Two Weeks Later...

The final tally: 9 scarves, 3 hats. Not bad for two weeks work. :)

Now We Have a Lawn Mower, Ho Ho Ho

The lawn mower repair folks delivered our shiny new lawn mower this morning. They also installed the mulch kit, no charge. So, while losing an entire lawn tractor = not so good, replacing it with a brand new one definitely counts as a save in a customer service department. Plus, it's been so darn dry around here that we haven't even needed to mow for something like three weeks, so not having a mower hasn't even been much of an inconvenience.

In Hypericon news, I'm washing my pile o' Potter scarves in preparation for tasselling this afternoon. I have two ear flaps left to knit on my fourth Jayne hat, and I'm fairly certain I have enough yarn for a fifth, which I feel confident that I can finish during the con. I used Elann's Highland Wool, and it's actually not a bad yarn, especially for a project that's supposed to look rustic. And, when I mentioned here that I was waiting for yarn, the yarn was, in fact, sitting on my front porch at that very moment, so I was able to get started a couple of days earlier than I'd hoped. Cheap yarn delivered fast. :)

Jinjifore's Fourth Law of Knitting

The pile of scarves is bigger, but the bucket of yarn appears no emptier. Is this some kind of new knitting physics?

I've run off eight scarves on the machine now, two for each house. I'm making a third Gryffindor scarf because I ended up with one old-style scarf and one new for each of the houses except Gryffindor, and I'd like to keep the symmetry. Besides, the first scarf I did has all the expected flaws of a prototype, and I'd like to have two non-crappy scarves for each house.

I've ordered yarn to make some Jayne hats, but I have no idea if it will arrive in a timely enough fashion. In any case, I've met my minimum Harry Potter production goal, so that's something. :)

Six days to Hypericon!

Harry Potter and the Knitting Machine

Allow me to present my life for the next two weeks:



Hypericon is weekend after next, and my plan is to turn the contents of the big green bucket into scarves and hats before then. I've run off five so far, and number six is on the machine. (Actually, I'm making this post because my daughter complained that the machine was too loud. :))

So far, I've made two Gryffindor scarves, one Hufflepuff, two Slytherins, and am mid-way through a Ravenclaw. Unfortunately, I used up all the Slytherin green I had, so if I want to make any more Slytherin stuff I'm going to have to re-scour JoAnn's and Michaels and other cheap yarn venues for dark green yarn. In retrospect, it might not have been my smartest move ever to make one of the nearly-all-green scarves from the third and fourth movies. But it is very pretty.



Well, it'll be pretty once it's seamed up. :)

My plan is to make at least two scarves for each house, and hopefully I'll be able to make some others based on the third movie design. It takes me about two hours to run off one scarf on my machine, and two to three more hours to do the seaming up. The seaming, though, can be done in spare moments, whereas getting blocks of time to use the machine are more of a challenge.

Greebo is a big help with this: