Nice Mail

I had good mail yesterday.  

First up, one of my lovely nieces sent me a Christmas gift.  Yes.  It took a month for a Christmas letter to clear the post office.   It's a gift certificate for one of my favourite yarn stores.  What a sweet woman and a lovely gift.

And the yarn I ordered last week was also in the mail.  And oh my goodness did I pick the colours right.  

The navy Cascade 220 is from my stash but the 5 colours are new.  These are going to be  Flea sweater for me.  This time I am going to watch my gauge more carefully and I am going to check closely as I knit that I am keeping that gauge.  It may not look glorious yet, but it will.

And the sock yarn.  

Again it may not feel like much, but it fills my soul with pleasure.  A green farmer sock is on the way for me.  I started on with existing yarns but the Kroy sock yarn was too heavy for some old but very nice Confetti sock yarn.  They were distinctly different weights even though they were both fingering weights.  

They don't look that different here but they sure are when you work with them.  The Kroy would be a reasonable mate to the Fiesta.  

Now I have to figure out what I want to get with my gift certificate.  Right now I am leaning to something a little special.  Noro Kureyon?  Maybe some Cascade to make a gorgeous cabled something?  Hmmmm.

Interesting.

It was a lovely quiet weekend.  Lots of time to knit and lots of time to do tasks that have long been put off.  

I cleaned and tidied my sewing room yesterday and it was really nice to have that mostly done.  I.  Can.  See.  Floor!  And tabletop.  The tabletop is the most amazing part of it.  There were boxes of mini things from November piled there as well as spare blankets and pillows that had been washed after the holidays.  Plus all of the usual fabric I was working with when last I sewed.  It was a bit of a nightmare.  There were all sorts of things that didn't belong taking up floor space.  There still is a bit so work will continue this week.  That poor room has been neglected too long.  

Today's play is going to be going through all the miniature tools and putting them into the lovely little tool box I got at Christmas.  

It's the perfect size for mini tools and will be a real help keeping ordered.  Is time to pull out the things I need to get a start on the garden.  There are a few things I want to do for inside too.  Like real houses, there are always things to do. They are never really complete.

It was a good knitting weekend too.  

I did a good bit of knitting on socks.

 One sock completed in January.  And a start on a toe for February.  I must say though that this is the very last time I do this sort of toe.  It's just too fiddly for my shaking fingers.  I love garter stitch square toes for the fit and comfort and now for the ease in making it too.  

There was other knitting too.  The socks seemed to be enough of a change that I charged ahead and kept working on the Blue sweater.  

What you see is the front of a side split knitting up nicely.  

I might set this sweater aside this week.  I feel like something else today.  It might be socks.  It might be my Musselbourgh hat.  It might be something new.  Maybe.  It might be that I will  just wind yarn today.  There is lots of that to do from the yarns for projects that I really want to do.  

The more I think of it, the more that sounds like fun.  Playing with yarn but not adding to the pile of WIPs on the go.  Interesting.  

Working on the Blue

Somewhere in the week, this happened.

Suddenly, it's a sweater.  The underarm length is 8 inches now and it is time for some decisions. 

Split hem?  I think so.  This is a Basic Tolsta, which is a brilliant design by Rebecca Clow but part of the design mastery is that it is made to be modified.  She encourages you to turn it into your own sweater.  This gorgeous blue is mine and I want it to be something utterly comfortable to wear.  

I have a couple of things I made where the side split is perfect.  I am going to follow those for where this split ought to be.  A vest that I really love has a split starting at 8 inches from the underarm.  The vest is always worn with something under it.  Any lower back chill is stopped by that.  On a sweater, it might be a good idea to knit just a tiny bit more.  I think I will knit an inch more and then split. 

I want to add a bit of a detail where that split happens.  Often splits look stringy, like a suddenly loose stitch with a long leg.  I want something to make that separation more reinforced.  I think doing a stitch similar to the way a stitch wraps a group of stitches in Mrs. Hunter's pattern. Some kind of wrapped stitch is what I am aiming for.  

After the split I am following just what I did on the vest.  The front will be an additional 7 inches and the back, 9, some of which will be ribbing.  

And then sleeves.  I think, these will be my preferred 3/4 length.  For a change, I am not concerned about running out of yarn.  

Plenty of yarn left on the cones.  There is another sweater there, possibly a sweater and a vest.  

I'm just happy I get this one.  And satisfied.  There is nothing like making and wearing  clothing you have made yourself.    

Today's work will be socks.  I am finding my way with this process of giving myself a day to work on small things.  It feels comfortable and right.