The Niebling, it groweth

I am having way too much fun knitting my Niebling. It doesn't have a fancy name, like Lyra, or Federdolde. No, its name is Page 19. Someone ran out of inspiration, I guess. Or he was too busy designing to think of cute names.

Someone has alerted me that Franklin posted about the Five Stages of Niebling. Now, when I read about it, I thought - Ben Franklin commented on Niebling? I thought Niebling was more contemporary than that. Hmm.

Oh, THAT Franklin. And those five stages have nothing to do with me. True to form, I don't follow the form. My five stages read something more like Dreaming (about making one), Drooling (over my choices, when I get into the serious planning stage), Delight (in casting on, and once I get past the second row), Tedium (somewhere around 50 hours into the project), and then it's back to Delight (when I get close to finishing, finishing, and smiling upon it when it's blocked)

I'm still waiting for my FleegleNeedles. Rumor has it that our heavy rains (thanks, Earl) disrupted mail traffic a bit. So far, I'm doing fine with 360 stitches on dpns. Small yarn, six needles to work with, light needles, and tight tension have conspired together to produce no dropped stitches. But boy, will it be nice to have a circular!

A KnitPicks order went in today. I got only one skein of yarn (pats self on back), but two books. Filia will find one of them helpful for her knitting class next year. Yup, that's it. (That wasn't the whole order - Filia got yarn for an argyle sock, non-argyle mitten, and her swatches. And a friend got some goodies as well.)

If I'm going to be knitting with my new skein this year, I need to get back to Page 19.

Carowho?

It's been a while, one might say, since I wrote a blog entry. What happened?

• I joined SparkPeople, and blogged there a bit more regularly than I did here.
• I had the Hectic Summer to end all Hectic Summers, and didn't find myself sitting at the computer wondering what I could do, ever.
• There wasn't that much knitting one going on.
• There wasn't much schooling two going on either.

But now, my activity on SparkPeople has shifted into maintenance mode, my hectic summer has ended (hear that, summer? You are NOT allowed to be hectic any more. No carryover into fall, either. Period.), I am knitting, and I am schooling.

Life is pleasant. It's staying pleasant by regular and repeated pronouncement of the word 'no.' This is necessary because

• The schooled two have activities on Monday night, in towns 10 miles apart. This requires two parents (since the towns are 12 and 20 miles from home, respectively)
• I'm in a book discussion group on Tuesday night.
• The schooled two and dh have activities on Wednesday night.
• Thursday is knit night.
• Our next free Saturday is the 23rd of October.

It's also pleasant because I have begun to knit a Niebling. There aren't any photos of it on the internet that I can find, but if you're on Ravelry you can look at my projects and see the one item someone else has made and photographed. I'm using size 30 crochet cotton (don't panic - it's on 2.25 mm needles) and estimate it will be just a yard in diameter, as opposed to the 5 ft suggested by the model which used size 10 crochet cotton (and 3.0 mm needles)

In order to knit this Niebling, I needed (yes, really and truly needed) a circular needle, and one with an excellent join. So I have ordered myself some FleegleNeedles - and decided I may as well get a short one and a long one. (22" and 32") If I love them as much as I think I will, it's highly likely that size 1 will become my size of choice for lacework.

Lunch break over ... back to school! Reading for the afternoon includes Book I of The Histories by Herodotus, 5 pages of Johnson's History of the American People, and 2 pages of Every Thought Captive. Plus Job 31-42.