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A friend of mine in England has a family business making and selling darling little papercraft people and animals. His wife does the artwork! They very kindly sent me a bundle of goodies a while back. Tonight my right hand, which has been very sore from too much Christmas knitting, finally felt well enough that I could use scissors, so I made two of the little animals into Christmas ornaments! They are printed in several layers, which you cut out and then assemble with little sticky foam pads between them to give a 3-D effect. Here’s a Polar Bear:

Doesn’t he look wistful under his mistletoe?

And here’s a jolly Christmas-tree bearing Camel:

And here’s how his components looked before he was assembled:

There are several more in the package — a turkey carrying a plum pudding, robins with crackers, and penguins playing in the snow, plus more poses from the camel and the bear. Can’t wait to make more!

A few weeks ago, Mom commissioned me to make a hat for her friend. The friend wanted stripes in lime green, blue, and cream, so we bought Knitpicks’ Telemark in Northern Green, Cobalt, and Cream, one ball of each. I started the hat last weekend, top-down, and it took a few tries to got a crown that I liked (it took all day Saturday), but once I had it going it was a quick, fun project. I did stripes and cables, for fun, and a turn-up that’s knit inside out so it’s right-side out when turned up :) And I lined it with a band of polar fleece around the ears. Here’s the project on Ravelry: Commissioned Striped Hat

Henry modeling for me:

And here is a shot of the turn-up unfolded:

And folded:

I also finished a gift for someone a couple of days ago. It’s in the mail, and I’ll post about it when the recipient lets me know it got there! And I’ve got a few Christmas presents on my needles, too, which of course I can’t post about yet :)

We’re having crazy October weather. Last week we had a heat wave and it got up to 98 degrees Fahrenheit in our neighborhood (that’s 36.6 Celsius), plus the typical hot dry Santa Ana winds blowing in from the desert. Now we’re having a cold snap — it was 46F (7.7C) outside today when I woke up at 8am, and 66F (18.8C) in the house. The heater even turned on last night for the first time since last winter!

We all hope it stays cold. I love bundling up in my warm woolly clothes and not needing an ice pack to keep my feet cool at night. But since it’s October in San Diego, it’ll probably be 100 degrees next week again.

I’m having mouse problems with my Macbook. Something in the button has broken and it randomly decides that I’m clicking it even when I’m not. It’s more manageable if I never click the button at all, so I’ve got my external mouse hooked up all the time, but I still get the occasional random button click, which can have hilarious or disastrous results! I have to try to remember to park the cursor over a blank area of the screen, not over a “submit” button. Dan can install a new mouse assembly for me (wonderful Dan!), but that means buying one, which is annoying.

I think I never posted about my finished Hermia sweater! I finished it up last week. I absolutely love it! Here are a few photos (which I had to take myself ’cause everyone else was busy):

(real yarn color is brighter)

(this one is pretty close to the true spring-green color)

(I made the sleeves long long long for my gorilla arms. I hate sleeves that are a little too short.)

I used about 5.5 skeins of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece and size 5 and size 2 Knitpicks Harmony wooden circular needles. You can read all about it on its Ravelry Page, or, if you don’t have an account there yet:

I got about 5st/inch and about 6.5 rows/inch, so I cast on for the XS size but am working the neck increases every four rows. And I’m working a few sets of short rows across the back.

Stopped increasing at 162 st (including the 4 CO st under each arm), worked a couple rows, then dec away 2 st from the back under each arm (158 st total).

After working the welt, I increased to 200 stitches for the peplum. I worked the lace pattern 6 times and then worked the hem, splitting the yarn down to 2 plies for the underside of the hem and sewing down the live loops instead of binding off.

Working sleeves flat and simultaneously on one long circular needle with two balls of yarn. A bit awkward but by god they’ll match. Decreased sleeves down to 54 st over the first 12 rows or so, now will work plain for a while.

After 60 rows (to about elbow length), I increased at each side and then again every ten rows to 62 st. Now I just have to knit till they’re long enough…

Ok 126 rows seemed long enough for the sleeves. Then I worked the YO turning row and then the facing with two plies of yarn.

I worked two sets of short rows across the back neck edging, first set at back raglan and second set 6 st back from there. Worked three garter ridges, then cast off on the next RS row, giving the effect of four garter ridges.

Soft and comfy!

I finished knitting Hermia yesterday, and she’s blocking now:

(the green is not so dull as it looks in the photo, it’s more springy)

In other news, it was 96 degrees Fahrenheit here today. Good lord. Henry and I sat around and melted all day. I fixed milkshakes for lunch — chocolate ice cream, rice milk, a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter. Yum.

Pattern: The Travelling Roses pattern for the main motif and an edging to be decided later. I’d love some edging suggestions! I re-charted the pattern with my favorite symbols (I’ll post that chart later) and am working three repeats across. It’s a 44-row pattern and rather complex in places (those rosettes!) and I haven’t been able to memorize it yet like I did the easy Print o’ the Wave pattern, so it’s slow going and no good for TV knitting or not-feeling-well knitting, which is why I haven’t made quite the progress I’d have liked to. But it’s so pretty! :)

Kathy (my lovely and gracious elder sister who will have a birthday soon!) chose Knitpicks Shadow yarn in the Midnight color. It’s just beautiful — very dark blackish-blue with just the faintest fleeting hint of purple and green when the light hits it right. Very elegant.

After three lengthwise repeats I did a rough blocking to make sure it’d be wide enough:

Looking good, eh Kath? :)

Feeling really wretched today. My mouth hurts and I just feel completely exhausted and wrung out, and I must have slept funny because my whole left shoulder/neck hurts. Bah.

I felt well enough to knit yesterday so I made a lot of progress on Hermia:

Worked the lace while watching Mad Men all day, and worked the hem while we watched a couple episodes of Season Two of Life On Mars (John Simm. Yum.). I split the yarn in half for the underside of the hem to reduce bulk, and instead binding off I just sewed down the live stitches. When the lace peplum is blocked I think it will have a nice swing.

Dan went out and brought me two tubs of mashed potatoes from Boston Market for dinner last night ’cause I’d finished my big homemade pot of soup and my carton of creamy tomato/roasted pepper soup from Trader Joe’s. He also took my iMac in to the applestore on Saturday because it developed a vertical blue line on the monitor. And we had three days left on the warranty. *whew* Apple has given me a new power supply and a new logic board for that computer, and now I think they’re giving me a new screen. Always buy Applecare.

I watched the 1985 BBC Pride and Prejudice miniseries on Saturday. It was really great! I liked the whole cast very much except for Mister Darcy, who was just thoroughly unappealing. And Lady Catherine de Burgh wasn’t much to write home about. But everyone else was very well-cast and I even preferred this Mrs. Bennet to the 1995 Mrs. Bennet.

I’ve been coughing for a week now, and feeling really rundown so I’m not getting much done. Mostly I’ve been sitting around, watching Mad Men, and knitting.

I finished Dan’s laptop bag:

ravelry page

and Susan’s stole:

ravelry page

and I spent my Home and Hobby Special Award gift certificate on enough (I hope) Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece to make Alison Green Will’s Hermia for myself. Got started last night:

ravelry page

I think my cough is a bit better today, actually. Maybe I’m finally on the mend.

I made a little quilt-top yesterday:

The white-ish fabric is leftover from the regency dress that I made for Chloe many years ago. The red and green is flannel leftover from pillowcase Morsbags, and the purple is a scrap of velour. (WordPress doesn’t think that “velour” is a word, heheh) I set up a nice sewing area on the back porch, under the overhang, and sewed it all together while listening to old (2002! 2003!) episodes of Loveline with Kathy Griffin as the guest. (Oh Kathy Griffin we love you SO MUCH! Can’t wait for season 5 of D-List!)

Anyway, got the quilt top pieced, and then pieced together odd scraps of batting from Dan’s Monkey Wrench quilt and sandwiched the whole thing with a large scrap of mom’s hydrangea/raspberry curtains for the backing. Ready to quilt!

I don’t even really know why I’m making this… I just had an urge to use up some scraps and make a little quilt. Go figure.

Yesterday we drove up to the fairgrounds in Del Mar (it’s the racetrack, really, but they do lots of other things there when it’s not racing season) to pick up our fair entries — Henry’s dragon collection and my sweater and fern lace scarf. We both got blue ribbons, and I got a fancy yellow rosette because of my Donated Award from Common Threads, a $50 gift certificate.

Also went to another doctor for a second opinion and more tests. She thinks my Strange and Very Painful Condition is shingles, which is what I think too because it makes more sense than anything the first doctor suggested, and that’s also what my ER doctor friend thinks. Ugh. Whatever it is, it hurts like hell. The first doctor I saw (who was open on the Fourth of July, thank goodness, which is when my Strange and Very Painful Condition erupted) didn’t think of shingles so now I get to go get my blood drawn again. Hooray!

Henry and I saw some friendship-bracelet-type things at the fair, and I told him we could make them ourselves. On Friday I googled and found a fantastic website: http://www.steffe.se/vanskapsband/start.php. He’s got a basic tutorial to refresh your memory (how long has it been since you made a friendship bracelet??) and then a ton of patterns and techniques, and even a make-your-own-pattern generator thing! So Henry and I had a great time making some bracelets and I’m sure we’ll be making lots more. It’s a nice summer craft.

I’m finally feeling a lot better, whew. I just have a slight little cough, not bothersome at all. And I think my thyroid situation is beginning to even out. I have a little more energy lately and I feel like doing things again!

Henry’s Guys and Dolls performance last Tuesday went beautifully. He was so awesome! I was incredibly proud of the entire cast, and grateful to their teacher, Karen, for helping them shine. I’ll post photos as soon as I get around to sorting through them.

I finished the Baby Surprise Jacket last week. It only took a couple of days to knit and was so much fun. Now I understand why everyone knits them over and over. The shaping is so very entertaining, and when people come over to admire your work you can ask them what they think it is and no one will guess — and then you do your two little folds and presto! Baby jacket!

(lots of in-progress photos on flicker and ravelry)

The yarn is Knitpicks’ Shine Sport, a cotton/modal blend (modal is beech fiber) and was just lovely to work with, and machine washable and dryable! I tumble-dried it until it was barely damp, then patted it into shape to block it. I used almost all of three 50-gram balls on #3 needles.

And I finished Mom’s striped socks:

(that photo is a bit washed out. The real green is a nice grass-green)

They’re made with Knitpicks’ Essential sock yarn, which is the only Knitpicks yarn I’ve ever used that I don’t love 100%. It has a funny, almost slippery feeling in my fingers. But oh well, it’s a nice inexpensive superwash wool/nylon sock yarn anyway.

I have more things to say but will save them for another post!

Updated October 17 2008 with better edging instructions!

I had about 38 grams of a 50-gram skein of Knitpicks’ Shadow merino laceweight leftover from my sister’s Print o’ the Wave stole, and I wanted to whip up a bit of lace to enter in our fair this summer. So I planned out an easy little lace scarf. I knit the edging on the long sides as I went along, so I was able to use up almost all the yarn and then just save a little for the edging on the two short sides.

Yarn: any leftover laceweight, 30 grams or more (less is fine but will make a rather short scarf)
Needles: your favorite lace needles. I used Knitpicks Harmony circs size 2, but I am a notoriously loose knitter, and I think it would have looked better if I’d used bigger needles anyway. You’ll probably want size 3 to 5, or even larger if you knit very tightly. Larger needles = longer/wider scarf.
Finished Dimensions: Mine turned out to be about 9 1/2″ x 52″ after blocking. Yours will surely vary somewhat!

Ok, think of this scarf as being made of several columns. The right-side edging is the first column, then a 2-stitch always-purl garter column, then a fern-lace column worked over 16 stitches, then another 2-stitch column of garter, then another fern-lace column, then another garter column, then the left edging. If you want a wider scarf or a stole and you have plenty of yarn, you can work more fern lace columns separated by garter columns. If you want skinny, just work one repeat of the fern lace (just like the chart).

Wrong sides: always knit the wrong side of the edging, always purl the wrong side of the fern lace and garter columns. I’ll say this again later on so you don’t forget.

Start by casting on using your favorite provisional cast-on. I prefer this one.

You’ll need 4 st for the right edging, 2 for the first garter column, 16 for one fern repeat, 2 for the garter column between fern repeats, another 16 for the second fern repeat, 2 more for the last garter column, and then 4 for the left edging. Which makes, um, 46. Yes, cast on 46! Place ring markers between every column so there’s never any doubt what’s what and where you are. Seriously. I don’t usually have to do that, but I messed up a lot until I gave in and placed markers.

Now begin following the chart. Chart shows only odd-numbered right side rows (if I’d remembered to write the numbers in they’d be 1, 3, 5, 7, etc.) Go ahead and write them in :) For even-numbered, wrong-side rows, KNIT the edging stitches and PURL all the other stitches.

(D’OH. I forgot a symbol key. Circle = YO. Dot = purl. Right edging dec: ssk. Left edging dec: k2tog. Right side of fern lace dec: k3tog. Left side of fern lace dec: sl1, k2tog, psso) (Another note: the edging is an 8-row repeat. The fern lace is a 12-row repeat. The chart shows 24 rows so the two patterns work out even.)(Chart shows only odd-numbered, right-side rows)

Casting off for pointy edging:
When you complete the 7th row, you’ll have 8 edging stitches on each side. On the 8th (wrong-side) row, cast off the first 4 stitches so you only have 4 stitches remaining before the first marker. Work across. When you turn to begin the 9th row, immediately cast off 4 stitches (4 stitches remain before first marker) — then follow chart for row 9 (k1, yo, ssk, yo, k1).

Ok, so keep working until you’re nearly out of yarn. End after having cast off the edge stitches so there are 4 stitches remaining on each side next to the purl columns (you might have to fudge this a bit). I put my working stitches on a string after a while and worked the edging across the cast-on stitches using the other end of the yarn, and then I knew I really only needed a little bit left for the last short edging.

To work the short-end edgings:

If you’ve ever knit an edging onto a piece of lace, you know what to do. If you haven’t, well, I’ll do my best to explain :)

Hold the scarf right-side facing you, and cast-on edge up. Slide a needle through 6 cast-on loops from left to right – 4 loops for the edging and 2 loops for the garter column. The tip of the needle will be pointing toward the rest of the cast-on loops. Ok. Now, slide the other end of your circular needle through the rest of the loops from right to left.

Start working from the point between the needles, toward the left . You’ll be working the garter column and edging according to the left side of the chart. Always SLIP the first stitch of EVERY RIGHT SIDE row. So, for the first row: sl1, p1(place marker here to divide edging from garter column), k1, yo, k2tog, yo, k1. Turn, work wrong-side row: K5, slip marker, p1 — NOW ssk the last st together with the first stitch from the other needle. Drop the right-most loop of the ssk’d stitch but leave the left-most loop on the needle, and use it next time to help the corner lie flat.

Turn, work next RS row from chart: sl1, p1, slip marker, k2, yo, k2tog, yo, k1.
Turn, work next WS row: k6, slip marker, p1, ssk with the stitch you didn’t drop last time to help the corner lie flat. Drop the whole ssk’d stitch this time.

Next RS row: sl1, p1, slip marker, k3, yo, k2tog, yo, k1. Turn. WS row: k7, slip marker, p1, ssk (drop only right loop of ssk’d stitch again, and save left loop for the next ssk)
RS row: sl1, p1, slip marker, k4, yo, k2tog, yo, k1, turn.
WS row: this is the 8th row, the one where you cast off four stitches to create a point. CO 4, k4 (make sure you have only 4 loops left before marker), slip marker, p1, ssk with leftover loop of last ssk.

Keep working edging and purl column, decreasing away stitches from the original cast-on stitches on every wrong side row (don’t double up ssks anymore) until there are only 8 cast-on stitches left. (Better put a marker 8 stitches in from the other side so you remember that that’s the time to double up your ssks again (ask me how I know that you’ll forget otherwise… )

For the last repeat, double up the decreases again so the corner lies flat. That will eat up two of the last 8 stitches.

Then when you’re all done, weave the 6 remaining cast-on stitches together with the 6 working stitches. Voila!

Do the same thing with the live stitches at the other end of the scarf.

Gently wash and block your scarf. Enjoy!

UPDATE (July 8 2008): At our County Fair this year, my scarf won first prize and a special donated award — a $50 gift certificate to a local yarn store, Common Threads, in Encinitas.

Here’s Marlene‘s scarf:

After a long hot weekend, yesterday was a perfect summer day, and it looks like we’re headed for cooler weather again. Good. Summer is bad enough here without it starting in May.

Sorry I haven’t been blogging much… I haven’t been feeling well for the last couple of months and it’s hard to do much of anything. It kind of snuck up on me gradually, until I suddenly realized that I had many symptoms of bad thyroid levels again. I saw my endocrinologist last week. I hope it’s my thyroid levels, ’cause that’s very easy to fix with an adjustment to my synthroid dose.

So, yeah. I’ve been very slowly knitting a lace scarf to enter in the fair. It has to be delivered next week, but I’m almost out of yarn so I should be finishing soon. I used a fern lace pattern and knit a sweet pointed edging along the sides as I went, ’cause I didn’t know how far the yarn would take me. I already knit the edging onto the cast on edge.

I’ve been reading a little bit, though it’s hard to concentrate on anything but the most compelling stories, and I do find myself reading the same page several times. But Anna Maxted is always good, and I’ve just started The Country Wife by Dorothy Van Doren. I’ve been reading Everything Bad is Good For You to Henry for his bedtime story. :) When we’re done with that, I’m going to try him on some Agatha Christie.

Also, TV has been pretty entertaining lately. I discovered http://hulu.com/, where you can watch full episodes, clips, and a few movies for free, legally. Sure, the selection is limited and there are a few short ads, but if you want to see last night’s Family Guy without bothering to find a torrent and download it, hulu does the job. Also http://watchtvsitcoms.com is handy — we’ve been working our way through Seinfeld in order on the weekends :)

The Office season finale was excellent. Survivor is over now, sigh, but we have next fall to look forward to. We’ve been catching up on House — the current season is quite good. And The Tudors is great. Poor Ann. And last week we finally had a good episode of Battlestar Galactica! FINALLY! Things happened and it wasn’t boring! Dancing With The Stars ends tonight. We can’t wait for next season.

Oh, and my night-elf druid hit 70 last weekend :)

I finished the Print o’ the Wave Stole! (Note: As written, Chart B for the edging contains an error. The second-to-last stitch of rows 9, 11, 13 and 15 should be marked as a k2tog.) I knit 34 repeats of the main motif in one long panel, instead of grafting two 17-rep pieces together down the back.

Yarn: Knitpicks’ “Shadow” in “Lost Lake” (dark green, with just a hint of blue and brown). I bought three 50-gram skeins, but only needed 12 grams of the third skein.

Needles: Knitpicks’ “Harmony” wooden circs, size 2.

Finished size: 23″ x 65″

This was my first fine lace project. It was fun and easy, and I got it done much faster than I thought I would — less than a month start to finish. Both lace patterns were relatively easy to memorize, so of course the knitting sped up when I no longer had to refer to the chart all the time.

I wish you could feel the finished stole. It is so soft and fine and light and floaty, yet very warm. It’s a very beautiful thing.

Photos! Because there are so many, I’ll make them small. Click to embiggen.

And now, backwards in time a bit, here it is blocking yesterday. It dried fast in this insanely hot weather:

And here’s what it looked like as I was rounding the final corner with the edging:

Happy birthday, Kirsten :) I’ll pop it in the mail soon!

I’ve been working on the edging like crazy. Here’s what one short end of The Stole looks like, pinned roughly out to shape:

As of tonight, I have only about 15 reps to go!

Also — last night The Office was on. Hooray!!!! I believe that was Michael’s finest “That’s what she said!” ever. Ahhhhh so wonderful to have new Office.

I’ve been working on Eunny Jang’s Print o’ the Wave stole, in Knitpicks’ Shadow laceweight merino (Lost Lake colorway) with size 2 needles. I’m having a lot of fun with it — it’s a nice easy lace pattern with restful purled WS rows. The zig-zags are so nice and obvious that I don’t need markers to remind me where the pattern repeats are, and it’s easy to tell what row I’m on if I forget. (Note: errata here! Most important thing is “As written, Chart B for the edging contains an error. The second-to-last stitch of rows 9, 11, 13 and 15 should be marked as a k2tog.”) I’m knitting the thing in one piece from end to end so there’s no grafted seam down the middle. And I don’t think I’ll be doing as many reps as the pattern calls for (34 total)… we’ll see how long it gets.

Progress on March 23:

And earlier today:

I was just browsing around for alternate knitted edgings, in case I want to change things around a bit, and by sheer coincidence I bumped into the very same pattern (pretty sure, didn’t analyze it but it looks the same) as the main body of the stole, only here it’s called Coral Pattern. Neat!

Henry’s Happy Striped Socks are done!

Yarn: Knitpicks’ Risata — one entire skein of blue, with only a couple yards left over, and less than half of a skein of buttermilk.

Needles: Knitpicks’ Harmony 32″ wooden circs, size 0

Vague Details:

CO 16 st using Judy’s Magic Cast-on. Make toe till you have 52 st total. Move one st from sole to top (25/27). Top is k3,p1. (End k3) Work two rounds white, 5 rounds blue till you have 9 white stripes. Make ordinary Dutch heel on 25 st (heel flap will be under the heel) for 14 ridges. Turn heel on 8+9+8. Pick up all those side stitches. Decrease away gusset stitches every third round. Continue ribbing pattern for 5 more white stripes. Switch to k1p1 ribbing in blue for 12 rounds, then 4 rounds double knitting to prep for grafting (14 rounds total), then graft. Done!

Kung Fu Socks!

In progress:

I love the Magic Loop method! I’d never knit socks that way before. It made them go really fast, because you only have to fiddle with your needles twice every round, instead of four times! Also it made them way more portable, and easier to try on at any time. I’ve started another pair just like these but in green and brown — Henry’s choice. I also discovered that i don’t hate toe-up socks if I don’t try to make a fancy backwards heel. A regular old Dutch heel is just fine.

Knit Picks’ Slipped Cable Vest, in Wool of the Andes worsted. Needles: Harmony wooden circs, size 4.

Cute, huh? I’m quite pleased! It was fast and fun to knit. However, for the sake of other knitters who might want want to make the same vest: Warning! There are a lot of errors in the pattern!

1. You need to start the cable patterns on the second row (RS), which is not really made clear in the pattern. Also, you don’t want to just randomly place your increases! Count your stitches and figure out where to place increases so that the ribbing continues unbroken up the sides of the vest.

2. This one might trip up a new knitter: when working the short-row shoulder shaping, you will start on a WS row for the left side, and a RS row for the right side! You want the taller part of the fabric at the neckline, and the lower part at the armhole, so you’ll start working the short rows at the neck edge, not the armhole edge!

3. When you start knitting the right side and back after binding off for the armholes, the instructions are unclear and could lead you wrong. You must start by knitting a WS row or you’ll lose a row of your cable pattern.

4. When you pick up stitches around the neckline for the collar, the instructions don’t tell you to pick up stitches up the side-fronts! For me (size small), it was 23 front +18 side-front + 46 back +18 side front +23 front for a total of 128, not the 94 called for in the pattern. Quite an omission. EDIT: Now I’m wondering if maybe I’m wrong about these numbers… maybe they really did want me to pick up far fewer stitches than I did, though it seems as if the fabric would pucker. That might account for the width of the neckline. Hmm… Well, try it both ways and see how it works for you!

All in all, a somewhat sloppily written pattern and not one I’d recommend for new knitters, or those who don’t want to have to figure out where the pattern is steering them wrong :)

This was a fast and fun knit, despite the pattern errors. Wool of the Andes is a lovely yarn, very easy to work with, and it blocked beautifully. The pattern needs some tweaks to make it great (besides fixing the errors). Balancing the cables, front and back, so that like cables meet at the shoulder, would be easy and very effective. In size small, swapping the positions of the front cables would not change the stitch count and would mean that the cables met smoothly at the shoulders. The neckline is oddly low. The collar needs short rows in the back to raise it — I added four sets of staggered short rows, raising the back of the collar by an inch (4 inches high in back, 3 inches in the front). Another touch I added was to balance the collar ribbing so that it starts and ends with k2, PLUS a chain selvage — so, on a right side, sl1, *k2, p2* around, end k2, p1. Wrong side: sl1, *p2,k2* around, end p3.

Another little tweak — instead of binding off for the armholes, just slip the stitches to a holding string. Drop the working yarn, and attach a new ball for the back and another new ball for the other front. Then when you pick up the armhole ribbing it will continue smoothly up from the side-ribbing!

This is not my favorite FO, but it’ll be useful, and the yarn was only $14, so even though it’s not perfect I’m still happy I made it :) More photos:

(Look at my ridiculous puffy hair. Oh how I wish it would lie flat!)

Another beautiful day today! Hung more laundry outside. It’s so nice to have a real backyard with a clothesline! Henry and I went down to Mission Bay again, and we brought his bike so he could ride on the bike path, back and forth, back and forth. I sat in the shade and worked on the Slipped Cable Vest, finished up the fronts and started the back!

(Thanks to Aperture, this is a relatively accurate representation of the color, at least on my iMac’s monitor)

When we got home, we played another game of Agricola, and then in the evening I took him to his Kung Fu group class for the first time in two weeks. So happy he’s feeling good again. And after Henry went to bed, Dan and I watched episode 9 of Celebrity Rehab. Love that show! Seth and Mary and Jessica went to Sober Living, yay!

I recently ordered knitpicks’ Slipped Cable Vest pattern and 8 skeins of Wool of the Andes in a lovely honey-brown-gold color they call “wheat” (on sale for $1.79/skein. Dude!) Also a set of size 4 Harmony needle tips (Yeah, pattern calls for 8s, I got gauge on 4s. Go figure.) Last night, after finishing the brown and cream mittens, I cast on for the vest and worked about two inches of ribbing, and then today I finished the ribbing and worked two repeats of the cable pattern. Working 198 stitches in ribbing is funny. It starts out six miles wide and draws in gradually while you’re working, and when you finally have 3 inches of knitting it’s a reasonable width :)

It’s very restful, after all the improvisational knitting I’ve been doing, to just follow a damn pattern for a change :) The pattern is very simple, and is written pretty well, but the transition between ribbing and cable could be made a lot clearer. If you follow the directions, it seems that you need to start the cable patterns on the second row (RS), which is not really made clear in the pattern. Also, you don’t want to just randomly place your increases! Count your stitches and figure out where to place increases so that the ribbing continues unbroken up the sides of the vest. If you goof it up a little, you don’t need to rip the whole thing back — just drop the offending stitches, rearrange them a little so that the knitted ribs are unbroken, and pull them back up with a crochet hook.

Here’s my progress so far:

I’m enjoying working with the Wool of the Andes. It’s a little rougher than Telemark, and I wouldn’t want to wear it directly next to the skin, but for outerwear it’s very nice.