Latitude 61...Land of the Midnight Sun

Second sleeve syndrome

I always seem to suffer from second sleeve syndrome, and the second sleeve of Stillwater is no exception.
Once I pick up the stitches, it will go fast, but I don't enjoy the picking up process so I'm just procrastinating.

I used this break to work on a new hat; Ardvey, by AS.  I had always admired this hat, and had meant to knit it long ago, but my "love affair" with sweaters or vests; especially the stranded variety, always seemed to get in the way. 

This winter has been colder than usual, at least, up until the last week, so it seemed a great time to actually knit myself a new hat.  Starmore describes her inspiration as coming from her observations of the patterns on a sea urchin, and that's exactly right.  Minus the spines... and who wants to wear those anyway... it looks exactly like a sea urchin, which has always been one of my favorite shapes occuring in nature.

Ardvey was a really fast knit and the pattern was easy, but fascinating as it unfolded.  What cleverness to have figured this out!  So here it is, knitted in left-over very vintage Scottish Heather in Brass.  I should have picked a different color though. I didn't realize that in the photo it would appear to almost match my hair.  In "real life", it has a greenish cast, which fortunately my hair does not!

The only down-side to this hat, is Scottish Heather is really quite "scratchy", but luckily, the style prevents it from coming into contact with skin. 

Now... if I can only  get enough Hebridean 3ply left over from something else.... that would be so much softer!

Arctic Blast drifted off to.... somewhere else!

Thank goodness the horribly cold weather we were having finally drifted off... according to some people... the Mid-west.  It was -24F here for awhile... forever, it seemed, but today it warmed up to a "scorching" 22F.  I actually felt too hot in the house!

I usually don't make New Year's resolutions, since they don't seem to stick, but this year I decided I would make one.  I'm going to try being more monogamous in my approach to my knitting so I can actually finish something this year!  That being said, I have worked on Stillwater almost non-stop since January 1 and have completed an entire sleeve! YAY!  Of course, the whole time I am knitting that, I am fantasizing... (project slut that I am) about all the other projects I have started and am NOT knitting!

 I just don't know why when it comes to my knitting, I have the attention span of a canary. (always flitting off somewhere else...) I only have 8 or 9 other projects on the needles... that's not too many, is it?

So since I haven't posted a picture of Stillwater since 12-20 when I finished the UNMATCHED shoulders, here is a picture of the front bands and one sleeve.

I'll include a picture of one of the shoulders too.  I'm only a little distressed this time... since this is a completely vertical pattern, there was nothing I could have done once I started knitting, and it only looks weird if you're looking directly down on the shoulders.  I would have had to change the "center" somehow, since both shoulders are different in the way that they line up.  I can tell that the shoulders would have matched if I had knitted a size small, but some consolation that is since mine is a medium! 

Abalone looked far worse to me, than this, when it's shoulders didn't match.

Here is the worst shoulder... the other one is actually a little better.