Where did my life go?

I feel like I'm floating in someone else's life lately.  Is there crafting being done?  not really.  Knitting?  a bit  DIY? not really.  Where did my life go?

I'm still not well and have been spending much of my days resting which totally sucks since that's not what I want to be doing.  I went from being the Energizer Bunny to being a Couch Potato.  It has been good for having time to spend at online gaming though, but how does that make my house look beautiful?  It doesn't and my hips are starting to show the effects too. 

You know how when you're sick and lose your appetite and you lose all that awesome weight?  (I'm talking the 5 - 10 lb kind of weight, not serious unhealthy weight)  Well, my appetite showed back up and I gained it all back and that's just depressing.  During the holidays, that weight loss was my only rainbow coming out of the black cloud following me.  Oh well.  I'm doing really well at gaming though.  :)

So if things have been sparse and sporadic with the blog, please bear with me.  I'm trying to get the docs to work with me and listen to what is actually going on and it's not happening so far and that's totally taking up all of my time that's not being spent on my family.  I keep thinking up all these neat projects that I want to do and share and just don't have the time and energy to spare for them yet. 

They'll be coming soon though.  There's a Batman/Joker party in the works and Mama's got to come up with some good stuff for it pronto!

Who's Coming to Town?

You know Christmas still has a pull on a kid when you hear from another room:

"You watch out; You better not cry
 Better not pout; I'm telling you why

Spiderman is coming to town..."

First Piece of Mystere

Mystere is now 40% complete.  That's fancy talk for the front (or the back since they're both the same) is done.

It's also been blocked within an inch of it's life.  I don't know if it was the yarn or what, but my confidence in this piece was less than great.  So, I decided to get out the schematics of the pattern and block this to make sure everything was like it should be.   I should have trusted myself more I guess.  The piece was dead on with the schematics.  Yay! 

This has been fairly fun to knit.  I love how subtle the cable is in the front and the texture that surrounds it.  There's garter stitch at the bottom edge, reverse stockinette at the sides and the cable panel in the middle.  I also like the waist shaping that is happening in the piece as well.  This has been great for moving watching due to it's simplicity.

The one thing that I'm not liking is the yarn.  The yarn (Nashua Hand Knits Creative Focus Worsted) is a lofty, single ply mix of alpaca and wool. The ball band says it's a 10 ply, but if that's a 10 ply yarn, then I'm a jack rabbit.  It's looks like it is softer than it really is and it's very fuzzy.  I don't mind that part, but what I do mind is the splittiness of the yarn.

It's very easy to only grab part of the loop your working with and not notice until the next row.  When this happens it's very noticeable.  I've just been grabbing the stray loops and pulling them up onto the needle with the loop above it and working them together and that seems to be doing fine, but it's still a bit messy looking.  However, I'm not ripping back every time I find one.  I'd never get this sweater finished if I did that!  It happens pretty much every two rows.  Yuck.  I won't be purchasing this yarn again.