Confessions of a Spreadsheet Junkie

Okay, confession time...I admit that I am a total and complete spreadsheet junkie. I think if everything in life were tidy enough to fit in an Excel spreadsheet, I would be in total bliss. I have been working away on my great big shawl and didn't get very far before I started wondering how much I had done and how much I had to go. Enter my spreadsheet addiction. Since the shawl is designed as a big square made up of four identical triangle, the number of stitches total and stitches knit so far can be estimated. So I wound up with a loverly little spreadsheet that estimates how many stitches I have knit so far (almost 39,000) and what fraction of the total I have knit (nearly 29% of a total of about 134,000 stitches). I update the spreadsheet daily as I knit and it delights me way more that it should.

Anyway, if any of you are math-phobic and the thought of lace-knitting spreadsheets makes you woozy, here are some pictures:

This is the shawl, which turns out to be particularly well-suited for sitting in the grass while the kids play in the sand at the park, sitting on a chair on the patio while the kids run around the back yard, and so forth, so I have been getting a lot done on it! I have finished the first chart and am on the third repeat (of seven) of the second chart. Needless to say, the rows keep taking longer as the thing gets better. Fortunately, I have stitch markers at the ends of each quarter, as well as setting off each of the repeated sections of chart two (one repeat on the first time through, two repeats on the second time, etc.), so I have very frequent milestones!

I have finished the knitting on my entrelac purse, but will now need to felt it a bit, block it, line it, and put a handle on. This is the backside (flap up):

and the front (flap down):

I have all the ends woven in, but I am waiting to trim the ends off until it has gone through one wash cycle. I am happy with how it turned out, but in retrospect, I kind of wish I had swapped the colors of the first two rows of full squares. That would have made the edge triangle navy blue, the first row of block magenta, the second row of blocks light blue, and the third row pink. I love the way the colors look like woven strips on the rest and doing the first edge the other way would have had the navy be a continuation of the light blue stripes and the magenta be a continuation of the pink stripes. It clearly doesn't bother me enough to undo or redo, but...

My current TV knitting is the M-D baby kimono:

We finished all the Battlestar Galactica episodes that are out on DVD and season 3 won't be out until August or September, so we are currently waiting to do a nostalgia fest and watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, starting with season one and going in order. Kitty Daddy and I have both seen every episode multiple times, but it will be kind of fun, unwind-in-the-evening entertainment when we are between other things. Yeah, yeah, I know, "must get a life" and so on, but what else is new???

The only other thing that is making slow progress is the current sock. I was too lazy to dig it out of my purse for a picture, but I have turned the heel, shaped the gusset and am working on the foot now.

Once I get the baby kimono done, I am going to try and go back and pick up and finish the things that have kind of gone into a permanent holding pattern to get my progress bars jungle cleared up! Most of them qualify nicely for TV knitting and would finish up very quickly if I would (in the famous words of Nike) just do it!