Speed Stix

Ok, despite my love of Knit Lite needles and my need to buy as many as I can get coupons for, yesterday I had to run out sans kids to buy a pair of Speed Stix - size 50 needles. My friend Laura considers Knit Lites to be "monetarily irresponsible," but I have a real need for a way to knit without lighting up the room - kids that are 2 & 4 who insist on sleeping on my bedroom floor. I can only imagine what Laura would say about my size 50 needles. I thought size 35's would be big enough, but I found a pattern that would use up 8 skeins of leftover Homespun from my Waterfall Throw stash with the Speed Stix and only 34 stitches across! If your wrists can handle it, this ought to be a pretty simple and quick knit. Manipulating these huge needles does cause your wrists to hurt, so I've pretty much turned to haphazard english style knitting, which I normally reserve for 2 color fairisle work, because it's slightly easier. But how sore would I be using smaller needles to get this amount of fabric ? I bet much more so, along with having wasted countless hours instead of a couple. I was slightly disappointed when I read that the pattern actually called for 8 skeins instead of 4, but I knew it had been too good to be true. I know it took 10 hours to crochet a waterfall afghan out of 6 skeins - I should have timed myself to see if it was quicker with this knitting pattern.

Today is my Sunday, and it's raining out, so I'll probably stay home and get some knitting accomplished. I've been re-reading the good parts of "Knitting Under the Influence" which is an outstanding book if you have a chance to pick it up! While Jo is at preschool I'm hoping to get a few more rows of the speedy afghan knit, then I'm going to start knitting dishcloths for my stash reduction project. I don't like the way my Hallowig is coming out - I tried using Miami ribbon yarn, but it's not creating the right effect, so I'm going to steal the Pounder of lime green yarn I bought my daughter over the summer and make it out of that instead. That Red Heart Kids yarn is $3.79 a skein! I know I had that skein of pink around here, but I'm not sure if I trashed it (my kids have been tangling the house with yarn they find*) or if I just have to look around some more.

*maybe it's time to get rid of the kids?