Shake It Up

So, it occurred to me that I had gotten into a bit of a knitting rut- plain sweater, plain socks, plain mittens.  And what I really needed to get my interest back up was to do some new things.  So- I cast on the Herringbone Rib Socks, which I had tried to knit once before.   The last time, I was traveling, and after knitting and unknitting the first few rows a few dozen times, I said, "Definitely not travel knitting!" and went on to something else.   This time I cast them on at home.  And after the third time I knit and unknit the first two rows, I got smart and went to see what other people had to say about the pattern on Ravelry.    The gist was- the socks work up slowly but the result is worth it.  And.  Around six hundred other knitters had made the socks. 

Well, that stung my pride.  If 600 other knitters can do it, it can't be that hard.  So I put markers in between the pattern repeats, and kept careful count and after I got an inch or so of the pattern on the needles I started to be able to read the pattern and could lose the markers.  And I really do like it.

It does knit slowly, because there's a lot of passing stitches back and forth, but it's a pattern that works very well with variegated yarns and breaks up pooling.   I'm knitting it in a skein of beautiful yarn my sister gave me from Deep Water Dye Works, the colorway is Black Prince.  Definitely not your plain vanilla socks.

But clearly that wasn't enough.  More is better.  So I also cast on for the Wasabi Hat, out of the one remaining skein of lambswool left from my mother-in-law's tulip scarf.  I asked her if she might like a hat to match the scarf and she said yes, very much and so, lace:

I'm really liking this pattern.  The emerging pattern holds my interest and I think the hat will be gorgeous.

And as if that weren't enough, a friend passed on to me a box full of yarn that had been her mother's.    Biscuit was fascinated.  Actually both cats had to sniff the box thoroughly, since it was both new and came from another house with cats.  But Biscuit wanted to get his little paws on the fiber.

And what the box actually had in it was a lot of coned yarn, cotton, linen, some acrylic and several skeins of a lovely fine alpaca.  Definitely I'm going to have a lot of fun with this.

Now, you might be wondering about the big snowstorm that was all over the news last week.  Well.  It was kind of a big deal along the coast due to storm surges and power outages.  But here?

"Snow?  Forget that.  What about dinner?"

We did get a couple of feet of snow.   We did do a lot of shoveling.  We especially did a lot of cursing the city, who appears to have suddenly got religion (or perhaps a budget) for plowing.  They have a perfect genius for waiting until we shovel out a plow curl- we'd be inside taking off our boots and they'd plow another three feet of snow into the driveway.   But the most notable thing about it was not so much the snow and wind, but the frenzy in the media and in the stores. 

The bread aisle of the grocery store, the day before the storm.

 

As it was, we never lost power, we just got a lot of snow.  Gave the place a properly wintry look, we thought.  And made the idea of cuddling up in a pile of yarn exceedingly appealing.  Which is largely what I did today, having the day off for President's Day.

And tomorrow is back to work, and whatever time I can snatch for my exciting new projects.  And then there's the lace socks,  I haven't even mentioned them yet.  Later!