Busy weekends.

I had a little friend helping me with stuff on the weekend.  Well, helping it might overstate the case, but lets just say that when Sweet Thing is big enough to get into things...those corners have already been sorted and ordered.  

My little helper, aka, Toby, who belongs to Son3.  It isn't that he was bad, it is more that he looked at everything and oh how I mean everything.  If it was get-into-it-able, he got in.

He did take breaks while I knit.  He would curl up into the smallest little corners, 

 Like the spot there between, side table, chair and knitting bag.  Or this.

Across the way, surrounded by baskets of Works in progress.  Baskets and baskets (I need to work on that again.)

Also making an appearance on the weekend, were Sweet Thing and her folks.  In a grandpa and grannie cheering move, she honoured us with her wakefulness. And we played.  It was great.

Her mommy and I played in the stash while she was sleeping.  Mommy found some yarn that she really liked, and we sorted her out with the right needles, and then we talked knitting.  She is very interested in cables and loves how they look.    She did not know how to make them so we knit a swatch and sorted that out, what happens if you put them to the back, what happens if you put them to the front and how two simple cables can combine to make the look of something dramatic and flamboyant.  We spent some time with Alice Starmore and Barbara Walker and some lesser known talent, finally settling on an intermediate book of patterns with really good information on the chart symbols. We worked a little on understanding chart reading too.

I have to say, this is one amazing young woman.  She isn't a knitter.  YET.  She sure could be.  I am not sure if it is innate talent or if it just the way she has learned to approach knitting but she is intuitive.  Just the suggestion seemed to take her to understanding.  Its is so inspiring watching that.  I can't wait to see what she comes up with!

After all was said and done, and Sweet Thing left for the evening, I closed the door on the study, put puppy down to sleep and slept the sleep of the well entertained.  In the morning, even with my weekend coffee, it was not looking nearly so cheery.

 We went through every box that was not lace and that was not cotton.  We didn't go through nor take out all the things on the shelf above this.  (I didn't want to overwhelm her)  But we did a thorough dig and it looked it.  There were several boxes devoted to scarf yarns and quantities and that is what we spent most of our time on.  Once those boxes were stirred, it was time for a good resort and re-order, as well as putting away the hanks and skeins that have been purchased over the past while.  That took half the day but order was restored and sanity reigned

and the closet doors were ready to close.

I knit the rest of the day.  Lots of bits, but mostly on the young mums sweater.  It looks like this now.

Not a lot different from the last time you saw it, but it did include a complete re-do back to the ribbing.  The knitting was just too tight.  You know how it is when your hands don't feel it's right?  You never feel like working on it.  I took a good long look at it and decided to fix it and do it right. It looks much better now and feels like it has some give and drape, which is important for a pattern requiring drape and give.  Funny how that works together.

I must comment about the wool.  The yarn is a now discontinued sportweight from Elann, Highland Sport, if I recall it correctly.  It shows the difference between good wool that is lowly processed and highly processed wool that is not the best quality.  It isn't bad and will be fine once washed and blocked and worn, but right now?  My thumbs are buzzing.  The nerves of my fingertips are way overstimulated by the yarn rubbing over them as I work.

So a caveat to my words of last week on being an earthy loving yarn person.  Earthy, yes, but not poor quality.  Its kind of sad how the earthy yarns get set aside by people assuming they will be coarse.  Too sad.