Balance

It feels like I didn't knit anything at all, but this blanket is really funny that way.  Today is precisely 30 days since I started it and it feels like very little time has been spent considering the last three weeks were fairly light knitting.  I think.

Midway through the day Saturday I realized that the giant ball of denim yarn was looking pretty skimpy.  I took it out and wound it up into a ball.  

Not too much remaining before the new ball gets joined.  The bonus in this photo is that you can see the place where the previous ball of cream was changed.  A bit more than a foot of knitting was done since that happened.  My best guess at this point is that I have about 8 inches of knitting the marled colour before it is time to switch to knit the edging trim bit again.  That bit is 11 inches wide, so about 20 inches to go.

I did not knit at all on Sunday.  F1 was just too...normally I would use the word exciting, but yesterday was something else.  It was probably the most stressful thing I have seen happen in years.  Just after the start of the race, fourth corner I think, there was a massive crash and huge fireball.  Fireballs are rare these days in formula one.  They were regular in my younger days as a fan, but with all the safety features are thankfully rare now.  To see it happen was just heart wrenching.  There were moments when every soul watching across the entire planet held out breaths.  No one could live through that flaming mess and then the relief as the commentators say they have him out.  You still can't breathe till minutes later, the medical car comes on screen and there the driver is, shaken, you can see and in shock, but walking mostly on his own and you just have to cry for the relief of it all.  As the day unfolds, you see more video and you start to realize that this was a miracle of epic proportions.  Every single thing was in his favour, from the halo parting the fence just so to the medical car being right behind his end of the pack crash, right down to him not being knocked out and managing in the middle of the fireball to lever himeself half out of the safety cell.    A miracle.  I think of his family too.    

And then by the time the extended race coverage was over, it was time to get ready for my swanky new bed scheduled to arrive late in the afternoon.  I did not sleep well the night before.  I slept in the living room on my love seat.  It was fine but I was chilly without my layers of pure wool coverings. I caved in the middle of the night and dragged the whole pile out to cover me.  All the race drama meant no napping to catch up so by the time I hit the swanky new bed last night, I was exhausted.  I slept well enough.  The bed is certainly comfortable.  The mattress, a Bloom is incredibly comfortable and yet, I didn't sleep well last night.  It wasn't the usual.  I didn't have my curtain so I felt weirdly naked.  The bed sits higher than my old bed.  Not stupid high but enough that I could feel it in that odd way our bodies know something is different at night when you sleep.  It was like sleeping on the wrong side of the bed, or facing the wrong way.  I slept, and I was really comfortable but it is going to take a few nights to feel at home.  

However, pressing a button and raising your feet and your shoulders is cool.  Very cool.  And the silly thing has a massage.  Did I mention that?  Plus, we figured out how to get the curtain up again.  It will take a few days to manufacutre it but I will get my curtain back for which I am very thankful.

Anyway, that brings me to a slightly groggy morning and an urgent need for more coffee.  It is errand day today but there should be lots of time  for knitting.  

It is also the landlord's birthday.  I asked him this morning how a kid who was such an easy quick birth could have become such a big pain as an adult.  He slowly raised his head in that quirky laid back sort of way of his, looked at me with a weird smile and said, 'Balance.  It is all about balance'.  

Word.

Easy Knitting?

Yesterday was mail day and what a great day it was.  My regular beater for my loom arrived.

I ordered it for the race it now has which I hope will make me use my loom just a tad more. This plus moving the loom to a more freequently viewed location  will, I hope make the fabric I am looking for happen.

It feels like I have hardly knit anything this week.  I have been babying my hand so I don't hurt it again.  My fingers were taped together again.  My ring finger gets taped to my middle finger, which aches, and somehow magically it doesn't hurt!  And it doesn't feel any worse at the end of the day.  Weird but I am sure that holding it different when taped has a lot to do with it.  It also means that I knit slower and that probably plays a part too.  But knitting more slowly is not what I hoped for.  

I want this blanket to get done fast so I can go on to knit blankie number two.  I really would like both to be done for Christmas.  In my head, I gave it 4 weeks to be finished, but it is already 4 weeks and there is a lot to go. 

Still, it is a blanket and it feels like it is growing substantially.  I've been sitting it on one of my footstool-ish  WIP bins when I work on it.  It is past the point where I can keep it on my lap, or tuck it between my leg and the sofa so it will sit nicely while I work across the rows.  It isn't huge yet, but it is ungainly.  This morning with my eye opener coffee, I took a good look at it and it seems as if it has grown overnight.  It did not look this long last night when I put it down.  I gave the blanket a measure.  

44 inches.  Somewhere between Wednesday morning and this morning, I knit 7 inches.     I know this because Wednesday's post says it was 37 inches.   The blanket as designed is supposed to be 65 inches long, though I am pretty sure that the first one I made was a bit longer.  I did not record how long and sure wish I had.  I might take a bit of time and go back over the blog posts.  Maybe I talked about how long it was here and just did not record it at Ravelry. 

In any case, if the blanket is now 44 inches long and the end with the solid cream and red section is 10 to 12 inches (I did not measure) that means I don't have all that much of the middle section left.  A couple days of easy knitting and it will be good.  Maybe another week in total?  Probably more.  I guess I will find out!

Meterage

The blanket is fair zipping along.  My hand, my left hand, finally feels strong enough to work without taping my fingers together, so I worked heartily on the blanket and guess what.  I have moved on to ball number two!

 

I love the way it is looking.  While I was leary of the denim heather when I started, I love the way it looks now.  

Fay asked a question about the yarn, so I will try and answer.  The yarn I am using for this blanket is Red Heart Comfort.  454 grams and 792 metres.  If I was knitting only the pattern size in this yarn, I would be able to get the blanket from one ball of the dark colour of this yarn and two of the cream/white and a wee little bit of a red worsted yarn.  All the yarns are held double stranded.  

Because my first blanket was a bit larger than the pattern, I used two full balls of Comfort in cream, a full ball and about 150 metres of a second ball of charcoal.  And the red, which so charms me.  This second Sock Monkey Cabin version is even wider, so I expect to use about a third to a half of the second ball of denim heather and about one third of cream giant ball o' yarn number three.

The pattern calls for Bernat Super Value yarn, which is a very, very close to the same yarn in 197 gram, 389 metre balls.  The pattern calls for two balls in a dark colour of the Bernat yarn, 4 balls of cream/white and one of red.

You do have to be careful because sometimes, yarn gets weird. Yes even acrylic yarns, which are not my most favourite yarns for garments but are the exact right thing for blankets.

I have some white for my Friesland blanket to match what Marcus picked.  It is a Red Heart Super Saver in a skein of 198 grams and 333 metres.  

And the dark grey for Amy and Scott's Sock Monkey Cabin Blanket is a Red Heart Super Saver  141 gram 215 metre ball.  For their blanket, I have six of the small super saver in the dark grey heather.  That should be just enough if I make it 150 stitches wide but it was too close for comfort if I make it 180 stitches wide.  I have two more skeins on order for a total of 8 skeins.  

Red Heart Super Saver.  Exact same name on the ball but very different skeins.  One is made in Turkey and the other in the US.  Not sure if that is the difference but do take care.  You always need to know exactly what is in the ball you are purchasing.  

I always check because you never know when a line of yarn changes their put up.  Sometimes even the yarn for that line changes a bit, as Kroy sock yarn did, moving to be a very slightly thicker sock yarn, so the current skeins now have slightly fewer metres.   

When I first started working at the yarn store, I was told to always always check the meterage of the yarn called for in the pattern.  Meterage never fails.  

Any way, it is time to knit.  Hope this helps, Fay.  

I will have enough yarn.

Way back I mentioned being nearing the end of the first ball of cream.  Guess what?

I am still on the first ball of cream.  There was a lot more cream in the bag than I thought there was.  If you can see through the sides of the giant ball, it means you still have a lot of knitting to do.  

I measured the work and my blankie is now 37 inches long.  The first Sock Monkey Cabin Blaknet I knit was at 45 inches when I switched to the second ball of white, which gives me a bit of an idea of just how much blanket I will get on this wider version.  

The pattern is written for 130 stitches, which seemed a bit small to me.  That is okay for a lap blanket but I wanted a blanket for two to curl up in.   The first blanket was 150 stitches wide.  It was great for a couple with a tiny grandchild or two tucked in with them.  But the rest of these blankies need to be family sized as in parents with a couple squirrely kids under them.  This second blanket is 180 stitches wide and I can really see the difference in the amount of yarn I am using.  It really doesn't feel any wider at all.  It fits nicely on my needle and it isn't taking demonstrably longer to knit, but it is sure eating it up the yarn.  

I prepared for this when I purchased.  I bought 5 balls of cream, two for each blanket and one just in case.  Just in case is probably going to happen.  If I knit this blanket as long as the first, I will need yarn from a third ball of the cream.  

So often when I knit, I am in uncharted territory.  It is an expeiment, I might be winging it, it may be a new to me designer or a new shaping but I never know  how much yarn I will use.  It is never a comfortable thing.  This kind of sureness about yarn amounts is very odd. very odd indeed.    

Decadence

I'm getting down to posting late today, but it has been a very busy morning.  I've usually done my post by now and I am off to knitting and my second cup of coffee.  

I was talking about reading last week, and my large library of books.  Most of my reading is done via audio book these days.  I love audio because I can read and knit at the same time.  I have tried  regular reading and knitting but that doesn't work well for me because of my long standing visual issues.  I need a book, tablet, newpapers, held close to me  so that the little letters stay still enough to read them with any semblance of ease.  The farther away something is, the more the letters seem to dance, which leads to eye strain and a further loss of clarity till I simply can't focus close enough to read. Reading, be it tablet, newspapaers, ebook or real printed book that is done by me these days is done close to my face with my glasses off.  And that presents its challenges.  

Sitting straight on the sofa and holding a book is awkward and is a strain on my already well worked wrists.  I don't do well in recliners. Recliners are too tall to get in and out of comfportably and there is a center of mass probelm that made it difficult to operate the one that did fit me.  I did try reading at my kitchen table as my grandmother used to do, but it just wasn't a good solution for me.  

Anyway to make a long story short, I have wished very seriously for one of those cool beds where the head and feet can raise and lower.  My mother in law had a hopital bed and I seriously thought of asking if I could buy it from her estate but that felt unseemly.  I do believe it was in use by my father in law anyway.  But I have long wished for one, just so I could raise and lower at will. 

I admit that back then, it was the raising the head of the bed to sitting that was the attraction but as I have aged, it is raising my feet that really makes a difference in life.  I have a wedge of an old mattress section tucked under the lowest part of my current mattress to raise my feet by six inches.  Doing so has completely cleared up long standing back pain.  The wedge is not the best solution though.  It causes things to slip and slide no matter what anti slip you have between parts.  It makes sheets pop off in the middle of the night, even with the handy corner elastic things. It means getting into bed with a higher foot level is awkward and weird and some days, difficult.  Still, I lived with it to keep my back feeling good.  But I coveted a fancy bed frame that could do it all for me.

Last week, I went wandering (on the internet, of course) to a reputable sleep store, and you know what?  The lowest price base wasn't that pricey. I was actually surprised.

So, that is what I have been doing this morning.  Wangling a fancy shmancy new bedframe and mattress.  Sleep Country Canada gave me a discount over and above the web prices, and I found I could afford the bedframe a step up from the base model.  It is a frame that is almost pretty in comparison but the most significant different feature is a wireless remote plus you can set the bedframe up at many different heights.  

So, that has been my morning.  I have a big day ahead.  I am planning on sewing and doing some goodly amount of knitting. Along with that, I shall have to do a lot of work, practising being decandent.   

Maybe I should knit lace?

That Giant Box

I am deeply frustrated.  The injury I did to my not working knitting hand, my left hand, is not improving.  This is because everything I do uses it.  Reading?  It holds the book.  Whoddathunkit.

The really frustrating part is that this means that instead of blasting through my blankets, as I had planned, I will be going slowly.  I hate slowly.  I hate it not because it is slow, but because of this.  

This box is 3 and a half blankets of yarn.  The only thing out of it so far is the two skeins I am currently using, one blue, one cream, to knit this first blanket.  Bits of yarn came from another ball  of cream but there was also stuff added such as the giant ball of red that will make many many Sock Monkey Cabin Blankets as well as the dark gray from another source for Scott and Amy's Sock Monkey Cabin Blanket.  

And that is the sorry truth of it.  Slowly means I have to crawl around this giant box of yarn longer than I planned to.  

When I talked about this box of yarn, the only yarn I talked about was for Sock Monkey Blankets, but there is something else in there for me. I think.  If I repeat myself, oops and I am sorry. Marcus and Cassie gave me some lovely royal blue yarn that Marcus picked out all by himself. In this giant box of Sock Monkey Cabin blankets to be, is also yarn to match that precious yarn from him to make a blue and white Friesland just for me. I have had the pattern for a good long while now and I await the challenge.  

And lest anyone feel the landlord would be slighted, nope.  I haven't decided if he will be a denim Sock Monkey Cabin or not.  It would mean getting more cream yarn for him. I know.  I am kept awake at night by the worry of this (not really) but I have some concerns about it because he has also asked me to knit him another sweater.  I'm thinking about it.  He wants that giant collar of the Brownstone again.

This first one was lost when his car was stolen some years ago.  The car came back.  The sweater did not.  I am debating about yarn choices and blanket first or sweater?

I can dream of knitting these things but first there are Sock Monkey Cabin Blankies to knit and some serious ssewing needs to be done.  Today is going to be all about figuring out how to hide the reality of the size of that giant box of yarn so it doesn't get in the way.  

Just for fun

Shhh don't tell anyone, but I spent the day yesterday reading a book.  I did do a few other household type chores but I did not knit and I did not sew.  Mostly, I spent the day reading.  

It was triggered when the shelves of one of my bookcases fell.  Cleaning the rest of the shelves off so that the bookcase could be pulled out and repaired led to piles of books everywhere.  The repair led to the whole rest of the books being gone through because one of the shelves wasn't quite tall enough to fit the things that had been on it before.  In other words, all of my bookcases have now been sorted and ordered so all the books fit again.

What that doesn't express is the power of my books to charm me into submission, to call me back to reading from a paper page in some small way. I have so many good books.  So many, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I spent the whole day reading yesterday and I might do it again today.  Just for fun.  

  

Using my Space

Over the past few months, I have been slowly making decisions and working towards a better way to use my space.  I have a spare room that gets used fairly often for guests and kids playing and assorted other things.  It is great to have the room but it isn't a big room.  It has always had trouble being what I needed it to be.  

I haven't been happy having my loom in the spare room at all.  It was meant to be in my living room or in my study.   In the spare room, it didn't get looked at often enough to keep up the urge to weave.  I do want to weave.  I have some specific goals for it in fact but you have to do it if you want to meet specific goals.  The loom needs to be in my study where I very often am.  I have evenings after knitting, that could be used for weaving.  Even if it was only a few rows a day, it would add up with the bonus of filling up the empty hours when I cannot knit. The other thing  about the loom is that while the loom folds up, even when it is warped, and could be stored in a very small space, the loom stand doesn't fold at all.  When guests come, the loom remained a behemoth in the corner of the room.  Goal one or reorganizing space, move loom to the study area.

I desperately needed to get the cutting table out of my room.  With the table set up for sewing, my room becomes a narrow little hallway between piles.  Not really but that is what it feels like.  It also ends up being a flat surface that you see immendiately on entering my room.  I am very familiar with my flat surface problem (as in if it is a flat non-moving surface, it gets covered in stuff) and having a flat surface to put stuff on, in your face on enetering the room?  And then that space underneath a table?  Stuff.  Piles of stuff.  Everywhere till I feel overwhelemed by stuff.    And though I love having a large table to cut fabric on, having this table piled with stuff was making it less likely that I would sew at all.  It always needed a day of putting stuff away before I could do any sewing or prepping to sew.  We all know how I am about cleaning first so... The table stored well enough when it was folded but in my room, having the flat surface, there was just no reason for it to be put away.  Goal two, move cutting table to least likely place for it to turn into a 'flat surface'.  

But more than that.  This house has no where to set up an ironing board.  I generally have been using it in the hallway but trust me, this is a much less than optimal place to have it particularly since the irons cord no longer rewinds into itself.  Tripping over that cord is a disaster calling my name. I desperately need a place to use it where I don't have to worry about hot irons getting knocked over all the time.  It usually is stored in my study, just leaning behind the door. I cannot begin to tell you how much I hated it there.  It was forever falling over.  Goal three, have place to store and set up ironing board and to iron.

I needed room to set and use the carder and stand.  I have never really had a good place for it.  It sometimes sat in my room and sometimes in the lvingroom.  On really rare occasions, such as all of my family coming here for dinner at Christmas, I would stuff it into the spare room closet, but trust me, this was not a good place.  Not at all.  Too much other stuff putting the fine teeth of the carder at risk.

And lastly, my winding station.  It has been sitting in my livingroom for months and it really isn't livingroom material.  It works, but it is a bit battered and beaten.  Small children are forever peering into it and dropping toys there and wanting to play with it.  It needs a place to be when it isn't in use where it can sit with the open side to a wall!

So that is what has been going on the last couple of days.  There has been some moving of big things and making and finding a way to make my space a better place to live in and use and still have it be a place where guests can come and feel welcome and get a good nights sleep.

    

Sweater Update

I started this sweater on the 26 of October, so it has been in the works for three weeks so far.  I was kind of hoping to have it completed by now, but having the kids here last week threw a monkey wrench into the speed sweater plan.  But having time with my monkeys is worth more than a speed sweater so it is all good.  Besides, some sweaters are ten day sweaters and some are not.

I shouldn't have hoped for speed anyway.  Not with what I wanted from this sweater.  I wanted warm and cozy.  I wanted tunic length.  I wanted long sleeves and a high neckline.  All those things combine to mean that there is a lot of knitting that needs to happen and getting where I am in more or less two weeks, is wonderful.  And this is where I am.

It is getting there.  The body is at it's full stitch count so it is all easy knitting from here on.  It is fifteen inches long from underarm to hem, so only three more inches of stockinette to go and then some ribbing.  I am right at the place where I would separate for a split hem if I was going to have a split hem.  Might happen yet.  I haven't decided.  We shall see what happens when I pick it up to work on it.  

I am also just at the start of the second cone of yarn. I am barely two rows into the new cone and I wanted you to see just how far these cones go.  I am not at all worried about running out of yarn.  Yes.  I know!

Of Sock Monkey Cabin Blankets and Gray

As you can see the Sock Monkey Cabin Blanket is coming along wonderfully.  I may not feel that I knit much last week while the short people were here but there was progress enough.  

And as you can see, the denim blue looks great!  I wasn't really sure about that but now, with more than a little edge of the marl,  I think any colour would work.  There is an antique purple in the large balls of Red Heart Comfort that would look smashing and in a soft brown or forest green, it would be wonderful.  I am not a hundred percent sold on antique purple and the red stripe, but I would probably come around to it.  

It looks great, and I could gladly knit this a second time for Scott and Amy, but for one thing.  Amy has seen  the sock Monkey in the charcoal and she loved it.  She loved it so much, she almost kept it for herself.   I think staying with the dark rich grey is important because I want her to love this one just as much.  The problem with that, as I mentioned before, has been getting the charcoal.  It hasn't been available for months.

I ordered a grey from Mary Maxim, a long time supplier of interesting stuff, from the same big brand acrylic yarn company, but you know how it is after your order?  Okay, maybe you are not afflicted with this, but I keep going back  and thinking maybe there is a better one.  Maybe I ordered the light grey, not the dark.  Maybe...maybe, maybe.  I could maybe me to death.  

The gray original and the interloper

I put them together so you can see for yourself a bit better.  They are very different.  The interloper is quite a bit lighter and that just raised the worry level up.

And then I did this.

After this stage I felt pretty good because when both samples are put together

I can tell them apart right here, but this picture makes me want to place a bet that Amy won't really see the difference, unless she holds it next to her mom's blankie.  It is going to be just fine.  

The really happy part is that I could order what I needed in one fell swoop.  No note that it was out of stock or low stock.  

Oh oh, I just thought of something.  I found out recently that I am going to be a grandma again come spring. That makes them a family of 6.  Which means nothing except the ideal blanket needs to comfortably cover the whole family.  I think I need to cast on just a few more stitches.  Two more skeins are on the way.

And I think I know eactly how I can use the leftover charcoal gray.  Baby Sock Monkey Blankie!

Involving Kroy

I feel chilly this morning and on a feelin' chilly morning, there is nothing so fine as hand knit socks.  My sock drawer is a little low right now but it is just enough to get by.  I have pressure to knit more without feeling really pressed.  

I have some on the go and they will be completed but I have also come to feel pretty strongly about a certain sock yarn.  

Kroy.  I love this sock yarn.  Every time one of my pairs of Kroy socks are clean they end up on my feet.  I love the doubled heel.  It is sturdy and it wears like iron.  The socks are warm because they are just that little bit thicker than many commercial sock yarns.  

The only socks that I pick before I choose the Kroy socks are the double stranded sock yarn socks.  And there are only two pairs of those.  

I do gave a bunch of Kroy on hand, not quite all the colourways, but many, so my most recent purchases of sock yarns have been the plain colors.  

I could speak much more about sock yarn but there is a demand on my tablet.  Marcus finally took his bath and earned the right play games again.  It seems my tablet is part of this scheme.  

It is okay though.  I have my own schemes and they involve Kroy.

Thursday

Things have been moving along here.  My blanket is looking good and I am about a two hundred metres ( by weight) from the end of the first giant ball of cream.  The end of the first ball of cream means half done so I think it is going along nicely.  Slow and steady seems to be working!

I would knit this morning, but my left hand is unhappy and I really don't know why.  There was no excessive knitting.  I worked out my hand with my stretcher excersizes and I used my powerball to keep my wrist strong and balanced and yet, in the middle of the day, my middle finger started to ache when I move it.  I don't think it is a carpal thing because the pain seems to start in the knuckle and only goes up, not down. It feels more like a sprain. In any case, I am not knitting right now.   

Because of this, I am going to spend my morning doing a bit of yarn winding.  I have that silk I pulled that I would like to wind and that gorgeous fuzzy Handmaiden.  If the kids want to help, then there are a couple skeins of purple Sweet Georgia and a skein of Alegria in the Locura Fluo colourway to wind too.  If things go nuts and the kids really feel like work, there is always a sweater quantity somewhere needing winding.  

The kids and I are having fun, though it has been almost a week and they are really missing mom and dad and their stuff and their beds.  Even fun at grandma's house isn't fun if it goes on too long.  There has been very little squabbling and a whole lot more goofiness. Goofiness like yesterday afternoon, where they had pillow fights all afternoon and never went past the pillows to turn the 'fight' into a fight.  These are good kids and they hardly need me anymore.     

This afternoon is mail and I am really looking forward to it.  I have a package coming from Camilla Valley farms with a different style beater for my loom.  I purchased the loom with a hanging beater and it works well enough but the regular beater has a race now (I don't know that it did before.  I looked for it and there was nothing said about it) and I really wanted a race.  I am not now and am never going to be a great thrower but slipping is down a race?  I can do that.  I also have a package of grey heathered yarn coming from Mary Maxim.  I was looking for a dark gray for Scott and Amy's Sock Monkey Blanket and I am hoping this one will work.  If not it will go to knitting hats and cowls for the those in need and I will have to keep looking.  Keep your fingers crossed that my minion, for whom I am exceedingly grateful, will get off work in time to get there before the PO closes.  

   

Remember Always

In Flanders Field

The Poppies of Flanders  (Please click the link)

Toes.

I am not a sound sleeper.  I haven't been for many years.  Long ago I decided that I was not going to call it a thing and worry about it because that usually makes the problem even worse.  Where some may have called it insomnia, I just call it a weird sleep routine.  I get up and read a little or knit till I feel chilly and then I know that burrowing in my cozy blankets will put me right back to sleep.

So last night when I woke, I found this.

It is the foot of the fey creature in the racoon suit you saw yesterday.

There she was, sleeping under my bed.  I don't know why she was there.  I thought I heard something just as I was going to sleep, but I called out for whoever was under my bed to come out and no one did.  She usually can't stop laughing when she does something silly so I suspect a joke and then by the time I heard her, she was asleep.  I tickled those toes till she woke and she went off to bed and slept really really well according to her account.  

And that is sort of the way the day went.

From Almost Nothing

Last week you saw this.

It was kind of encouraging to me to see it, because I felt like I had spent no time at all working on it.  Inside my head, it felt as if the cummulative time spent working on it, I ought to be no father along than the red rows.  As you see, I was a lot farther along.  

Which is why, when I spent the entire weekend working on the sweater, not even thinking about working on the blanket, this happened.

This is the blessing of working on a project where you hold two stands together.  Plus, it requires no thinking at all, once the first row is cast on and the rib is established, and yet that rib means you are always doing something different.  It hardly feels like you are working at all, as if you create something from nothing.

I am expecting to get a lot of work done on it over the next few days.  I have some little visitors.  

One of my family cohorts is here while they have school break.  Their mom is working on an away jobsite right now and their dad is alone at home, but is also working.  The lady who was babysitting last year has a brand new baby and the after school care isn't available either so Grandma's house was the only option for fall break.  I do suspect the break, which isn't quite the usual comes from 2 extra days the teachers are being given for stress relief plus the Remembrance Day break and likely a couple of days that are more normally for marking report cards. Grandma expects to be busy.  Ish.  They are both so grown now that it is almost not work anymore.  

They will have some outside recess time (recess for grandma) in the afternoons, weather permitting, and we have a plan for making crafty things starting tomorrow, plus baking:  cookie baking,  cupcake making sub buns, hot dog buns and bread for our suppers and lunches. We will be busy.  There is also a portion, not too big of course, of the day devoted to electronics, but after that, there are markers and pencils and colouring books and tons of paper to draw on. 

Besides, in this house, first guy to say I'm bored has to do the dishes. That's the deal.

Crossing my fingers and toes

It is starting to look like a real sweater.

Like a really nice sweater if I do say so myself.  I am also wondering (see me crossing my fingers and toes and even my eyes occasionally, though that doesn't seem to help the knitting) if I have dropped the front neckline enough.

This sweater is made close to the same as I made my Playing Turtle sweater .  Both are saddle shoulder contiguous (SusieM, I love you) with a high close collar kind of mock turleneck in style.  Without the problem this time, I hope.

Playing Turtle is a good sweater and it gets a ton of wear but the biggest flaw was that I ought to have done more short rows to make the back of the neckline higher and done them more to the front of the neck to give it better shaping.  It is a little high and while that isn't a discomfort in that soft yarn, it just isn't right.  

This time, I did more short rows, but I am just not sure if I did enough to get it right.  Crossing my fingers and toes. 

Quickly

This needs to be quick.  I wanted to post before the day gets away on me but I am in the middle of a thing.

First, I found a set of needles!  I have had these since I started knitting and I am not sure I ever used them. They are the old finish Addi Lace Tips where the finish went odd and felt sticky.  I polished them up and they are working just fine.  And yes, I could knit much longer without stressing my hands.

I have also started using a stitch marker to show me my progress. 

The rows can feel so long sometimes, and it is nice to be able to pause and see just how much you have done.  It is almost always more than I expect.

And then the blankie. I moved on to the main body.

The first one I made was charcoal and I am still waiting for some of that colour to show up.  I live in hope, but till then, I am working on this blue one.  At first I wasn't sure I liked it.  I wondered if the red ought to have been a stripe of solid blue, but no.  That would be wrong.  And not at all peppy, which is part of what I like about this thing.  The blue is already growing on me and in the end, I know it will be just as right as the first one was.  

Knit ribbing till you are tired is never going to mean the same thing again.

A Little Knitting, A Lot of Fun

I did knit a little yesterday. The trouble since I switched to metal tips on my needles is that I have to be a bit careful just how much I do on the sweater.  I bought the Addi short tip lace set because I like the sharper tip but over time I have found that short tip stresses my hands somewhat ever since the great tea cozy event of  2017.  I was thinking about ordering some long lace tips yesterday but I don't know.  Do I really need them or should I go back to the bamboo tips I have and knit slowly?  Needs thinking about.

The day however was not without a myriad of pleasure.  I stash dived.  It was marvelous.  

First things first.  I dived again because I had not found the Quoddy Blue Regal.  I had found a range of supporting colours, but without the Quoddy Blue to set them against for photos, there was nothing to be done.

Found.  And tested.

The dark gray as a third colour.

And the medium grey.

The clear winner here is the medium grey, though my mind still does wander to the blue I used to have.  Yes, that is confirmed now.  The heritage blue that I thought would work is all gone.  I have so many other colours of this yarn that I hate the idea of purchasing more.  I tried the range of purples I have.  The original is knit with Fundy Fog, Lilac and white and I have the two purples but not in quantity to knit Agate Cove.  They were both nice, but did not quite work when I took all the colour out. And so Medium Grey wins. The real test, as always in colourwork is the swatch, so that will come in the next few days.  

I just kept on digging since there were boxes all over anyway and I stuffed my display cabinet with glorious things.  

I pulled out these two yarns. One, the ball, is Handmaiden Rumple and the other is Handmaiden Maiden Hair.  These will be a warm long cowl.  I am thinking of something like the Bandana Cowl, but with a longer neck tube so that it could be pulled up and over and be a be all and end all cosy thing.  I may or may not use both yarns.  We shall see what happens!

I also pulled out this skein of Madrastha Silk.  I think that is the name.  It is lovely and so soft.  Pure silk but not with the gloss we usually see.  Just the soft beauty of a more raw look silk.  It would be a perfect Huj Tub.

I took out a yarn for a a few other things but they really are far in the distance things.  I just wanted to look at the yarns truth be told and I couldn't put them back!  And then socks.  

Socks, the start and the end of all my knitting.  I haven't completed a single sock since February.  I don't quite get it, because I do need socks, though lately sock knitting has not been where my inspiration lies.  That usually means there is a problem with the colours of what I am working on, though what I have on the needles aren't that bad.  Perhaps it is more that I just have so many other interesting things on the go.  Still  I deserved a good dig in the sock stash.

It is joyously colourful even before the plastic is opened.  I dug and turned to my hearts content and pulled out a few skeins to recharge my close to me sock stash.  

There.  Doesn't that just make your hearts go pitter patter?  It does mine.  These aren't the fancy sock yarns, these are just ordinary simple things, but they bring me such joy.  Maybe it is time to see if sock joy will round out this year and make things so much better as they usually do.  

And that sort of was my day.  A little knitting, a lot of fun.

PS, just a little wave out to Fay and Brenda and Christine and anyone else who still reads blogs including this one.  Thank you.  I appreciate you and I think of you more than you know.

On the Hunt

Only a bit of knitting happened yesterday.  But I am now most assuredly at what is my hips.  

Yes, I know it looks like a mere two inches from the chest but my hips are perilously close to my waist and my waist is perilously close to my ribcage and bosom.  I had a good bit of a laugh the other day on reading how clothing manufacturers are working hard to be more size inclusive.  They are still not going to be including me.  It just is the way it is.

I spent most of the day digging in yarn again.  It was lovely.  I found a few things I had been looking for for a while.  

I found the missing cedar!  It is Fleece Artist BFL 2\8 that I planned to make a Tempest cardigan out of.  I have had the partly used skein and the multi colours together for a long time but the second cedar hank has been missing in the stash for more years than I care to think about.  It is nice to have them together again. I used some of the green to make a gift for a good friend several years ago,   I am not sure that I have enough green semi solid yarn to do Tempest now.  It has distinctive striping and I have a feeling that I might have to play around a bit with the stripe widths.  Or height.  Whichever you prefer.  Anyway, I am going to weigh what I have and compare against other projects on Ravelry and see what I have.  I bought generously so here is hoping.

That is not really the knitting for now though.  That will be after Christmas knitting at the earliest.  First warm sweaters for winter.  Once I have a few of those under my belt, then we can talk lighter weight things.

What I still am looking for is the Quoddy Blue Regal.  I pulled out the two grays that might be my third colour of that very pretty Agate Cove Pullover and I have all the white out too.  The Quoddy Blue is somewhere in there, still eluding me.  I am going to keep digging till I find it.  

If you don't hear from me, call the landlord.  I got lost in the yarn or buried in an avalanche of goodness.  I am likely having a good time, but if you could just tell him to bring me some coffee?   

For Bar Mitzvahs and Weddings

A lot of knitting happened this weekend.  A lot.  

I am thrilled to say by the end of the day on Friday, I was at the point where it was time to leave the sleeves behind and start work on the body of the sweater.  I had decided to do a bit of  feature just because I loved the way my two gray cones looked sitting next to each other.  Choosing a motif was difficult.  

I didn't want something with too many rows.  I didn't want anything too complex.  I just wanted a single simple motif just at the underarms.  I also did not want it repeated at the back of the sweater, so I had to decide how I was going to treat the colourwork.  Do I do it as an intarisa thing doing the loop method and knit back across or do I just end the  yarn and weave in ends.  I opted for weaving.  

 

I found a neat little Escher-esque tree design in the Alterknit Stitch Dictionary .  Originally, the plan was for three repeats, with the center rpeat being trees of the lightest gray.  Then I thought about doing a panel just a few rows deeper with a texture stitch or a three stitch cable instead of the middle motif.  I stayed with that thought for quite a while but then, once the first motif was complete, I realized that a single line of trees was perfect.  If I did more, it would lose something.  That single row also prevents the motif from ending too close to the apex of my bust.  It never works when a panel like this ends there.  So here we are, perfectly placed and well on the way.  I took this picture Sunday morning and am getting really close to the waist.  

Like I said, lots of good knitting.

I also did a lot of knitting during the race.  (F! at Imola)

I should have had this blanket started earlier in the season.  It really is just the perfect thing.  It is also a great way to end the day.  When my hands are doing the smaller gauge knitting, I can do at least an hour on the large needles.  Now that I have learned that I don't need to death grip them, it is a nice relaxing way to finish.  I want to knit another three rows of the cream and then move on to the ragg effect middle.  I can't wait to see how the denim looks!

In less knitterly but equally earth shattering news, I got my hair cut.  I was sort of joking whining as I was brushing my hair, that I could really use a haircut and would he cut it for me.  He told me earlier this summer that he felt it was outside the roommate agreement and that it was even outside the duties of a son for a mom and not to ask again.  I whined that I just couldn't deal with the mess and the knots anymore and he said boy, did he know what I meant...and then he said I will cut yours if you cut mine.  I thought he was kidding, but he went and got his stuff.  

And this happened.   

Might be a straggler there, that lone dark longer strand, but it also might just be the way the strand is combed, but beyond that, it feels wonderful and from what I can tell is at least as good as some of the cuts I have had in my life.  

He did good and I am considering renting him out for bar mitzvahs and weddings.