Haven't I been here before?

I feel as if I am knitting my way out of a black hole. Remember the "Twisty Wrap"? Remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth that ensued when it turned out I had knitted my way so far out of the black hole that the thing fell right off my body and landed in a green circle round my feet?

I'm in the same boat. I am not alone in this boat - Stephanie, aka the Yarn Harlot, and now it turns out, also Mrs Joe (so no longer a Harlot. I want my money back.) Stephanie has also found herself in this boat. She was knitting Birch at the time. Maybe it's something to do with the Kid Silk Haze.

I have knitted this pile of shawls:



or, put another way, this pile of shawls:



That's three down, three to go.

The fourth one is on the needles now and this is the "Black Hole Shawl". I knitted all day long yesterday, I have knitted for a good part of this morning and the BHS is no bigger. No bigger at all.

I still have his pile of KSH:



to make into yet another pile of shawls.

Wailing and gnashing of teeth can't be far away.

To try and cheer myself up I started a sock for 'im indoors:



Very cheerful yarn, no? It's that Regia mini-ringel I bought the other day, 2mm steel needles from the boutique - the sharp pointy ones that attacked me when I was knitting Amber's sock, so that's something to watch out for.

I'm sort of using this pattern, but with various modifications. I found that Lucia has a great deal of information on her site about sock knitting, in particular a very nice explanation of the paired "knit into the stitch below" increase to use on toe-up sock toes. An explanation which also includes pictures and which has inexplicably disappeared and is nowhere to be found. You might have more luck than me. Do let me know if you find it or if another effect of knitting in a black hole is hallucinations.

Anyway, it was there because I saw it. I used it to help me produce these lovely increases on said sock:



I think they look very neat.

Uploading those pictures has taken over an hour - I don't know if it's this new "improved" (Hah!) Beta-Blogger, my computer being like treacle, or the phase of the moon, but I'm very fed up with it. I still haven't managed to make the sidebar look like I want it to. I managed to put buttons linking to one or two of the on-line knitting magazines but can I replicate this feat with the buttons to link to the various blogs I read? No, of course not. I don't know how anyone else is getting on with it but "I'm (not) loving it!"