New Pattern: Bubblegum Spice

Happy Monday!

Bubblegum Spice is the perfect extra layer by a campfire on a cool summer night or tucked up against your neck under your winter coat.

Ideal for showing off your favorite hand-dyed yarns, Bubblegum Spice is worked from the center top down with edge and center increases on every RS row. The chevron lace body transitions to a diamond border.

As always, the pattern includes both charts and written instructions.

Bubblegum Spice is available on Ravelry now, and is $1 off this week!

Playing Catch-Up

Oh man, it's been FOREVER since I've visited with you all! The past week and a half has been absolutely crazy, but I'm finally starting to get back into my regular routine. Last week was tech week for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and we just finished production on Monday night.

The Sunday of tech week I woke up and immediately knew that I had strep (again!). I stayed in bed most of the day and went into the clinic that afternoon for a strep test. The Rapid Group A culture came back negative, but I tend to get Group B strep a lot, and I know what it feels like in my throat, so I called in sick to work for Monday and started waiting for the 48-hour culture results. We didn't get the confirmation until Wednesday morning, so I didn't go to work at all last week, and I missed the first three nights of tech week. Thursday night was a little bit crazy, as I hadn't been at rehearsal for four days and it was the night before opening, but everything went great.

Joseph was amazing. It's such a fun show, and we had great audiences for every performance. As much as I enjoyed the show (and community theater in general!), I'm ready to return to my regular, quiet schedule.

Since I was sick for most of last week, I didn't get as much knitting done as I'd have liked to, but I did manage to finally finish a pair of socks for my mum at the bar after performances! These have been on the needles for two years, and it's about time I finally finished them. I'm definitely not knitting socks like I used to, but I really did enjoy working on these, and I'm glad I was finally able to give them to my mum.

Ravelry Page: Arne & Carlos Socks for Mum

Pattern: my own sock recipe

Yarn: Schachenmayr Regia Design Line by Arne & Carlos 4-fädig "3761 Iris"

Numbers on a Friday

1. Play rehearsals continue apace.

2. I am so very tired. I am immensely looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow. And I'm exceedingly grateful that I only have to work at the library two days next week.

3. My apartment is a mess. I haven't done dishes since last weekend.

4. Related, there was a GIANT house centipede in the kitchen sink this morning and I about died.

5. I really, really hope that I actually managed to drown it and it's not amassing an army in the pipes to come up through the drain and kill me later.

Knit One, Rehearse Two

I'm still trucking along on this shawl sample, and I'm now about halfway through the final repeat of the first chart. The rows are getting just long enough that I'm only managing to knit three at a time during my lunch breaks, but I'm still having so much fun knitting this that I don't really mind the pace.

Play rehearsals have reached a peak, and we're officially in the busiest two weeks of the year for me. I have just one evening off between now and the end of the run, and rehearsals are going later and later. The show is coming together great, but it is definitely exhausting! Fortunately, I wised up a few years back and now I'm always sure to take the week of play production off from the library, so I only have one more week at this breakneck pace before I can slow down during the days.

OAL-ing

I've been making pretty good progress on my Hetty. I'm almost ready to start the bottom ribbing on the body, and with three and a half weeks left in the OAL, I'm feeling pretty good about my chances of finishing. I still haven't started my sewn garment, and that's probably the only thing that's making me nervous.

The bobbin casing in my sewing machine broke a couple weeks before I moved, so I ordered a new one along with some things I needed for my new apartment, and now I have no clue where it ended up. I feel like I've looked everywhere, but I haven't done a real, methodical search yet. Hopefully I'll find it this weekend. Either way, my goal is to get my fabric ironed, my pattern traced, and my pieces cut out by the end of the weekend.

I'm planning a pretty quiet, restorative weekend. We're heading into the final two weeks of play rehearsals, so after tomorrow I'll have just one day without rehearsal or performances until the 24th. I am going to be taking several days off work during performances, which always helps me stay sane, but this is still the busiest part of my year!

Thinking Pink

The grey cocoon sample that I've been working on for the past couple months got finished, and it's a disaster. There's some discrepancy between the swatch and the finished project, and the whole thing's a mess, and it's sitting in time out right now. So I decided to pull out my trusty pink shawl.

This has been hibernating for a while, but it is still an absolute delight to knit, and I think I'm just ten rows away from the border. This yarn is so soft, and the color is fantastic, and after a couple months of All Linen All the Time, it just feels GOOD to be working with wool again.

Over the weekend I managed to catch some kind of crud that's apparently been going around. I've been eating lots of spicy food to try and flush it out, but it's proving to be kind of stubborn. I have long play rehearsals tonight and tomorrow, but then I have the rest of the week off, so as long as I can make it through the next two days in one piece I'll be able to rest up the rest of the week.

Linking up with Crafting On