Memorial Day Weekend Knitting

Like many people in the US, we left home this weekend. But we're ba-a-ack!
The only knitting I took was the (formerly) gray Pi, last seen in the bottom picture.

As I think I said before, I am knitting this to use up some Shetland wool that I got in a box of yarn I won on eBay. The linen in the box was lovely, and well worth the price I paid, but unfortunately the cones of wool were damaged at the end, so they pull off in pieces of varying length. That shouldn't matter -- this is going to be a felted pi bag.

I did the increases from 9 - 18 - 36 - 72 - 144, and then stopped. At that point, the bottom of the bag is a flat circle, and then I continued knitting the 144 stitches to make a soup-can shape. I have lots of the gray left, all in short pieces. I just keep adding in the short pieces and overlapping the ends as I knit.

Scarily, I have not done any test swatches and do not know if these yarns will shrink at the same rate! I am very much a seat-of-the-pants knitter sometimes.

Since this was in-the-car knitting, I did knit it off multiple dpns and onto a circular needle. This is a Susan Bates Silverado, US size 6. I actually don't mind knitting with this one too much.


I just realized I did not post my last photo of the crochet thread Pi doily, so here it is. The "sun in splendor" effect at the ends is completely serendipitous, but I am liking it so much that I'm thinking about casting off at this point.

One more photo, this time of the cool thing I bought at American Science and Surplus while we were away:
What is this? This is a push drill and the very tiny drill bits that came with it, metric sizes 61 to 80! The bits come in their very own tiny drill index box, which is only about an inch and a half wide.

Crivens! I can't express how much I like this tiny little tool. I have already been drilling teeny little holes in a plastic card with the size 80 bit. How tiny is that? A size 80 hole is about the size of a period "." or 28 gauge wire. If my hand is steady, I can just put a hair through it. [maniacal laughter] Who needs a $15 needle gauge that only goes to 4-0? A metric size 76 drill bit -- which I now have -- drills a 0.508 mm hole. A size 8-0 knitting needle is 0.5 mm in diameter. If you can pick out an 0.008 mm difference, you are welcome to quibble.