Slowing down for September

September bites my butt, every year. The Jewish holidays happen, I tend to get sick or injured (after the eye thing, I've messed up my back — re-irritating an old tailbone injury which has mysteriously caused pain in my shoulder and left arm. It's improving thanks to good therapy), and work always has some nonsense up its sleeve for me too. Maybe there's a little sadness at the ending of summer? So anyway, my posts have slowed as I, too, slow down and stumble a little. It's all right, though.



This is the nearly-completed (I've since finished and started on a sleeve) back of the lovely Khaki Cables. I cabled without a cable needle on this whole section, and learned something interesting and hard to fathom: my gauge changes when I cable without a cable needle. Just a little bit width-wise — but I was predicting that, and it's not enough to matter (it'll add up to maybe 1" wider around, which is perfectly fine). The weird thing is it's longer — early an inch longer than the front I already knit. I should be able to handle this in the blocking, so it's not worrying me at all, but it's very strange.

Why so strange?

Because it's longer in the seed stitch section as well.

So it can't be because I'm cabling w/o a cable needle, can it? Maybe I just loosened my gauge in general. Except the gauge width-wise is spot on in the seed stitch section.

Oh, I don't know. I don't know that I really care, either, since it's manageable. It's just piqued my curiosity. :-)

What's this?

Looks pretty weird, huh. It's the beginning of my attempt to teach myself Huichol beadwork. I textured this old Jelly Belly container with the sander on my Dremel, then coated it with beeswax, and now I'm having fun with seed beeds. Letcha know when it's done... I have no idea if it'll really work or not. But, ya know, I needed another hobby...