It’s almost time to freak out

With Yarn School less than 3 weeks away, I’m just on the cusp of my usual freakout. Here’s what’s heightening my angst:

1. I broke my camera when I was in Austin. I dropped it. Sigh. This was 2 days after Ron scolded me for never using my case (jinxing me, obviously). It still works to a point, but I think the anti-shake thing is broken, and the picture you compose (viewfinder or LCD) is about 30% off from what you actually get. So the best you can do is kind of guess, shoot, check what you get, guess again, and repeat. And good luck focusing with any accuracy. The repair will be at least $350. Yay. A new body (which could use the same lenses and battery but not the 36Gb in memory I currently have) would be $650 (plus an extra $150 for the accident insurance, which I would obviously purchase this time around–wasn’t an option last time; plus $30-50 for memory; plus another $50 for a case I’ll actually use). For a while I deluded myself that I would buy a new body for me and repair the broken one and give it to Ron. And then I remembered that I don’t have any money.

2. I don’t have any money. Really hating the being broke. The harsh winter heating bills decimated our cushion and we’re back to forced austerity. Bleh.

3. The chaos! After a few giddy flirtations with order, my place has descended into chaos once again. My office looks like a Hoarders “before” shot, the gym is a disgrace, and the back hall is still overflowing with KITH merch. (Knitting in the Heartland was really fun, btw! I’d recommend it next year if you’re in the KC area.) Now, I have made some marvelous improvements (my kitchen’s in fair shape, and the back walls and floors of both my closets are clearly visible; I was beginning to doubt their existence), but it’s a constant, crushing battle and the havoc just seems to want to swallow me whole.

4. With just 2 weeks to go to shearing, the sheep are going out of their way to screw up their lovely, pristine covered fleeces. In the last couple weeks, three of them have managed to wiggle or shred their way out of their coats. Yesterday, Fudgy demolished her coat. She seemed to have burst out of it, Hulk-fashion, and was just trailing the shredded remains around the barnyard. Luckily, I had just ordered some large Sheep Suits and had one left for her to wear, but I’m going to sacrifice about a pound of pristine fleece because the Sheep Suits have less coverage.

(After Yarn School, I’ll write a detailed review of the two sheep coats I use. I love that the style above covers and preserves so much of the coat, but they just do not last. The Rocky Mountain Sheep Suits cover a lot less–they’re the Miami cut, and the others are the Amish cut–but they’re tremendously rugged. I haven’t had to patch a one, while the canvas ones are beat to hell and held together by patches and sheer will. I’m going to try an experiment this spring, treating the canvas ones with a UV stabilizer to see if that helps.)

Okay, that’s all the complaining I feel comfortable with for now. Now the good stuff!

Last week, I finally monkey-groomed last spring’s wool clip and sent it off for processing, and with any luck, at least some of it will be back for Yarn School. I didn’t make the Zeilinger sale deadline, so I decided to blow off the combed top this year, but I got a separate roving made with each animal’s fleece, plus some Fudgy yarn, plus a mix-em-ups roving with all the stuff with a little too much VM, and I’ll use that for roving rugs. I still have Roger’s 2009 clip and Autumn’s and Andy’s 2009 alpaca clips to contend with, but at least my own little beasties on soon to be yarn.

I even made pages for all of the animals so I can compare fleece year-by-year, with room for greasy and washed samples and notes. So far I have 2 Fudgy samples, plus one each for Agnes, Uncle Honeybunch, and Mister Shivers, and I can’t wait to include the lambies. It will be like a fleecy family album. And man, am I a dork.

After sending off my potholders, I tried writing up the pattern, but found the requirements were totally different in MerLin (what I happened to have on hand) than in Sonata, so I decided to wait until after Yarn School to get some more Sonata to write up a proper, reproducable pattern.

And after feeling very out of sorts with nothing on the needles (yay!), I finally jumped into my Drops 110-2 cardigan! It’s a sideways garter number done with short rows. I’m using my remaining 3 balls of Noro Silk Garden Lite leftover from this sweater, plus some natural dark brown Lion Fisherman’s Wool. If the Noro makes it through the sleeve (which is about to commence), then I’ll know I’ll have enough to finish. Otherwise I’ll need to do something tricky in the back to make it work.

My gauge is different than the required  yarn, so I multiplied all the stitches by .75 & that seems to be about right. Rows are measured, not counted, so I don’t need any math there, which simplifies the conversion.

Hm. Less good stuff to report that I thought. I’d better get my ass in gear.