the Akamai Knitter

Today was cold and rainy for Hawaii, so I spent much of the day knitting on the Centerpiece Treasure Afghan. I had to put it away for awhile because it was much too hot to work on, but today’s cooler temperature were perfect for having a big lap of wool on my lap. As you can see it’s quite a chunk of woolly love, though not quite photogenic at this point. I only have about 3 more color changes before I can bind this baby off and I’m in a fever to finish it off.

Cooler weather also induced other symptoms of woolly fever, I’ve fallen in love with another sweater. It’s Ariann from ChicKnits. I’m not sure how long I’ll be obsessed with the thought of knitting it or whether or not I’ll actually knit it. For now I’m enjoying the possibilities that this sweater could hold for me without purchasing the pattern or the yarn for it quite yet. Though if this weather keeps up I will definitely be purchasing some yarn for a sweater quite soon.

Finally, my cold finally seems to have been chased away. For some reason these strange germs don’t like the cold weather. Maybe it’s all this woolly fever I have or maybe it’s my nifty Gentleman’s Socks that have done the trick. Now I’m inspired to knit more socks. I need to try and discipline myself and finish my gift knitting first though. That’s what my mouth keeps saying at least. My eyes keep wandering over to the bin where I keep my sock yarns. Oof!

Today I got some goodies in the mail from Knit Picks that enabled my to transform my Centerpiece Treasure Afghan from this mess:

into something resembling this:

I was a little skeptical about how I’d take to the Knit Picks Options needles seeing as how they don’t come assembled and I hate to fiddle with things like that. I had no problems putting them together though and the join is very smooth.

The thing I liked the best and the least about the needles is the different cable lengths you can get for them. I say the least because they don’t come in 16″ lengths and I really like to use that length for hats, so I had to shop elsewhere for those. I say the best, because it comes in 60″ lengths. I haven’t seen anyone else carry them that long. I envision the 60″ length as perfect for this particular project and for shawls.

I also like the fact that I could use these like jumper flex needles, which are a like a hybrid of straight and circular needles. So there are a lot of options, which I guess is why they call them options.

I’ll probably put the afghan away until my Christmas gifts are finished, but it was nice to work on something other then a scarf at least for a little while. The weather hasn’t exactly been conducive to afghan knitting either. It’s mostly been in the mid 80′s and the trade winds are expected to die down which will raise the humidity to a level that will be rather uncomfortable. Or at least it will make knitting a wool afghan uncomfortable. What was I thinking?

Centerpiece Treasure Afghan

I have a few projects lined up to make up for the lack of lace knitting that is going on in Chez Opal. One of them is the Centerpiece Treasure Afghan from Lion Brand Yarns. I bought the pattern and yarn for myself as a birthday present to me.

Click To Make Bigger

As you can see I’ve made a start on the afghan and it’s been an adventure since the pattern is wrong. Luckily I was able to figure out what was going on by looking at the picture and proceed from there. I found it interesting and vaguely amusing that Lion Brand has a disclaimer on their pattern for human error and typographical errors and basically anything else that can go wrong with their patterns.

And we will just ignore the fact that my afghan center is puckering up like a nipple or maybe a funky belly button in the center as I will block that out later. Just keep walking, folks.

I also have at least 2 other Illusion Scarves to knit up. One of them will be another Skull Illusion Scarf and the other will be the Alien Illusion Scarf from the book Stitch’n'Bitch. All of these will be gifts and the recipient of one of the scarves reads my blog. So I could make them Top Secret Projects, but I’m just too much of a blog addict to do that! I’m a really bad friend, aren’t I?

I’m also playing with the idea of making the Linux Illusion Scarf, but I’d have to rewrite the pattern. I’m not sure I’m prepared for such a intensive endeavor. We’ll have to see how things play out from now until Christmas. I’m pretty sure the person I’m giving this scarf to doesn’t read my blog, but then I think it would be pretty suspicious if I asked him right out.
And of course, I haven’t forgotten the ugly ass Jayne Hat. How could I? The image of that hat is burned indelibly into my poor brain!>

“A man walks down the street with a hat like that, you know he’s not afraid of anything.” -Wash