It's Friday Again

My mom always said that the older you got, the faster time moved.  It is oh so true.  This parade of Fridays happen, even though my head is on Wednesday.

My goal for this week was to get started on a heavy winter sweater for me.  As I mentioned before, the plan is to make the Rams Horn Cardigan from Meg Swansen's Knitting.  Being Friday, you can see how perilously close I am to missing the goal entirely.

Can I just say, I hate swatching in the round?  I wanted in the round because that is the way I intend to knit the sweater but getting started can be a real bugger if everything doesn't go just right.  I wanted to leave a nice section I could cut open once the swatch was complete.  I cannot tell you how many times I found myself knitting with the strand joining the two sides rather than the yarn coming from the ball.  I stopped counting at 8.  I finally decided to just knit the blessed thing together and let whatever would happen, happen.

You can just see the shapes of the design start to form.  I put the line of garter in because I am going to go down one needle size.  I started on 5 mm needles but the gauge seems a little loosey goosey to me. I want to wash this swatch to be really certain of which fabric I prefer.  I want it closely knit for warmth but I do not want to be wearing iron.  If I wanted iron, I could buy a coat.  Eeewwwww

When I wound up yarn the other day, I also wound up the very pretty skein my sister brought me back from her trip to Britain.  It seemed like the perfect sort of yarn for a Hitchkiker.  The simple garter stitch would really show off the pretty, spotted nature of the this skein of yarn from I Knit or Dye.

 
This is going to be my easy knitting for a bit.  I do still love my socks for in between easy knitting, but I cannot find the simple pair  that I have on the go and what with gauge games and lace socks and colour work,  I really need simple.