, lost needles. So, Sahara is in knit limbo, which would bother me far more if I had any hope of wearing it before October.

Then, there is Soleil. The required yarn, Elann Sonata, was part of the massive yarn haul my mom brought last month. I started happily swatching on Tuesday, only to discover that the mercerized cotton is so tough on my hands that I end up knitting far more loosely than I normally would. I'm down to 3.5mm needles and still too loose. I'm facing the dilemma of raw fingers from too tight yarn or cramped hands from too small needles. I'm rooting for option C, in which I throw the damn swatch in the washing machine on high heat and hope for the best.

No need to despair just yet! I have drawers full of yarn and patterns aplenty. I have...Highland chunky wool. Highland silk/wool blend. A bunch of Wool-ease. Noro Kureyon. In wool. Handpainted...alpaca. I am, it would seem, more than ready for winter.

I do have my Turkish silk, though the aran weight doesn't match many summer patterns. I also have about 9 skeins of Lana Grossa cotofilo, a cotton blend. I bought that one off Pavi Yarns, a truly wonderful online shop with rather horrible colour representation. The lovely soft green I intended to buy ended up being more in the neon family. I might be getting desperate, though.

In the planning state is the Lauren shawl by Rowan. I don't have 15mm needles and will be using smaller yarn, but that won't stop me! I've had enough knitting roadblocks this week! I will likely use 10mm needles, more stitches, and see what happens. It's a shawl, after all. I don't exactly have to worry about proper fit.

So, one week, no progress. But here is a slightly overexposed picture of my insanely cute cats. You can't have a knitting blog without pictures, after all.