Sunday, Catholic-style Guilt--A Day Late

Yes, it's Monday. For another hour and forty-eight more minutes, anyway.

And no, I'm not Catholic. I'm Lutheran. But ask anyone who has attended Lutheran schools growing up and if they're honest, here's how they'll define a Lutheran:

We're disgruntled Catholics.

Sure we threw out purgatory, Latin, and those pesky saints (though we keep them for our school names, a dichotomy I've never quite figured out) and other such things we couldn't be bothered with, but we kept the guilt.

And here the blog promised, away and far ago, updates on the ongoing projects. (This was before the blog took a job-hunting hiatus. You know how busy blogs can get.)

Puesdo-Catholic guilt hit hard on Sunday (as all good guilt should) and thus produced results with me on Monday (my life tends to work like that).

So, pictures and updates.

Totally unblogged but were-meant-to-be blogged baby hats for charity for the Yarn Harlot's Tour. I knitted two, Thing Two knitted one (the blue one, if you couldn't guess).

Mind you, I didn't actually get to see the YH speak. I was at Thing Four's vocal concert with Thing Three keeping me company in the audience. (Songs and poems that were all about food. Not to be missed.) Thing Two, with Thing One as a non-knitter chaperone, went in my stead to laugh. (And even Thing One found the talk funny. That gives me hope. He's the only one I have left to corrupt...)

The pretty, pretty self-patterning sock yarn did arrive at the YH event in time for the signing, though, and it had its photo op. (Please ignore the non-Harlot person in that picture. Not only does she suffer from frozen smile-itis each time a camera is pointed in her direction, she also has been experiencing what can only be termed as a bad hair lifetime.)

The train hat, in its third and final incarnation, with some previously unblogged mitten buddies. Both hat and mittens, especially mittens, are already much battered by winter wearings (since winter went long this year), a tendency of the Bernat yarn to pill and many tussles between the mittens and their Velcro-ized brethren in the mitten bin. (Damn Velcro anyway. We hates it, we do.) So yeah, I should have gotten pictures the day they were done and still shiny and new. I guess I can say they look well-loved instead, right?

The mittens, of which 1 and 3/4 were knit in one bizarrely fast--for me--day (last 1/4 completed the next day), aren't technically done. They still need the trains duplicate stitched on. (That should be fun as all get out. Anybody want to guess the number of times I'll fuse the two sides of the mittens together? Me neither.) I promised to line them as well. Midwestern winter winds are cold. And of course, he's getting a tubular scarf, one side red, one side blue, trains across each end in the same pills-from-hell producing yarn.

Maybe I'll make him a whole new set this summer. The pillish ones can be backup.

Hat for the daughter. Yeah, I snuck that one in. First official cable job. Discovered something there. I can have a glass of wine or two and cable blithely along. I cannot cable and chat at a family gathering at the same time, though. Not. At. All.

The pretty, pretty self-patterning yarn. Again. Apparently its appearance with the Yarn Harlot wasn't enough. It wants more face time. (Quite the blog pig, if you ask me. I guess I shouldn't tell it that Thing Two and I have named it the Sockey Monkey Butt Socks, because the heel reminds of said part of a sock monkey's anatomy--hey, it sounded funnier than Sock Monkey face/mouth/nose socks. We tried all variations, just to be sure. Sock Monkey Butt Socks was the decided fav.)

And bwa ha ha! I have defeated SSS; see? There's the second and all it's fighting now is the deadline knitting. (The since finished birthday shawl and bookmark; the definitely NOT finished baby-to-be-birthdate gift and gift for baby-to-be's big sis, whom I suspect will be a bit put off at the interloper moving in on her grandparent adoration territory. She's getting a bunny with a trousseau that is beginning to make me jealous. Someone hit me on the head with stitch dictionary the next time I get grandiose ideas, okay?)

What makes me happy, though, is that I managed to match up the patterning; I was only one stitch off (and was able to hide that one white stitch on the cuff with the dark tail of the yarn). This means that I don't have to count rows; when the pattern gets past the next block of pinkish tan, I switch to my heel work.

My little Frankensocks, made from yarn which is not really sockish in nature. Erm. Yes. Well. The two-at-once Frankensocks are still on the agenda, but not on the needles. I decided to practice with cheapo yarn in different colors. This, I felt, would make me more confident when having to switch back and forth with yarn that looked the same. And so they've been pushed even farther down the line, what with deadline knitting and de-feeting SSS (ha ha ha).

But I've got a long bus trip coming up and miles to go before I sleep (probably rather literally) and...

well....

Frankensocks may have competition.

I feel disgruntled-Catholic guilt coming on big time.

The only question is, should I feel guilty about doing the Leyburn pattern or the Froot Loop pattern?