Finished Loop!

Hmm, let's see. What to wear today? White shirt, check. De rigeur chinos, check. But what to ward off that chill of the Arctic office?

Why, it's a Paris Loop! All finished up and draped around my shoulders, ready to keep me warm all day as the thermostat goes out of control and it gets colder and colder. (Do building engineers even blink when someone says they're uncomfortable? Sigh.) Luckily, I'm not averse to layers, and l'il Loopy here is already gunning for the top of the list.

Paris Loop, by Stefanie Japel (published in MagKnits)
Yarn: Gedifra Cicco, Color 5868 Lichen, 3 balls*
Gauge: Irrelevant
Needles: US17 Addi Turbo, US13 and US9 Denise

I modified the pattern slightly. Because I have a short torso, I opted to shorten the length slightly. Instead of 24" total, mine is 22", as I chopped an inch each off the 2 middle sections. (5" knit, then 5" purl for me.) The length is perfect now -- it hits right at my elbows and doesn't get in the way. I also accidentally decreased about 8 stitches somewhere along the way. For all my forensic fiberology, I could never locate the precise scene of the crime. It doesn't seem to matter.

I will say this: As much as I adore the finished product, this was not nearly as much fun to knit as I thought it would be. I learned that I don't like thick and thin yarns to knit with, and I had a harder time weaving in the ends than I expected. (Luckily, I think you could weave a small child into the Loop and no one would notice. It's very forgiving that way.) Cicco has a lot of surface area friction and doesn't slide over itself the way I'm used to. That made it hard to keep stitches distinct and virtually impossible to keep any semblance of an even tension. (But, it's a loop! We don't need no stinkin' tension.) I will also add that the yarn is SO lightweight that it doesn't have the drape of some of the other ponchos I've seen. After slipping it over my head, I had to sort of tug around the edges to get it down around my shoulders. No problem -- it's not going anywhere once it's in place, but I thought I should mention it. What -- you need another photo? Okay, fine, here you go (sorry it's a touch blurry).

* The pattern called for 4 balls, and if I'd made the extra two inches, I would've had to dip into the fourth. But I didn't, so I have an extra Cicco hanging around. Anyone up for an oddball trade? Let me know.

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So, there's been a lot of talk lately about Bloglines, which lets you "subscribe" to different blogs and see at once which ones have been updated. (Rachael got the ball rolling, so to speak. And we know Kerstin's a fan. As is Becky and Wendy. And millions of others, no doubt.) As for me, I cannot say enough good things about this service. A long time ago, before I had a blog, I wrote to the good folks at Blogrolling and asked if you could use their service (which does the same thing, but for blog sidebars) in some way on the Web so that you could log into a page without having to display it in a sidebar. They wrote back promptly but said "nope, sorry." Bloglines is the answer!

And, for you loyal Fidget readers, you'll notice a handy-dandy link on the lower left of this page that'll subscribe you to your Fidget feed. Never miss another Fidget!

Don't say you haven't been warned, though: This is BLOG CRACK. If you, like me, like to take five minutes here or there to scan a new blog between tasks, this is as quick as you can get to mainlining. You set up all of the blogs you follow (for my list, that's already topped 100), and then once an hour, bloglines sends its magic spiders out and will show you who's updated. (Nathania has written about this as well.) Almost like reading in real time! But I can see I'm definitely going to have to pace myself here. Blog overload!

(Though, I do have a question. Some blogs offer a choice between XML, RSS and RDF feeds. I can't *see* a difference -- is there a reason why I should prefer one over the other?)