Yes! I'm still around. Husband hogging the computer all the time, but I'm so caught up in Core I hardly notice! Working on the last piece -- the right front. Should be done by Saturday. It would AWESOME if I could finish it all this weekend. I'm looking forward to having it to wear and starting something new.

Speaking of new, Spring Knitter's arrived this week. I found it a snore -- all the Spring yarn catalogs that are trickling in are much more entertaining to me.

And, speaking of Spring, here's A Sign. We have a pair of Canada Geese nest on our pond every year -- maybe the same ones each time, or may be first come first serve -- either way, they arrived this week also!

Boy, am I a doofus. A few days ago I wrote to Rowan asking what they had as a good substitute yarn for the discontinued Botany. I got a message back today with the link to the Rowan Home FAQs which of course has a long section on inter-Rowan yarn subbing. The message was signed by "Katie" and it was very pleasant -- there was nothing there at all to suggest Katie thought I was a complete doofus, although I'm sure she does.

If you are interested at all here is the link in question.

Rowan says 4-Ply Soft is a good sub for Botany, which is what I suspected. In addition, an on-line yarn store, The Wool Shack, has even set out a kit for the sweater I want with their own substitute color suggestions. Handy! I am going to order a Color Card to be sure. I think I also want one for Jaeger?s Matchmaker 4-Ply. It looks like it may be a good sub yarn also, and there are more colors available.

I watched the Most Entertaining movie last night: the Vampire Effect (aka the Twins Effect.) Chinese marshal arts and futuristic extraterrestrial vampires -- how fun is that? And the costumes were FAB: I especially loved the little Edwardian jackets in apple green and cherry red the two lead girls were wearing. Jackie Chan had a hand in the production of this movie, and he has a cameo role but he didn?t do his own dubbing. I find that very disturbing.

I can't believe I'm actually on-line! My husband has been completely monopolizing our internet connection the last few days, reading Sports News and the Cubs Boards, but he's watching Sports Center on TV right now so I snuck in. (Greg Maddux is a Cub again -- Woo Hoo! Should I mention my husband thought a three-year contract was too long? He should be the Cubs GM -- he’s ruthless.)

Since I was here last, I finished and shrunk the first sleeve of Core. It was right-O, so I commenced the second. Almost done, started the cap shaping about an hour ago. Also almost done with the first side of the Camel Bag, but, I confess, I HATE loop stitch. My loop stitch rows seem to last Five Hundred Years. I'm actually in the middle of a loop stitch row right now -- I put the piece away that way.

Still having trouble with Cotton Torque and I've tried a lot of different things to tamp it down: drawing from the outside of the ball, slinging the ball into a yarn bra, etc. Mostly, just keeping the balls small works best, but it makes for a lot of ends.

Busy week! Same knitting, though, only in Slow Motion because my arms have been hurting still. I tried to put the sleeve of Core on a circular needle but my gauge was markedly different. I figured it would be -- I didn't use that circ in the first place because I was getting best gauge on my plastic straights, but I figured I should try.

Road trip Thursday: no work because I am employed by the government in the Land of Lincoln. Hooray! My good pal Brandy wanted to go to Champaign to pick up some books she'd bought from an Ebay seller and invited me along. We picked up said books, feasted on fajitas at TGIFriday's and went to a Very Nice Yarn Store. It was Needleworks and I found it in the Knitter's Shopfinder. I wanted to buy everything in sight, but I stopped myself with 5 skeins of Cascade 220 in 5 different colors, and some Classic Elite Maya they still had on their shelf to put with the Maya I still have in my stash. The Cascade 220 is for the Bohemian Pouch in Interweave Knits and the Maya is for a felted bag I have had on my list to do for a while. (You know I just don’t have enough bags.)

I also bought a #3 bamboo circ for the Linen Drape Ribbed Cardigan I'm making after Core. That's right -- the Linen Drape arrived earlier this week and it is wonderful. Beautiful color. I had to swatch it right away. I knew in an instant I was going to need a wooden needle to work it, though: the stitches jumped right off my metal needle. And one negative: the plies FLY apart.

We also went to Barnes & Noble in Champaign and I bought Cast On, Piecework and a mag I hadn't seen before called Knitting. When I got into it, I saw it was only issue #3. It is produced in England and I liked it a lot. There was a nice variety of projects. I liked best the Fair Isle cardigan of Jamieson & Smith subtle blues and lilacs. I am definitely making a Fair Isle cardigan come fall, but I am still leaning toward the Cover Model of Rowan 28 as my first choice.

Check this out! Last night on Andromeda, the crew apprehended a weapons smuggler and her cargo was battle suits made of living matter. (They moved around all on their own.) Naturally, Captain Hunt wanted to know where this stuff came from. He found the source in a little, locked room in the top of a tall, isolated tower on a strange moor-like planet. She was sitting there in a long, flowing gown, with lots of long, flowing Pre-Raphaelite hair, spinning on a SPINNING WHEEL with threads coming OUT OF HER FINGERS. She was spinning HERSELF into the material that these bio-suits were made from. Go see for yourself. Cool, huh?

Washed and dried the back of Core this morning. I felt I had to do that before I went on with any of the other pieces, because I wanted to see what kind of shrinkage I would get from my substitute denim yarn compared to the Rowan Denim the pattern was written for. I had actually made a big swatch and shrunk it before I started, and I tried to use it to calculate what changes I might need to make to the pattern to account for the different row gauges I seemed to have, but it made me feel Tired All Over. I decided to put myself in the Hands of Fate and just work the pattern with Denim directions and see what happened.

Happy Day! I'm only about 1/4 inch off. I figured if I had a really overlong piece, I would rip back (half the sweater) and refinish it with the Rowan Cotton (unshrunk) directions, then Use What I Had Learned to do the remaining pieces. So happy it won't be necessary. And so pleased with my progress, although the back of Core isn't nearly as pretty as the front. I’m going to do the sleeves next -- get all that stockinette out of the way.

I’m also almost done with the first half of the Camel Bag. My stranded sections ARE actually a slightly tighter gauge than the stockinette sections, in addition to the loop rows being a little bigger. I still like the finished effect just fine, but I think if I were to make this bag again, or one similar, I would work the stranded sections with a size larger needle.

This morning I watched the E! True Hollywood Story: Rock Star Daughters. Diva Zappa showed off her knitting and crochet creations, including an openwork crochet poncho in a variety of different yarns and a hat that was a band around the head with a half dozen triangles poking out around the top, Jughead-style, with the ends dangling down. I liked the poncho.

Mission Falls 1824 doesn't stand up to repeated frogging as well as one might hope.

I'm about to begin my first row of Camel Bag loop stitch for the fifth time. Not because I can't loop stitch (believe me, I can loop stitch all the way to town and back now,) but due first to pattern problems and then to mine own goofer.

Pattern for Camel Bag specifies on the loop stitch row to k1, loop stitch, then repeat across. I began the first time doing same and ended with sparse looping. It seemed from the picture that I didn't have near enough loops, so I ripped and redid the row looping all across. Then I began the stranded colorwork immediately above and four rows later I realized that section was drawing inward. As I studied it, I decided my stranding wasn't too tight; the loop stitches were making that row poofy. I ripped and redid it back the first way, decided it was ugly and ripped again. Before I began for the fourth time, I thought about sticking a knit plain every five or six loops to tamp down the poofiness, but since I'd spent hours studying the pic I had observed the sample bag waved in and out at the edges according to loop rows and stockinette rows. It also occurred to me that for this project strict rectangularity was not necessarily desirable. The bumpiness rather added to its charm. So I looped the fourth time, began the colorwork, the first row didn't work out right by the chart and I discovered I had DROPPED A STITCH on the loop row after the SIXTH loop.

So, Time Five will commence shortly. Like I said, the bright side is I can now loop stitch rings around the house.

The Birthday Gift was finally Gifted last night so I can add the Folks Bags Korea bag to my sidebar. This was the sweet little bag made of Paton’s Grace, coral with melon drawstring and melon embroidery. I had to work hard on the embroidery but it was worth it: I loved the Finished Object and I am getting good at embroidering on knits. I’m glad -- I’m a fool for embroidery.

On the subject of the Folk Bags Sidebar, that is, of course, not ALL the Folk Bags -- just the ones I have materials for in hand. I will also note there are actually bags in the book I don’t plan to make. Not too many, I admit.

I started a new pair of socks tonight: Cabin Fever's Celtic Braid socks in Shelridge Farm Soft Touch Ultra, color Peacock, which is a nice, dark teal. Lovely yarn. I bought pattern and wool at Stitches Midwest 2001 in Minnesota, so it has been in my stash a little while. I had wound one hank into a ball on my ball winder when it (the winder) was brand new. When I pulled the yarn out I saw, with the eye of experience, that it had been wound Too Tight. I re-wound it into a much looser ball and I'm going to use it last. Hopefully, it will have relaxed back into shape by the time I'm ready for it. I'm planning to take my time with these socks, still concentrating on Core and the Camel Bag.

I just thought I needed to put a good springy wool project into circulation. Core is cotton (naturally) and the Camel Bag is wool, but at a very firm gauge. Between all that and the cold and my current work projects, my arms have been really bothering me. I dug out the exercise sheets from my physical therapy, but I'm not very good about doing them. They are BORING.

Goodies in the mail yesterday! Recent Elann order: 1400+ yards of yummy Peruvian treasure, celery green worsted weight pure alpaca yarn, and also four skeins (two colors) of sock yarn, all for my stash. Also Rowan book 28 which I won in an Ebay auction. I decided I wanted it to look at the Felted Tweed patterns it contained, but it is altogether a very good issue. Plenty of things I would be interested in making.