Where the Time Goes

It is frequently unclear to me where time goes (last weekend is mostly a blur) but it's clear that things have been happening. Last- but most important- we have a new member of the family!

Meet Cookie! He's two, and very affectionate, though quite unnerved by the whole moving to a new place experience. He's decided that Jonathan and I are welcome allies in the exploration of new territory, which has led to him getting us up in the middle of the night so he'll have company to explore the living room, or go out on the sun porch. Our strategy this afternoon has involved the liberal application of cat toys, in the hope of wearing him out so we can get some sleep for work in the morning.

Let's just say that providing cat moral support has completely derailed any intentions we may have had to get useful things done this weekend. Or provided us with a good excuse, anyway, take your pick!

So, in other news, I finally caught up with my sister for purposes of wrapping her in fluffy yellow sweater-ness. She seems pleased with it:




I'm actually pretty pleased with it myself. The fit is excellent, and it really did come out just the way I wanted when I originally conceived the design. (Ordinarily the design mutates in the course of execution, but not this time!)




































But, I haven't been resting on my laurels:


Rather, I've been doggedly working my way through the last of the gray yarn. In fact this was actually what I originally intended to try when I saw it...I thought that it might work well in a Norwegian-inspired design, and so it does. I was also pleased with my improvised decrease pattern.


It could be smoother, but considering the lack of advance planning, I was pretty happy.

There are also various other projects-in-process that I haven't photographed yet--some gray and white mittens (since there's more gray left), a pair of socks (which need to be photographed in daylight to do the yarn justice). The green Aran, which is progressing but not complete (it's too big to carry around). And the advent of cool fall weather is filling my brain with knitty ideas...and filling my pool with acorns and leaves (closing the pool was the major project derailed by cat reassurance this weekend).

So. I'm off to flutter a cat toy. It's too soon yet to tell if Cookie is going to be enthusiastic about knitting, but it's for sure he needs lots of healthful exercise before bedtime!

Sweater Weather

We've been having a warm summer in New England. Really warm. I think we've had more days in the 90s than in the past five years combined. Even if you leave out last summer, which was as unusually cold and rainy as this one has been hot and dry. But over the weekend, a screen of gray cloud was drawn across the sky, water started to drip out of it, and our temperatures plummeted twenty degrees. And suddenly the urge to knit small light things that can be held without touching any part of my body aside from my hands evaporated and was replaced by the urge to fill my lap with something fluffy and warm.

This did not stop me from finishing the second baby sweater, however:


Nothing fancy...I wanted to do something different from the first one, so I cast on the same number of stitches as the raglan (less one button band) in the round, and improvised from there. (Note to self: Do not drink alcohol until after you have cast on. It makes the whole counting thing so much easier.)

But as soon as I had done that, I pulled out the sweater for my sister, which offended me back in the spring when the two front pieces inexplicably came out different sizes. (I checked the last time I saw her, and my sister does not have one armpit two inches higher than the other and a one arm a third larger than the other.) However with my sudden enthusiasm for fluffy, I soon ripped back the offending front piece and re-knit it (this time the same length as the other one, and with the armhole in the right place). And then, then I sewed the back and two fronts together, so I could pick up stitches for the sleeve. And that means I can at last show you something that doesn't look like a fuzzy yellow blob.


I'm really quite pleased with the way this is coming out--it's actually very close to the way I originally visualized the design- a round neck--

--which rises up a bit in back to keep the draft off. It has no buttons, because Kate prefers to let cardigans hang open in front.

It's quite long- nearly knee length on me, and my sister is only a little taller. But she wanted it long enough to sit on. It's a closely fitted design, so I have flared it slightly below the waist to give her some additional sweater to wrap around her legs, and small slits at the side to give a bit slack for movement:


I'm continuing the fitted style with the sleeves, and will taper down to another seed stitch band at the cuff. It's good to see this project moving again...it's been looking at me reproachfully* for a number of weeks. Now if I can just finish the sleeves before the weather turns warm again!

*Not that it has any grounds for reproach...if it wanted to be done sooner, it should have come out the right shape the first time I knit it. It has only itself to blame. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Gadabout

For the last couple of weeks I've hardly been home long enough to read blog posts, let alone write them. This does not mean a pause in the rate of crafting, however. Has yarn, will travel, that's me. The itinerary, with yarn highlights:

1. After the stress of the whole car/fuel tank/furnace drama, I snapped. I was getting close to the end of my red sock yarn, and realized that I had only three skeins of sock yarn left. One of which I was going to need a contrast color in order to use (since there's not quite enough to do a pair of socks for feet my size). I did try to convince myself that at two weeks per pair of socks minimum I was very unlikely to actually run out without enough warning to get more. But, there was no quelling the irrational anxiety. So, I went by the craft store, intending only to look for another 50g skein I could use with the skein that was too small, and found they had a whole bunch of new colors in Paton's Kroy that I hadn't seen before. I wound up restocking my sock supply. Rather a lot.

And then another shopper handed me a coupon they weren't going to be able to use, and I found myself standing beside the discount bin. I was charmed by the honesty and utter uselessness of the label:

100% unknown fiber.
It feels like cotton/acrylic blend to me. I'll wash a swatch to be sure it's machine washable, but I suspect it is. This may wind up as a sweater, but it's more likely destined to be another small afghan.

2. On evening trip to Cambridge for dinner later that week, I arranged found myself with enough slack in the schedule to visit Mind's Eye Yarns (in Porter Square), which I'd never been to before, as well as stopping at the very fine bookstore across from them. A small shop, but extremely friendly and well-stocked. They also had some wonderful hand-dyed yarns and I took home this delightful skein of merino/Tencel sock yarn. Because I didn't have enough, clearly!


3. The weekend before last my husband and I went down to Washington DC. We wanted to see the Terracotta Warriors exhibition at the National Geographic Museum before it closed (on March 31st). Amazing! The artistry of the figures, their expressions, the level of detail in the sculpture, were all incredible. The rest of the stay was pleasant as well--we visited the National Building Museum and the new Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. And we walked (about 17 miles during the weekend), enjoyed looking at architecture, gardens full of flowers and cherry trees blooming like crazy. Gorgeous! However I left my camera at home, so the only part of it I can share is this little sprig:


It was given to me by a man on the street, and for lack of anything better to do with it, I tucked it into my hair. I wondered for the rest of the weekend if I'd get stopped by a police officer to be reminded that picking the cherry blossoms is strictly forbidden. (Though I'm not altogether sure it's cherry- could be any one of a number of flowering trees.) Fortunately, I wasn't. It was pretty badly wilted by the time I got home but it perked right up when I put it in water, and it was cheerful to see it for the several days of pouring rain that greeted us on our return

I started a new pair of socks on the trip- not because the red ones were done, but because I didn't have a pair of wooden needles in their size (which the airlines prefer). So these are the new socks...basket weave pattern in Patons Kroy Stretch Sock:


I like the look of them fine, but I can't really say the same for the yarn. These are cotton, wool and elastic and I'm finding the yarn way too stretchy to be enjoyable to work with. At the start my tension was all over the place. I think I've gotten to the point of handling the yarn lightly enough not to have weird puckers in the fabric, and I think the finished socks will be fine to wear, but unless I change my mind as I get more used to it, I'm probably not getting any more of this. A pity, as I want to knit more summer weight socks, and was hoping this would be a good reasonably-priced option. (I've liked the other summer weight yarns I've tried, but they've been more expensive.)

And what about the red socks, you ask? Perhaps you're picturing them languishing in the knitting basket, cruelly abandoned for something newer and shinier? Not so:


A sextet of socks, all ready to be tied up in bows and slipped under the Christmas tree. (Don't worry...getting an early start on the Christmas knitting only makes me overconfident and leads to ridiculously ambitious knitting plans for the fall. You can laugh at me then.)

4. Last weekend we headed out to New York and visited friends in Troy who were throwing a musical party. We stayed up way too late playing music and singing. Our friends have five cats, so in addition to their commodious guest room, we were provided a guest cat. Or the cat provided herself. Her name was Cyrene, and after ascertaining that we were indeed people who knew how to pat a cat and scratch her on the neck, she joined us for the duration. Periodically we were awoken by a large cat head-butting us and purring to let us know it was time to pat her some more, but it was still very nice.

5. Saturday we went for a walk in Albany. It's a city that I've visited many times, and never seen. Which is to say, we quite frequently visited friends of the family who lived there when I was younger, but I'd never been to the downtown. Like a lot of places, the downtown had empty streets and a lot of empty storefronts, but the generally good state of repair of the place did lead me to think that it would probably be livelier on a weekday. We went down to the riverfront and walked on the Mohawk-Hudson bike path, and enjoyed the unusually warm and sunny weather.


We walked a total of about ten miles (part of our mildly ambitious plan to be in better shape by the summer) and on our return, found it remarkably difficult to locate even a single open business that could sell us a cold drink. We eventually resorted to throwing ourselves on the mercy of the clerk at the Hampton Inn and Suites, a very nice man who sold us some water and sodas out of the hotel's snack bar.

6. Sunday being Easter, we drove up to Maine to have dinner with my parents. We took a detour along the coast and stopped for a stroll at Odiorne Point, one of my favorite state parks on the short NH coastline.


Another beautifully warm and sunny day, followed by a delicious meal with family. And my mother gave me a large bag of yarn...mitten yarn. (And it isn't beige! 100 projects list, watch out!)

Easter weekend travel knitting mostly alternated between the basketweave sock and the long fluffy yellow sweater for my sister, which is progressing slowly. I had a chance to check the fit on my sister Sunday, and gratifyingly, it seems to be coming along more or less the way I intended. I'm on the second half of the front, and I think once I'm done, I'm going to sew the back and fronts together and pick up stitches around the arm to knit the sleeves. Given that I am totally winging this, it will make fitting a lot easier. And I've got an idea to incorporate short rows into a bit of sleeve cap that I'd like to try...we'll see how that goes. At the very least, it should make for more interesting pictures!