Secrets I've been keeping

Every so often I check in at Ravelry to see how I'm doing with projects and I can't believe how many I've pulled off this year (31 started and finished, so far.)  But what really amazes me is when I remember a lot of those were things I also designed, and that I also took time to spin yarn.  How the heck do I get all that stuff done?  And how much writing could I do if I wasn't doing it?

h'mmmm.

Anyway as November progresses we get closer to December, when - I am pretty sure - most of the stuff I designed in 2011 will be making its way out into the sunshine. 

Like the two patterns I've just left with my technical editor (one of them is going to knock your socks off; the other might put them on.) 

Or the things that other people wanted to publish (including the amazing supersecret item I kinda tortured you guys with last spring.)

What won't be coming out that soon is the SuperSecret ScarfyThing.  And I really want to tell you about that  even though I can't show it to you, because it's so SuperAwesome in its portability and I'm just too happy not to say Yay.

Remember all the trouble I had in the fall carting socks around on the subway?  Well, I don't have that problem anymore thanks to SS ST. 

It's knit with yarn that comes in 50g balls, and because it's worked flat I can use a fold-up friendly circular needle instead of long straights or extra pointy dpns. 

The stitch pattern is ridiculously easy to remember and execute - I got in some serious distance on it at a concert one afternoon, with no need to look at the needles - and every few rows there is a change that serves as a clear progress point before going back to the same old same old.

(except the same old same old gets prettier the more there is of it, to say nothing of the drape that unfolds as you go, so it kinds gets new instead.)

And the yaaaaarrrrn... okay, I'm being cruel now.  But it's soft, and even though the ScarfyThing gets long fast it's actually just fingering so you can fit a lot of yardage into that 50g ball.  I was able knit miles of it before adding a second ball and making it a little too bulky for my purse.

Which is where we get to the downside of the SS ST.  It's so awesome, you have to kind of hide working on it lest somebody ask you to make another.  And the upside: when that happens, you have a new SS ST to cart around for when the old one gets too big. Ahem.

But enough chat, I have a date with some old movies and the original SS ST; I wanna finish it today so I can sneak in some time on a certain bulky hat tonight.  Or, um, a Christmas knit.  Yeah, that's it.  Christmas.