The carrot and the stick

Well, we all know what the stick is here (as opposed to the schtick, which I haven't quite settled on yet). Miles and miles of stockinette. (Thanks, btw, to Carrie for pointing out that listening to World Without End whilst knitting miles and miles of stockinette is a bit too coincidental; I think I'm cursing myself.) I didn't even take pictures of it all on one needle (although it is, it is!), because it looks like nothing so much as a giant heap of stockinette. Probably because it is a giant heap of stockinette. Each row is now taking about 15 minutes, and my shoulder is hurting, but they're a bit less boring since, four times each row, I get to do a bit of work on the lace panels, and on each RS row, I get to decrease four stitches (yes, Helen, I am a bit of devil, aren't I?; I'm just living the high life here, I tell you!). In another several inches, I will get to not only do the raglan decreases, but also (hold on to your hats here) the neck decreases! Excitement! Drama! High jinks!

Or not.

So, given that I have this giant stick, it seems that I need more of a carrot than just my desire to have this done so I can wear it. I thought I'd show you some recent acquisitions. These have not come all at once (lest you think I've gone completely crazy with the credit card and tattle on me to Rick), but I haven't had a chance to show them to you. I have taken them out and keep them nearby for fondling and drooling purposes, and because as soon as I'm done with this sweater, I get to play with some of them!

First, I got several sets of clasps from Schoolhouse Press. The top one is for The Stockinette Slog, the middle one is for the sweater I finished recently for Younger Daughter, and the bottom one is for the Cardigan for Arwen I knitted for Older Daughter last year at about this time. (All of these photos are crappy and blurry; by the time the girls and I got home and took Kia out for a little stroll, the light wasn't so good, but we can work with it, right?)
Aren't they lovely? And honestly, well worth the price, especially since I'll take them off of the girls' sweaters as they grow out of them and repurpose them for other knitwear.

Also, contrary to my usual tremendously bad luck with drawings and raffles of all sorts, I won Rachael's Heifer donation raffle! Me! And what I won was a gift certificate to Briar Rose! It just doesn't get better than that (what a generous thing to give to support the raffle, too). And I won it because the girls and I went shopping with their charity money for the year and bought a brace of rabbits and a flock of geese for some people who really need them more than we needed our charity money (1/3 of the girls' weekly allowance goes into a charity jar, and at the end of the year, they get to choose the recipient of their donation, and Rick and I match it; the last couple of years it's been Heifer. I will someday wax poetic about all of the reasons why I like this organization, but today you are spared). It really seems unfair to win something for doing something that a) is important anyway, and b) we would have done in any case, and I appreciate Rachael setting the whole thing up. So, what did I get, you ask (assuming you haven't gone to sleep by now; you there, in the back, wake up!)? Why, this, I answer!
It's hard to tell, but this yarn is all lovely deep rose pinks with darker purples. It's gorgeous, and while I'm not sure yet what I will make of it, for the moment I'm happy just looking at it. I also got this:
I'm considering using it for the lotus bag, but I'm not sure yet. Thanks Rachael and Briar Rose!

There's some lovely sock yarn all in blues and greys whose picture was so bad I'm not going to share it right now, and another skein that makes me think of spring:
People, I do not understand my love for this yarn. I would never wear pink and green together in real clothes (as opposed to socks), but I see this yarn and it makes me happy. I have been drooling over it at the Loopy Ewe for months and months and months, and when I ordered the yarn for my Loopy Ewe Swap buddy, it somehow slipped into my basket and I didn't have the heart to tell it to go home. Doesn't it just scream spring? In a tulipy kind of way?

Finally, there's this:
This has a purpose. It is going to be ZigZag Mitts, yes indeedy; just as soon as I'm done with The Stockinette Slog, and my Loopy Ewe swap knitting, this lovely skein is going to become mitts for me. Nice, small, portable knitting, with an end in sight, to keep my hands warm on chilly nights. Yup, there's my carrot.