3 days till Christmas and they've all gone home.

Can you tell it's a slow day at work?  Went to the new iHop for lunch (with workmates, to celebrate holidays), then spent some time photographing my latest socks using the built-in camera on the Mac on my desk.  That was fun.  Glad no one came in in the middle.

Anyway, here it is at last....  The color work sock made at the NSKO.  Hope you like it!

Rip it

Last night was a frogging night.  I knit up a good 6 inches on the sleeves of the Suede sweater, then got a nagging suspicion that I was not increasing fast enough to taper the sleeves up.  Although I was mightily tempted to just continue on and hope for the best, in my heart of hearts I knew this was the old me talking, the one who never made a sweater that fit in her life.  Firm in my resolution not to be that knitter any more, I put one of the sleeves on a string, took it off the needles, and tried it on.  Sure enough, halfway from the wrist to the elbow it became totally snug.  Not large enough.

So, I ripped it back.  Not all the way, the first 3 inches or so were okay,  but I ripped out all I had done last night.  It hurt.  But I keep thinking of how good it will feel when I finish the sweater and it fits.  Patience, knitters, patience.

A mixed bag

By popular acclaim (thanks, blonde knitter), I have started the Lion Suede sweater jacket.  A bit of advice: when someone shows you a cool new technique and you want to use it, don't wait a month to do it.  Fortunately, I still had the sample I knitted at the NSKO.  After 4 tries I finally managed to do it right and was able to cast on.

In my defense, the sample was knit flat, and the cast on was in the round.  So I did have to adapt the original instructions a little.  But my basic mistake had nothing to do with that, so it doesn't really excuse me.

Anyway, I decided to knit the sleeves first and to knit them both at the same time, so I now have them cast on, the first two rows knitted (the cool braided looking pattern K1Frog2 taught me) and also a couple plain rows to lock it all into place.  I stopped there because I have to take some measurements and decide on the increase pattern so the sleeves can taper properly.  I'm knitting the sleeves first because I'm making the pattern up as I go along.  The length of the body will be determined mainly by how far the yarn I have will go, so I figured get the sleeves out of the way and then I'll know how much yarn I really have for the body.

On a different note, more sock sadness, but also some gladness.  The pair of socks I knit on our vacation last summer became a single sock somewhere along the way.  For a couple of months now, the single sock has languished, hanging over the edge of my sock box waiting for its mate to reappear.  Finally, it did.  In the yard.  Under the clothesline.  Where it has lain for lo these past months since it got too cold to hang laundry out and have it dry in a reasonable time.  Peter discovered it while bringing in the clothespins for the winter.  Do you know what happens when dyed wool lays out in the sun for a couple of months?  Yes!  It fades!  Now imagine a sock which has lain in the sun with one side up and the other side down for all that time.  It is a very interesting two-tone sock now.  However, I have determined to go ahead and wear it.  I only wore these once or twice, I want to wear them more.  Just not anyplace where appearance really matters.  

Starting Again

I am happy to report that my mother-in-law is back home and stable now.  They don't call her the come-back kid for nothing.  The cardiac socks are almost done, just need to bind them off.  The yarn is a hand-dyed Peruvian wool in shades of brown/terra cotta/black which was a gift from my sister-in-law a while back.  It's a little heavier than most sock weight, but not much, so I knit it up on the same needles I always use.  The size is fine, and the socks are just a little extra heavy and warm.  With the wintry temperatures we're having this week, I'm happy to have them.  Okay, wintry for Maryland, I know you Chicago types would laugh at this. 

Sock sadness over the weekend.  I put on a pair of lacy socks I knit in a self-striping yarn, and discovered a big hole in them!  Yarn breakage, moths, don't know why, but it looks like some of the yarn gave way and then it unraveled a bit.  I think I'm going to try darning them.  I really like these socks, the combination of the lacy pattern and the stripes did some really cool looking things.  The stripes became waves, and as the socks were washed the yarn felted a bit so the lace pattern is more of a visual texture now.  So they are textured with funky wavy stripes.  I love it.

And now I face the new project dilemma again.  Will the next project be the Lion Suede sweater jacket we all helped design at the NSKO?  I'm quite excited about the design, I think it will be fun to make.  Or will it be the gloves I'm dying to try?  On the NSKO trip to the yarn shop, I bought a book because it has good, basic instructions for knitting gloves, which I am eager to try.  I also bought some blue/green speckled sock yarn, and when I got home I realized it's the perfect colors to go with my berber fleece jacket that I wear in spring and fall.  So now I am dying to knit a pair of gloves with this yarn to go with the jacket.  Decisions, decisions!

Of course, neither project is a good traveling project, so there will also be another pair of socks started soon.  I have picked out a variegated yarn in muted sunset colors, yellow to peach to salmon sort of shades. 

Cardiac knitting

Still basking in the afterglow of the North Shore Knit Out.  Thanks for everything, ladies, it was an amazing weekend!  A real break from everything, and great to see you both again! 

When I got home I launched immediately into the preparations for Thanksgiving, since we had the whole family (10 people in all) up to our house for the big day.  A nice time, and a nice meal, if I say so myself.

Unfortunately, the afterglow of that was dampened by Peter's mom going to the hospital at 5am Friday morning with chest pains.  They say she did have some sort of cardiac event (not the first time).  Once she was stable and they determined that inserting a stent was not an option (almost killed her last time they tried), they let her go home.  That was Tuesday afternoon.  So she's home, she's happy, Peter's sister is taking leave from work to take care of her, no one quite knows what to expect.  On the bright side, I got a lot of knitting done last weekend, too.

I finished the Fair Isle socks I worked on at the NSKO.  While I was working them I had serious doubts about my color choices, especially the purple, but once I put that final band of the burgundy tweed at the top of the whole thing, it really pulled it all together.  I am happy with them.  The tension seems fine, I did not have trouble wearing them or getting them on and off.  No undue trouble about snagging the yarns being carried on the wrong side.  Some of those carries were a bit long, I was a little worried about that.  I don't quite know what, if anything, to do with all the ends from the color changes.  I may just ignore them and hope they felt up and stick to the inside of the sock eventually.  I just washed them for the first time, I ought to inspect them and see whether that sounds plausible.

Finished those up on the day after Thanksgiving, while I was waiting at home to find out what was happening with Peter's mom.  By the end of the day she was stable and we knew she'd be in for a while, so I started a plain pair of self-striping socks to work on in the waiting room.  Sure enough, spent large parts of Saturday and Sunday in the hospital waiting room, mostly watching stuff while Peter and his brother and sister took turns visiting mom in the critical care unit, talking to doctors, etc.  It was important for me to be there, but I'm also really happy I have a hobby that is portable and can keep me occupied for hours.