Knitting and Some Long Distance Love

I spent the whole day knitting for a change.  It was great.

After pulling back the Mrs. Hunter's pattern sweater because of the gauge issue, I felt inspired to knit with this more rustic yarn.  I started out on a 4 mm needle, one full size down from the 5mm tips I used for the lace section.  That was looking good.  The stockinette section was matching the stitch gauge but the lace panel was most assuredly  not.  So, back we go again.  

4.5 mm needles seem to be working pretty well.  It is coming in at very close to the right lace gauge and the stockinette gauge seems to be matching.  I don't really have quite enough knit for a good gauge test, but it is a good visible match.  I will knit a bit more and will take gauge again and we shall see.  

I did add two purl stitches on each side of the lace and I am really happy that I did.  It adds such nice definition to the panel.  

Today is going to be another sewing day.  I need that pair of pants!  I also want to get another pair cut out so I don't have to put the fabric back into the bins.  After this next pair of pants, I have some nice sand coloured linen to make a top and pants or skirt out of.  I have been trying to get this project done three summers now, and I really just want these garments.  

I have a lot of fabric like that.  I have a lot of yarn like that.  It is a pretty great problem to have.

And finally, my grandson Carter got two copies of the same Dogman book for Christmas.  He gave one to his brother Emmett, who is in grade one and just learning to read.  I got him a copy of one of the series he did not have to replace it.  Getting mail should be an event so I like to fill a it with some surprise treats. As you can see, his little brother is wanting in on some grandma love by mail too.  

Disasters and Other Things

I did things yesterday  and am generally pretty happy with what I got done and yet, it was the most miserable day I have had in a while.  

I sewed in the morning. The only thing left to do is to put the elastic on.  It is ready to go and I started to pin it on but there was something in the air that said wait.  I went and made some tea.  I have learned to listen to that voice when I sew.  Every time I don't listen to that voice, I end up regretting it.  New pants will be mine shortly but maybe not today.  The sewing room sits over Keith's downstairs office and today is a work from home day.   I try not to work on that side of the house when he is working.  

After I stopped sewing for the day, I picked up my knitting.  As much as I have been trying to stay monogamous to the Hacho sweater, I needed to knit on my grey sweater with the Mrs. Hunter's pattern.  

When last you saw it, it looked like this. 

I wasn't very happy with the fit.  It felt as if it was too wide.  The body is stockinette and I wondered about gauge.  The Mrs. Hunter's pattern part is resolutely coming in at 5 stitches per inch.  The stockinette gauge is 4 stitches per inch.  That's a problem and I knew I had to do something.  It was a hard decision but I pulled back to the underarm.  I changed my needle size and my sweater now looks like this.

The debate now is do I do the garter stitch to border the pattern areas.  I liked the way it looked at the divide between pattern and stockinette but where I had it beside the center front panel of lace, there was something wanting.  The garter stitch band overwhelmed the pattern section.  I was thinking about switching out the garter stitch for a reverse stockinette band.  I have been waffling and trying to decide but this morning as I write, I know what to do.  I am sticking with garter bands, but I am going to add a few purl stitches to my front patterning band.  I will add two purl stitches between the garter stitch and the pattern at each side.  The main body will stay stockinette.  I am not sure if the pattern stitches will be done on 5mm needles or on the 4 mms I am using for the stockinette.

And then the day got worse.  So much worse.  I decided to wind some of the new yarn I got for Christmas.  That shouldn't be bad and yet...

I pulled out a skein of the olive green grey brown glory that is Steam Trunk and started.  I don't know what I did but it was a weird wind.  The cake had a lot of bloopy bits so I thought it needed a rewind.  It was looking good but as I started winding, a floop pulled up and pulled out the center from the original ball.  Okay I thought.  If I go slowly, I will see where the tension is pulling from and I can free the mess.  When I picked up the cake to do so, the middle fell out to the floor, leaving about a quarter of the thing in my hands.  I had about half of the yarn on the winder, a good size blob on the winding station, a blob on the floor and a part of the mess in my hands.

I wanted to take photos but my tablet was on the other side of the mess and I couldn't reach it.  It took over 2 hours to wind it by hand to free itself from itself. And I still have no idea how the original cake got so messed up.   

It is sitting in a nice rather well mannered cake now, pretty as you please.  I am not sure how I feel about the cake. The yarn is great. I don't resent the yarn, just the cake and the caring process.  I have pretty deep feelings about that.

It was a day of feeling as if it was time to step away from things and doing other things that I should not have begun.  It had its ugly bits.  Oh well.  The good is balanced by the bad overall and at some point I will have new sweaters and comfortable clothes to wear.  

Today is baking day.  There are bananas to use up in banana bread and it feels like a good day for a chicken pot pie with home made buns.  I feel good about it and will be nice and cozy warm in the kitchen.  Socks are good kitchen knitting between all these things, so socks it will be.

The Book Part of January

Yesterday was a mixed sort of day.  I knit.  I set puzzles. I did chores.  The time I thought I should be sewing went to other stuff.  Okay.  I was reading.  

January is when a group of my friends and I participate in our annual NaJuReMoNoMo where we read novels we have never read before.  I have always enjoyed this but it is only the last few years that I feel like the reading self I always was.  

I was one of those kids who inhaled books.  I read everything I could get my hands on.  I read a lot when my kids were little and when Brian worked out of town.  It helped keep me sane with three little boys running around.  And then, slowly, overtime with the pressures of work and teenagers I was reading less.  I did try audio books but I still preferred to have the paper in hand.  

Somewhere in there, I picked up knitting and my whole life changed.  It was just like reading had been.  I was inhaling yarn fumes.  It was great and I loved it but I was not able to read and knit at the same time.  Life changed again and through the darkest times, I could knit.  What I could not do was read.  

I stopped reading anything at all.  I used the January thing to learn to read again in this new life I had to live.  I think I made one book the first year.  If I recall correctly, it was a Miss Silver mystery by Patricia Wentworth.  It took years to get to the point where I could manage more than one or two books a year.  In time and after becoming a firm fan of audio books, I have slowly been able to read as I used to.

Because I can knit at the same time.  

This year has been a great year of books.  I discovered some new authors and read new to me books from authors from longer ago.  I read things that made me laugh and cry and some books that made me want to know what the characters did next.  All of the list below were absolutely great reads.  I don't finish what I am not enjoying.  Life is just too short.  In between some of these I also stuck in two or three rereads from authors I have loved forever.  They are not noted.

In no particular order though the first book  read was The Old Vengeful by Anthony Price.  It is an older book but if you like Mary Stewart or Helen MacInnes it is a great read.  

The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick  This book has been in my wish list for years.  I should have listened sooner and yet in a way I am glad I did not.  I was so sorry that it ended and that I would never know what happened next. I will imagine.

The Murder Stone by Charles Todd.  This book is outside the author's Ian Rutledge world but is still a wonderful read.  If you like the period between World War I and II you will enjoy it.  A story of friendship and family and loss and what remains and going on.

The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear.  This is another story outside of the Maisie Dobbs canon but talent will out.  It is a wonderful book.

The Girl in the Cellar, Poison in the Pen and The Key all by Patricia Wentworth.  Three Miss Silver mysteries and all just as good as the others. I may have read the second in the list before but I don't think so. My Kobo showed it as unread.

Glass Houses and Kingdom of the Blind both by Louise Penny.  I went on a Gamache binge a few years ago and then I stopped.  It was great to be at Three Pines again.

The Widows of Malabar Hill, The Satapur Moonstone, The Bombay Prince all by a new to me author, Sujata Massey.   I read the first book in the series last because I did not care for the narrator but after reading the other two, I knew I deserved to read this one too.  They are light mysteries but are set in India in the early 1920's and reveal a part of the world and a time and place in history that I did not know much about. I found all three riveting stories and a revelation from an Indian woman's perspective. 

The Mistletoe Mystery by Nita Prose.  I love Molly the Maid and though this short novella has been out for a while I was saving it for a treat during Januarys novel reading month.  It was a treat I deserved.

And last but oh so not least, Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jessse Q Sutanto.  This was a suggestion from Audible.  I rarely like any of their suggestions.  They always want me to read  chick lit and I hate that category of book. This was a winner of a suggestion.  It was charming and funny aand serious and very enjoyable. A friend read it on my suggestion and found her only disappointment was that the author's next book does not come out till April.  I feel exactly the same way.  Sutanto has written YA books before and my friend did read a couple of those.  She says "well worth it" so they are on my list for the rest of the year.    

There is little bit of January remaining and at the moment I am reading The Enigma Game, part of Elizabeth Wein's  tour de force series Code Name Verity.  After reading the book Code Name Verity, I did not have the heart to bear any more of the pain and sorrow.  It was the most emotionally compelling books I have ever read.  They are classed as YA fiction but they are all quite simply great books.  I have only one left in the series to go, The Rose Code and I hope to read it soon.

And that is it for this January. It has been a wonderful reading challenge and has been a great way to deal with the long dark nights of winter.  Between books and knitting I look forward to February, only a few days away now.  When March arrives, the back of winter is broken and spring is on its way.

Action Not Reaction

I did not quite make my goals for the weekend and you know what?  That is okay.  Our western culture is goal oriented but having goals is a very negative thing for me.  It is just one more thing that I am not going to reach or manage to do, and right from the get go, it makes me feel bad. It is getting better now that I am old. I know that my brain reacts this way and I try to keep focused on action not reaction.  And I try not to set goals.  Silly me for doing that on Friday.  I must have been tired. 

I did not quite finish the first sock. I might feel bad about that except

I am at the point where I usually start the cuff and am thinking about what kind of cuff I want.  It will probably be a normal 1 x 1 rib but it is nice to think about trying a different way. Folded over cuff anyone?

Most of my knitting was on my Hacho yarn Lipstick sweater.

The Lipstick sweater pattern is a cardigan but since I almost always wear cardigans open, I am making a ridge of the same twisted stitch rib that is used through out the sweater to take the place of buttons and buttonband and I love the way it looks. I don't remember if I talked about that before. The sweater is starting to look like clothing now.  I do enjoy when that happens, that magical thing where a project changes from being a blob of yarn and needles and turns into a garment.  I made it to the second set of hip shaping increases so I did treat myself to something different.

 Instead of the bright yellow Folklore sweater, I decided to play around.

I frogged my Rust Flax and Wool sweater.  I wasn't wearing it at all and that was a huge shame.  I have 4 unused skeins and a bit more that I salvaged from the previous garment iteration and want to make ... something.  I am kind of leaning to a vest with a good wide and deep collar.  

That might be because I felt cold all day yesterday but then, I have been considering making more vests this winter.  Now that I am properly medicated, I don't feel cold in quite the same way.  It isn't that deep inner cold that was impossible to escape from no matter now many sweaters I wore.  When I feel cold now, throwing on a single worsted weight sweater is enough and much of the time a turtleneck shirt and a sport weight yarn sweater is enough. Yay me.  Now that my sweater chest is recharged and my problem is being sorted, maybe a vest is the way to go?

Half the fun of knitting is the actual knitting, but the other half is the adventure of the choices I get to make as I go.  Even so today is going to be a day in the sewing room. I have another pair of pants on the go, some nice cozy fuzzy on the inside pants for particularly chilly days and I am looking forward to sewing some other very interesting to me makes for winter and for spring.  Lots to do.

Friday Wrap Up

I slept long this morning and I have felt behind all day.  

Not that I have anything urgent to do or any places to go.  My new pants are at the point of putting the elastic on and of all the parts, that is the one that takes the most effort.  I am trying a new way of putting it on this time too.  

My normal way is to make a casing but I want to take some of the fuss of fit out of this.  I want the elastic exposed to make a smoother fit.  So wish me luck.  It seems to look ok, but I need all the luck I can get.  

I have been working on my Hacho yarn Lipstick sweater and am almost where I need to start hip shaping.  I have only made a few rounds on the socks.  My goal for the weekend is to make it to sock 2 and to the first set or two of increases on the sweater.  

If I get there, I am going to treat myself and allow myself to knit on my bright yellow Folklore  sweater.  It is the middle of winter and the wind has been blowing all week.  It can drive you nuts.  The yellow is right for deep winter knits.

Boxes and Sewing and Knitted Stuff

I have been spending huge amounts of time in my sewing room making and getting ready to make.

I made three new boxes to replace two that just did not work out from before Christmas. 

 That middle shelf of boxes are brand new.  They were immediately pressed into service.  Keith is really pleased and happy with the way it looks.  That is really what matters.  It is his house and it needs to work for him.  He is a very good son (They all are.)

Then I pulled out a couple of patterns.  I needed to assess the newer pattern against one that I am confident with the fit and see what adjustments were needed.  Step one: assemble the new pattern.  Assess for fit.  Adjust where it needed adjustments. Muna and Broad patterns are marvelous.  I don't need a lot of adjusting.

Next up, dig out fabrics.  That always takes a while.  There are 4 of the biggest totes filled with fabric.  I would like to pretend I don't know how that happened, but I do.  When I came here I probably had one biggie and one smaller one.  The last few years, I bought fabric at good prices and was not afraid to stock pile. For instance, pants fabric.  There are certain types of fabrics I like to wear as pants and I usually wear black pants, so pants fabrics were easy. If the price was right, I bought several extra meters so that when I needed, I had enough fabric to make more.  And if linen was priced at under $20 dollars a metre, of course you buy more.  

You can see how my yarn stash evolved.  It was the same thing.  Only yarn instead of fabric.

Anyway, I now have to really dig to find the fabric I want.  I know just where the fabric is but the box is at the bottom of the hard to get to pile.  It took a bit of time to dig out, but I found what I needed.  Then finally, I could cut out the new pattern.  It is all ready to sew today. 

In between I've been setting puzzles and reading and knitting.  The house is on puzzle three for the F1 off season and I am so happy with this one.  It makes some sense for a change.  The last couple were good but were hard to see because they were so dark or the picture on each small piece were so generic they could have gone anywhere.  Millennium Falcon, I am looking at you.

The knitting is great.    I have been sticking to my sock so it is coming along.  Project monogamy makes it happen.

I did a straight heel flap with a small gusset.  It's an old style heel but I love the way it cups around my foot.  I really am happy with this.  It's such winter killer brightness with that added dark contrast and just makes me smile.  

So, I am off to the sewing room again today.  Wish me luck.  I hope I have adjusted the patterns right.  

More

Here we are again.  Another sewing day.  I am going to do pretty much the same thing that I did yesterday except that by the afternoon I hope to be cutting out some new material for a new something. Not quite sure what yet but there is no rush to decided.  I also hope to get the Mrs. Hunter's pattern sweater blocked so I know where I am with it.

I did get just enough knitting in yesterday to make it to the heel turn on this pair of socks. 

This is gong to be a heel flap and the yarn is going to be doubled. doing tat really extends the life of my socks.  But that is it for today.  Lots to do and lots of fun.

Perfect for a Day of Patching and Repair.

I thought my weekend would be very different from what it was.  

I thought that I would knit on this sweater and that I would show you a mostly completed body this morning.  Did not happen.

The gauge in stockinette seems to be quite different than it is in the stitch pattern and I am a bit concerned.  Did I cast on too many stitches at the underarm? I did a try on and it fits just right...unblocked.  Mrs. Hunter's stitch pattern is going to need to be blocked to see how it really fits. A little ease is okay but I am worried that I will have much more ease than I want.  I am really really happy with the way the front pattern panel looks running down the front through the stockinette.  That was a great choice.   

By Sunday morning I knew I needed to knit something else till I blocked Mrs. Hunters sweater. I picked up my Hacho  Lipstick sweater.

   

This is such a happy knitting project.  I am utterly in love with the colours. I was going to meet with my online knitting group Sunday morning and it proved to be a bit much to flop around.  I grabbed a bag of sock knitting from in the WIPs bin.  I was looking for these.  

 

I thought they would be on top because they were the last pair I had knit on.  The sock bag I grabbed was a proto toe.  Just a mere half of a garter stitch toe in some dark Gentry Grey Kroy Sock yarn.  I could have dug a bit more but I was having a lovely chat with knitting friends. It would do.

And then the battery on my tablet died and I kept knitting. I kept on knitting on the sock because something amazing was happening.

The plan for this pair of socks is something that I enjoy doing with Kroy Sock yarn. It comes straight out of what I learned doing Monster Socks.  Put in a dark stripe to create more contrast than the original yarn designer planned for and you unlock an entirely new sock something.  All I do is to change to a dark stripe when the colour changes.  I carry the dark yarn up as I go and change at the beginning of the round nearest to the colour change. Some of the stripes have a little bit of two colours in them, but it ends up looking good anyway.  It is stripey, seductive magic and it is hard to put it down.   It didn't take long till I had a good bit of sock done.

This morning seemed like a good time to check on what else was happening in the sock bags.  I have not been paying much attention to these socks lately.  I have been having fun with the socks in the big bag full of sock yarn making double thick socks and Big Fabel worsted weight yarn socks. Time to see what else is happening in sock world.

 I have these cute striped socks on the go.  The colourway is Baby Whale or something similar.  I can't remember the company name but it is from the company that made the Watermelon sock yarn.

It is lovely and soft but I am not sure it will make good socks.  The yarn feels to soft to take the wear that is forced onto my socks.  It would make a really great pair of mittens though or a hat.  Maybe a baby something?

And this pair of plain vanilla Kroy Socks.

Tayler at the Wool Needles Hands channel was making some and I was utterly charmed.  I remain so. Yes indeed, I can leave Kroy alone and still have socks that I love.

I do have a pair of Money socks out there somewhere too.  Maybe they have been eaten by the WIPs bin?

Socks were my biggest weekend knitting and that was unexpected.  And a lot of fun.  It needs to be a sewing day today though.  I have a pile of things needing repair that cannot wait any longer so socks may well continue being the knitting of the day.  They are fun to pop in here and there and do a few quick rounds on in between.  Perfect reward knitting for a day of patching and repair. 

Not much

I have a bunch of chores to do today. Things have been piling up since I had that cold and I finally feel like I have the energy to catch up. It only took a week longer than I thought.  That is actually an excuse.  I was not able to knit much while I had the cold and this past week I had to catch up on my knitting. I just get odd if I can't knit. 

I did get my Mrs. Hunter's pattern sweater to where I could start the body of it.  I only have a few rows done and I want to put it on a cord today so I can check body measurements. The sleeves are just right but  I want to check the body because.  Yes.  Just because.  I am chicken.  I want it to fit just right.

That is it for me today.  No photos unless I do them later.  No wise thought because the brain is empty.  Just me and chores and knitting.  

You know what?  That is really a pretty great thing.  

Waiting on Books

I saved hard this past year so I could treat myself for Christmas and for my birthday.  I thought that I would concentrate on books.  I have been reading a lot lately and extra books seemed like a great idea.  My desire for a yarn treat tickled at the back of my mind, as ever, but was something I could manage.  

The post office strike around Christmas really helped hold that desire back.  The longer the strike went on, the more concerned I was about small businesses.  More than any other sector small business who rely on the mail for product delivery suffered.  Small enterprises in small towns outside of major centers, where alternate shipping is not always available, really were bearing the brunt of the strike.  Like my favourite yarn dyers.  I decided that books could wait.  Small business couldn't.  

I was going to order one sweaters worth of yarn from Midknit Cravings.  One sweater quantity would help them and be such a treat for me.  I may already have a lot of really great yarn but that doesn't mean I am not delighted with  the idea of new yarn.

I have loved their tonals for a long time but other than Kelp Forest I have not ordered any.  And I really love Kelp Forest.  I also love their deep After Dark and Shiraz colours but what I want to make, what I need in my wardrobe are staples.  Simple colours with a relaxed casual vibe. I want sweaters that will be go everywhere sweaters, do everything sweaters. The deep colours are not quite what I am looking for at the moment.

I landed on Steam Trunk.  

It's a soft olive green grey brown that simply defies photography. In life it it gloriously grungy and exactly right. Do check out the knitted sample on their website.  It is absolutely everything I was hoping for.

 And then I had a bit of trouble. I never leave their site without dreaming about the  wonderful speckles and variegated colours.  I dreamed.  I wished. I love Fruit Stand and Homegrown and Love Letter. I covet Rusty Gears.   I already have a sweaters worth of London Fog. When I ordered the London Fog last year the colour that was very strong runner up was Storm Chaser 

and a sweater quantity of it fell into my cart.  And I left it there when I checked out.  I am so happy that I did. I love these casual laid back looking colours. They are both exactly what I was looking for.  

I will have to wait on books.  I am good with that and the library is not that far away.

Quite Perfect

One of the things I do before gong to bed at night is to put away all the knitting. Except last night. This morning, I rose to lovely things in sight.  

My newest pair of Broken Seed Stitch socks which are so much fun to knit and

my Monkey Socks which are also a lot of fun to knit.  Both of these patterns are like a recharge to my sock knitting soul.  They work up quickly because there is always something to do on them and the pattern repeats are easy and predictable.  Sock knitting for when plain just won't do. I  had put a few rows on the Monkey socks at the end of the day and  wanted to see where I was on the Broken Seed Stitch pair.

Truth.  I often think about knitting a sweater in the broken seed stitch pattern.  I think about it but have never had a yarn choice pop into my head to help make it reality. YET.

This morning my task was to do as I spoke of yesterday.  It was time to put the Mrs. Hunter's Sweater on waste yarn and do some measuring.

Oh my.  I fell in love with it all over again. I spent a very long time looking and touching and opening out the lace to approximate the way it will look when it is blocked.  It just looks so right.  I am keeping on with this.  I was nuts to think a Staffin in this yarn might be better.  Staffin will have its time and its own yarn. This is quite perfect as is.  

The ratios of both body and the sleeves are doing what they need to do for a good fitting sweater.  It is going to be a bit longer from shoulder to underarm than I hoped for but I can speed up the raglan increasing if I must.  I am going to do a bit of math to see if I need to bother.  

The really pleasing part is the neckline.  It is larger than I originally wanted but in many ways it is quite perfect.  I want to do a folded over collar where the two front edges overlap and this little bit wider neckline is going to make that look really good.

I haven't checked over the shoulder lace placement but I might not worry about that.  The lace looks so nice that I may just keep the lace going all the way down the sleeves.  

I am going to work on this sweater today.  I have made good progress on the Hacho sweater and am treating myself by knitting on this lovely rustic Briggs and Little Regal.  I love soft drapey yarns, but I also love to work in rustic yarns like Lopi and CWM and Brigg's and Little Sport or Regal.

It's all knitting.  It's all good.     

Good Knitting

It was lovely to have a normal weekend. Quiet and no heavy chores, just knitting and setting puzzles and reading, with cocoa and coffee and the occasional tea filling in the corners. 

I did move the marker on Friday evening and though it doesn't look like much knitting, 

it is.  It is starting to fee like a sweater instead of a yoke that I am just knitting around and around on. There are a good four inches at the underarm now and that is progress.  If I didn't have the marker though, I would hardly know it.  

I am pretty happy with it so far.  It is going to be such a fun sweater to wear. 

I am stealing myself about the grey Regal sweater that I am doing, the one with Mrs. Hunter's pattern on the yoke. One of the things that made me set it aside for a bit is that it is time to check the top and see how the raglan sleeves are doing.  

The last couple sweaters, raglan or not have been a bit too small at the upper arms. For this sweater, which I am calling Mrs. Hunter's Business, I was determined not to repeat the mistake.  I started the raglan with double the number of sleeve stitches as I used on the red Third Coast sweater.  Now I am worried about the sleeves getting too wide before I  have a comfortable underarm depth. I am going to put the garment on some waste yarn and do some serious measuring.  I am also going to see how it looks.  I know that the lace pattern is placed properly to do a panel of lace down the front after I switch to stockinette but I am not sure about the sleeves.  I hope to be able to do the same thing down to the cuff too.  If I laid out the lace badly, I am not sure what I want to do.  

If it would look wrong ie, if the lace is not centered decently at the top of the sleeve, the yarn might well be a candidate for a rip back to make that Staffin sweater that I want.  

I did do some serious thinking about Staffin.  I mean, it isn't like I don't have other yarn choices for it. I do.  Many, in fact.  I know if I have a good think about the yarns I have in my stash, the ones on Ravelry and the ones that never quite made it there, I have a lot of yarns in the right weight and quantity for a sweater, and  a few more choices for a vest.

I  love having a generous stash. Time to play in it again soon. 

Still can't taste the coffee

I lived!  I feel much better.  The last two days have been great.  I knit.  I can almost taste food.  Still can't taste coffee yet.  Bummer, but most importantly, I knit.  

Not much for a good ten days of time passing.  I am going to move that little marker today.  It's time to move on from marking sick days.  

I am working on this sweater monogamously at the moment.  I need to push on it hard to feel as if I am past the takes forever to knit point.  It is great knitting though with just enough stuff going on to keep me invested.  

I also have a problem.  Rebecca Clow dropped a new pattern this morning.  Her Staffin sweater is gorgeous.  I love Petiteknits Ingrid sweater, but a new to me designer,  at this point isn't quite my jam.  I find that often designers design for their own body types and I am not at all that body type.  I have never knit her designs and I don't know what I would need to do to make her sweater work for me.  

Staffin has the same vibes.  Not quite cabled.  Not just textured.  All cozy warm.  A bit rustic and old home.  Staffin is what I need.  The yarn I need for Staffin is a cozy, rustic sort of yarn.  I don't have to look hard for that because I love rustic yarn.  In this case, my heart almost hurt because I knew exactly what would be perfect for Staffin.  

Arghhhh.  I love how this sweater is working.  It's fun to work and very different, but this lovely dark grey is perfect for Staffin.  It may magically turn into one.  

I have lots of knitting on the Hacho sweater while I think about all this.  And the many other projects in the WIPs bin.  Not that I am going to finish all these things before I start a Staffin.  Or one of the many other diversions waiting ahead for me.  As long as it is knitting, it's all good.

  

Better.

I am feeling a bit better but I can't talk.  I could bore you with the details but if you know, you know and if you don't know, you don't want too.

I am feeling much better today.  I may even pick up some easy knitting.  

I may even load the dishwasher.  Let's not get crazy though.  One step at a time.

Man Cold

My life is still having a bad cold. It basically feels like death warmed over.  Part of the day I feel better in certain parts of my body and parts of the day I feel worse. The only consistent thing is that I am tired.    

I was whining about this to Keith last night and he looked at me and laughed and said "Mom, you have a man cold."  He does much of the heavy lifting here. He cooks. He gets groceries and does all the shopping to keep things going here. He sort of has the caretaker role. 

He laughed and then stopped.  He realized he could only afford to only get mom colds from now on. I think he went to be sad.  And appalled.

I just kept laughing like a loon.  

Here is hoping this thing clear up fast.

I hab a code.  It is a good long time since I had one so it's a little bit much. It comes from little boy kisses and snuggles over the holidays no doubt but I wouldn't trade it for the world.  If the price of joy is a cold...well so be it. I did nothing yesterday but drink tea and blow my nose and generally feel sorry for myself.  

Today I already did a load of laundry andcI plan to do dishes.  Neither are from choice but need.  I do not plan on doing much more.  A shower is planned and a nap is planned.  If I get those done I will have had a successful day. 

Progress?

After writing my blog yesterday, I knit.  It was a long lovely day of knitting.  

I knit all afternoon and part of the evening and by all that I know, I got nowhere.  When I started the day, I am pretty certain that I had about and inch and a half.  There was not a single bit of growth no matter that I put the whole day into the thing.  

Harumphhhhh

That's the thing about knitting.  As you work on the body of a sweater, there isn't a whole lot of stuff to mark the progress you make.  Even if you measure over and over again, it does not grow.  Tape measures lie in the same way that gauge does.  

That is what I am facing with this sweater.  It did not grow when I worked on it before and it is not going to grow today.  I had to pull out the big guns.  I put in a progress marker at the end of yesterday's work and as I knit on it today, I will see the actual knitting make it grow.  And that gives me hope that this sweater will be finished, one step, one stitch at a time.  

Is It Forward or Backwards?

This must be the looking forward part.  Appropriate for a New Years morning.  I was going to have all of this in yesterday's post but that was getting too long.  These are all the sweaters of the WIPs bin.  Heaven knows why I keep getting distracted from them except 'Squirrel'...  They are all good projects and I am going to finish them.  There is no particular order here, not oldest to newest.  Not nicest or most eagerly wanted.  No order at all.  It is just the way they came out of the bin.

First up is my Linger cardigan from Knitty.com.  If I could work on it routinely, it would be done in a flash.  I love it and I am looking forward to getting it done. 

The problem is it is a little hard on my hands.  This is particularly true on the sleeves which is where I am now.  It has to do with the weight of the yarn ( worsted held double)  and the trouble with my hands.  The pattern and design are great.  The fabric is just yummy and ever so slowly, it is getting completed.  

Next up is my sweater with Mrs Hunter's pattern.  

The yarn is some of the Briggs and Little from my Epic Adventure with a few skeins I had on hand.  It is coming along beautifully and will soon be at the part where I split the arms.  I enjoy knitting the pattern but I am getting to the point where I am looking forward to being mostly done with it.  The top is all lace, but the body will have only a small panel of the lace center front.  I am not a hundred percent sure of  what I am doing on the sleeves yet, but that will come.  I have been knitting lots on this one.

Oooo, now here is an oldie.  

This little teal number is being made for some really gorgeous buttons that I got in Vernon BC at a Twist of Yarn.  It is always on my mind but I never seem to pull it out to knit on.  

My Hacho sweater!

Everything I have been working with, even socks, has been thicker or loftier or yarn.  This sweater is a relief to knit on.  The yarn is tightly smoothly spun and is a lot of fun to work on.  There is just enough thinking in Joji Locatelli's Lipstick pattern to keep it interesting.  

The is Joji Locatelli's Newspaper pullover or rather it should be. 

I started it and then fell under the spell of the Linger sweater.  Since they are both a very similar sort of stitch, this one kind of got left behind.  That is such a shame.  

I really regret that this got set aside. It is such fun simple knitting.  All garter stitch.  Yay for garter.  The only challenge is changing the colour of yarn in a way that will make the most of what I have.

It is such a pretty bunch of yarns.  

And the my Scandinavian Star Vest.  The pattern is based on a design from Cheryl Oberle's  Folk Vests.

The yarn is Cascade 220 and is going to make a stunning hard wearing warm vest.  I am now using my one handed stranding technique and it is brilliant.  

This is my very strong, bright yellow sweater in yarn from Arcane Fibres.  I started this in August last year and I have no idea why it is not done yet.  However, it is going to be brilliant knitting for the deep cold of winter.  

And then my betweeness Seasonal cast on.

This is the brilliant Midknit Cravings London Fog colourway in their Comfort DK Sport base.  I am a bit farther along now

Being just a few rows into the simultaneous set in sleeves.  I love, love, love the colourway.  It is casual and old home and speaks to me of comfort and coziness in the nicest of ways.   

There are two shawls as well.  One is the Bridgewater shawl that I cast on in 2012.  

It is the oldest thing in my WIPs bin and there is part of me that doesn't want to finish it because it is from the days before Brian died.  It is part of what was but to not finish it would be silly. Life is what it will be and I may as well have a very prett,y dainty thing to wear.  It will get done.  

And last of the big things in the WIPs bin is my Starting Point shawl.  This is another Joji Locatelli design and I am using a whole bunch of stash yarn, all of which knits up to a fingering gauge even though some of the yarns are not listed that way.

The colours are glorious and vibrant and strong and are right up my alley.  It will keep the chill off my back in the evenings or tossed around my neck when I go out.  It is a gorgeous thing and I love it.

There are a few socks and other small things in the WIPs bin but these are the things I really want to finish this year.  It isn't a resolution.  It's more of a gee I sure would like to wear that plan.  The only way to wear it is to finish it and since I feel like I  have become a more monogamous type knitter ( hahaha ), maybe I can empty the bin.  

And maybe not.  It's going to be fun to see where I get to.  It's a good way to look at the upcoming year too.  It will be fun to see what I get up to!