Houston, we are encountering multiple difficulties

I've been knitting, and knitting, and knitting on the 2nd square of my log cabin - and I am still not done! How does this work? The venerable Yarn Harlot wrote a great post about this phenomenon* ages ago - I'm sure everyone has seen it, but just in case the link is here.

Let's just do a rundown of the project to date. I cast on Saturday night, and knit most of that evening, and into the day on Sunday. I finished the first square Sunday afternoon, did a happy dance, took some pictures, blogged it, then immediately cast on for the second square. Thinking - whoo hoo, I'm so cool, look at me - wait till everyone sees what these are going to look like when there are more: the circles, the diamonds, oh happy day!
I knit on square #2 for oh, I don't know, let's say about 5 hours on Sunday afternoon/night. Woke up, and knit a few rows while I was waiting for the shower to warm up, and the caffeine to kick in. Got home about 6 last night and promptly started knitting... The BBE worked last night, so no distraction there. I sent the Boo out for burritoes, cuz I didn't want to deal with making dinner. Didn't bother with any house work, or laundry - just the knitting, just wanting to see what patterns emerge when I put a couple of squares together.

So you can just picture me happily ensconced on my bed, totally surrounded by tribbles (they've exploded and are taking over the house - I'm not kidding!). I watched two completely disparate movies last night (and knit, and knit, and knit). First I knit through The Devils Rejects - which was just Very Wrong. I liked it, but it is definitely not for the squeamish, faint of heart, or more sensitive peeps out there - think Natural Born Killers with less likeable characters. Then I watched Memoirs of a Geisha which was just beautiful! I'd read the book and was very pleased that the movie was true to the book, though there were some major chunks of the book that were just not represented, but that is understandable because otherwise you'd end up with a 5 hour movie.

Yep, so when I first sat down (tribbles purring, at hand, and just waiting to be selected), I was thinking happily to myself, whoo hoo - I should be able to get a square done tonight, and probably get a good chunk done of another one out of the way. Boy was I wrong. I finally gave up at 1am. Square #2 still needs one more color to complete it. My left index finger is sore, I really didn't take many breaks - nothing else to take up my time, and I'm not even done with the second square.

OK, so it seems that it's taking me somewhere around 13-14 hours of really concentrated knitting time to complete one square. The blanket is being knit on 3.75mm needles (?!?!!?). I think I'm going to need at least 36 squares. And I've decided that I'm going to increase the size of the squares, making the completion time per square even higher. Yep - I know - madness does indeed run rampant.

Oh, and remember that I was saying that this was going to be mostly stash yarn? Mostly Patons Cotton DK, which really wasn't very expensive to begin with. Well, I have a confession to make. I've busted into the Rowan stash (Glace and handknit cotton). But the colours - oh, the colours - they are gorgeous! To date I think I've got something like 27 different yarns incorporated, and I'm not even done with the second square yet! And you know what? I'm almost afraid to type this, but I've got an order sitting in my Elann shopping cart for, yep you guessed it, more yarn for this blanket. Sigh. But there are also some Bryspun circs which I've been wanting to try for ages in the cart, and more colours - oh the colours. Please someone stop me before I place the order! Shouldn't I just wait and see how much of the stuff that I have is using up? If I don't then the colors won't be distributed in such a nice random way.... Please, please - stop me - must not hit the check out button.

But the good news is - I am very pleased with the project so far! I'll probably never finish it - but that's OK. It's so nice to be working with multiple colours again. I'm half thinking that maybe I should just give up, or maybe try doing it with bigger needles, and yarn doubled - but I really like the way it's coming out so far (except for the black hole issues of course.)

And because I don't have any pictures of progress (miniscule as it is), I'll introduce my skitzy not-so graceful little Ember:


*Everytime I hear the word phenomenon the muppets doodoo dee doodydoo pops into my head.