Work, work, work all the time

Apart from taking a brief break from work to watch the dark storm clouds pass to the east, it's been nothing but work, work, work all the time.

Oh, and for you Harry Potter knitties, I discovered an excellent bag on Ravelry today: the HP House Fair Isle Pouch bag. There are charts for every house, which delights me to no end. (Don't believe me? Read the dorky comment I left dear Rosemary.)

I finished the Skull Lariat, sans skulls. (And sans pictures right now, too, but when is that a surprise?) It's mostly lime green, with fun splashes of aqua and a little moon charm at one end. (Again, when is that a surprise?)

I also worked out the changes I'm making to the French Market bag to enable ease of entrelac. My plans are to reduce the total number of base stitches from 200 to 192, which is evenly divisible by eight and six. Eight and six are to be my magic numbers for the bag.

There will be 24 blocks around. When I get to the part where I bind off some stitches and leave some for the handles, I intend to bind off three squares (well, I suppose they'll be top triangles at that point), continue three for a handle, and repeat this around for each quadrant. Then for every handle, I'll do a tier of two blocks, then a top triangle block, then a few rows of garter stitch for handle stability. (I made a little sketch on Sunday; I'll try to photograph that tomorrow and prove that all this blather makes sense.) I'm very excited — I think the math works!

I'm getting a visit from BAS and some of the menagerie at the end of this week. We're going to see Ellis Thursday night at the Ritual Cafe and hit the Iowa State Fair Friday. I'm pretty excited for that, barring any sunscreen amnesia.

PS: Look what I bought! Beautiful superwash merino sock yarn. Who could pass up a colorway called Moonlight Sonata?