I have been meaning to post for about five days now, but I have been stuck in a vortex of hellish problems in real life.

Well, nothing so serious...just annoyances. The biggest problem has to do with our car. It is only a year and half old and thus it's still under warranty. From day one when the temp drops to around 20 degrees or colder at night, it makes a strange grinding sound upon start-up the next morning, just as the engine turns over. I asked my local mechanic about it and although he didn't hear the noise first-hand, he guessed that the starter might not be disengaging quickly enough. Sounds like something that would probably be covered under warranty, right?

Well, have you ever tried to get work done under warranty when you live an hour and a half from the nearest dealership? And when the problem is one that has to be checked first thing in the morning, meaning that the car needs to stay there overnight? Let me tell you, not fun.

A couple weeks ago I finally finagled the dealership into reserving a rental car so that I could drop off the vehicle one night and return the next day and pick up my (presumably) fixed car. This was all with the understanding that if the problem was not one that would be covered under warranty, I would have to pay for the rental vehicle (which would only be $30, so no biggie). I made the appointment to drop off the car this past Friday night.

Well, Friday night was the first night in about three weeks that the temp did not drop below 30 degrees! Hence they did not hear the noise on Saturday morning. So I spent 6 hours driving back and forth, and I may be on the hook for the cost of the rental car, and my car still isn't fixed. They said I should bring the car back Monday night since it will be much colder(no word on whether I could get another rental that night or whether they would pay for both rental days). But that means another 6 hours of driving. And G has to report for jury duty on Monday, to make things extra-convenient.

Yup, I'm loving life right now. I think no matter how this gets resolved, I need to send a nasty-gram to corporate headquarters. Am I the only one that finds stress relief in writing complaint letters to companies (only when warranted, of course)?

Plus, I'm dealing with trying to set up a public hearing on a project for my work. It is a huge, stressful pain in the butt!

Oh well, enough griping. I did manage to finish Sheldon the turtle, and he's so cute that he might actually cheer me up!And, it's a great kickoff for Project Spectrum, what with his happy blue shell!
Project Notes: Sheldon from Knitty. Knit in Plymouth Dreambaby DK, colors 117 and 122.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, I love this yarn. It's so soft and cuddly! It did have a tendency to split during the fiddly DPN parts of the pattern, but on normal needles it was awesome. And speaking of which, if you don't like fiddly patterns, this is one to avoid! Not to say it wasn't fun, just not for everyone. I imagine most stuffed animal patterns are like that though, given all the shaping and little details and such. The pattern was well written, although I did make some minor alterations due to the yarn I chose not being a perfect gauge match. All in all, no complaints from me!

Let's reveal the mystery project:Jana guessed the closest, it is indeed a stuffed animal...Sheldon the turtle. I knew I had to make this because my friend is decorating the baby's room with a turtle theme (her favorite animal). He's looking a bit sad here as he still doesn't have legs or a shell, but those are coming along quickly. I am using Plymouth Dreambaby DK yarn and it's awesome. It's extremely soft, machine wash/dry, and reasonably priced. I'm not sure how well it would hold up to repeated washing, but if that isn't a problem it would be a great yarn for baby garments. However, it wasn't a very close match in gauge to the recommended yarn for this pattern, so alterated it by making the body a bit wider and longer.

I am also getting ready for the kick-off of Project Spectrum. For February and March, the colors we are focusing on are blue, gray, and white. I just recently bought this yarn that I'm really excited about:
This is locally produced yarn, from a farm only about 20 minutes from us. I had seen their sheep grazing all summer and (of course) I wondered if they sold the wool. Lo and behold, they do! They also sell eggs from their chickens so we bought some of those too. The yarn comes only in the natural colors but there were a bunch of different pretty shades of gray, white and black. I am going to attempt to use it to make this sweater, from the VK fall/winter 2004-2005 issue:The only problem is that the homespun yarn has a somewhat different gauge that what's called for. I spent what seemed like a couple hours on Saturday trying to calculate the numbers to customize the pattern. In the course of things, I found what may to be a minor error in the pattern...for the increases prior to beginning chart #2, the instructions for two of the sizes (34.5 and 43) seems to have you increase to a number of stitches that is different than what is required for working Chart #2 per the instructions. Nothing that would be difficult to work around, but if you are thinking about this pattern see if you find a problem too (maybe I'm missing something?).

Here's a gauge swatch for a portion of the fair-isle chart:
I'm very happy with the colors and pattern, I think they go very well together. I am curious to see if my calculations were right and I can get it to come out to the size I want, though! Will it be success or disaster?? ;)

Baby blanket, finished and blocked! First FO of 2007! And, I finally got these photos to depict the yarn color accurately.
I added a crocheted mini-picot edge of my own devising to the ends, and the selvedges are "double-slipped garter" from the Knitter's Handbook. The blocked blanket is about 40 inches square in size.
Pattern: "Print Blanket" from the 2004 Filatura Di Crosa Baby booklet. Knit using the recommended yarn, Filatura Di Crosa Zarella (color #409) on 5 mm needles.

This was a quick 'n' dirty knit, only took a couple of weeks! To me, the pattern as written comes out different than what is pictured in the booklet, but I'm OK with how it turned out.

The yarn was so-so. It's quite soft now after a hand-wash, but I don't find anything particularly outstanding about the yarn. Since I rarely use acrylic blends I don't have a lot to compare it to though. The colors it comes in are quite pretty, and it's a decent yarn, but I'm not sure it's worth the retail price (at least I got it on a WEBS discounted order). Also, I used eight balls of yarn for this project and there was like five or six knots to deal with...grrr! It's a machine-wash yarn but I notice that you are supposed to flat dry. I feel a bit bad about that as it's kind of a pain for a baby item.

Now, I'm making a little something extra to give with the blanket. Anyone have any guesses as to what this mystery project is?