Knitting – Page 32 – The Knitting Doctor

My Desk

In keeping with the latest trend, here are a few pictures of my office. This is the “bonus room” of our house, and is a balcony room overlooking the main living area. It has a spectacular view out over the lake, and serves as a writing room, work office, and the knitting room.

Here is what one of the desks looks like:

My other desk is an ancient oak rolltop. I haven’t been able to get the top down over all the crap for decades.

If you were wondering, “Is that a crown on her desk?”, why yes, it is a crown!

A friend gave me this crown, clearly realizing my royal potential. I wore it to the hospital all day on Halloween this year. Most of the patients loved it; a few were clearly confused as to why the Queen was visiting them in the hospital and asking them how their breathing was doing.

In case anybody in knitblog world thinks they have the most books, you are dead wrong. Here are five of my bookshelves:

There are three more of those ceiling high bookcases in the lower level of my house. And books in stacks all over the floor as well. Even if they had been able to fit in my office, I’d have been afraid to have that much weight all in one balcony room! Every so often my husband has a meltdown and insists that we weed out some crap and give it away. When this happens, I spend an agonizing several days going through all the books to find ones that I can get rid of. I almost always find at least one little box that I can part with.

There is knitting going on in this house, and actually out of the house as well. Remember this?

I’ve used up one whole ball of yarn, and spliced in the second ball (of three) while at the theater last night, matching the stripes perfectly, I might add. We went to Noises Off, at the Seattle Rep. If you live in the area, go see this; it is very well done. On a much sadder note, Tacoma Actors Guild folded last night due to financial difficulties. They were the only professional theater group in Tacoma, and have done some fine work over the years. We were at their last performance Wednesday night; of course we didn’t know it was the last one. Here’s hoping that some huge corporation bails them out and fills their Christmas stocking with a wad of cash.

Purple Thing

After some serious dithering, the sleeves are done and are on the blocking board. The fronts and back shoulder seams have been matched up, and I’m just waiting for the sleeves to dry so I can set them in. Then a little seaming party, a few bands, buttons, and voila! A sweater!

Oh my god. Buttons. I forgot to buy buttons for this thing. I’m thinking something really girly and elegant. Another shopping opportunity. I just happen to have a gift certificate to the Weaving Works in Seattle, and we just happen to be making a trip to the city later today. Who the hell goes to a yarn store and just buys buttons?

The consensus on the bands, by the way, is seed stitch. I will try that first and see what it looks like.

Here are the sleeves:

I am one of the apparently few knitters who like the sewing and finishing part. I look at all those pieces and think “wow” I knit all that! Helping them all get put together in the right configuration is fun for me. Even sewing in yarn ends in not onerous. That moment when the last stray end is hidden, and the last button secured, is wonderful. Even if it is the middle of the night I want to get up and parade around the house in my finished work of art.

Don’t be sending me all your unfinished sweaters just yet. I don’t find the finishing THAT much fun.

The dithering on the sleeves was the result of my apparent inability to remember which decreases are paired with which, and which ones go on which side of the piece. The knit side increases I have finally committed to memory, but the last 18 rows of the sleeve caps required a decrease on every row. I am just not a fan of purl side decreases. I haven’t done them very often, so they don’t look as neat as they should. Then I just plain followed my scribbled instructions wrong, so had to rip back about three times to get it right.

For the record, and if I write it down here, I might have a prayer of remembering it the next time I have to do it.

On the KNIT side, the decrease that goes on the right side of the work, that is left-leaning, is a SSK. The left side of the sleeve gets a right-leaning increase, a K2tog.

On the PURL side, it gets a little dicier. After trying a few things, here is what looks best to me.
On the right side, the left-leaning one, is a SSP. Slip the next two stitches, one at a time, as if to knit. Return them in their now-turned configuration to the left needle. Now purl into the FARSIDE (the back leg) of the stitches, purling them together.

The left side of the sleeve as you are looking at it gets a right leaning decrease. The book that I looked this up in said to just P2tog, but I like how it looks on the public side better if you P2tog through the back loops.

I have to say, it takes a bit of practice to do the through the back loop ones without stretching the stitches way out.

I will leave you with a couple of pictures that make me happy. We have had the same angel on our Christmas tree since we were married. Here’s old Gabe:

And here are the Three Wise Guys:

If I could find the rest of the nativity scene that matched them I would buy it in a minute!

I’m off to finish my Christmas shopping. Who am I kidding? I’m off to START my Christmas shopping. Where the hell is the challenge in getting ready for Christmas in October??

Back to the Purple Sweater

I am near the end of the sleeve misery. I haven’t quite figured out why people who love to knit, and spend every spare moment either knitting, thinking about knitting, or shopping for the next knitting project hate to knit sleeves. My theory is that you knit the sleeves last, so you are good and sick of the whole project by the time you get to that last row.

Anyway, I need some opinions about the button bands and the neckband. This is a pattern that I designed with Sweater Wizard software, so I am the boss of my knitting on this project. For those of you who have forgotten what the purple sweater looks like (because I’ve been doing it for so freaking long), it is a plain hip length cardigan, knit in stockinette stitch, with a wide lace border on the bottom hem and sleeves. At one point I thought about doing seed stitch bands, but now I’m thinking about a 1 by 1 plain ribbing for the bands.

I know, I know. I should try both and see which one I like best. And it certainly may come to that. What do you all think? Do you have a preference? Here are a few old pictures to get your mind around what this sweater looks like.

The polls are open. One hopes that this vote won’t be as controversial as the November elections.
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Many thanks for all the anniversary wishes! My husband would personally like to thank everyone who commented on how handsome he is in his tuxedo. He is not so impressed by those of you who commented on Eric the Chef. I believe he thinks that some of you are shallow and featherbrained for drooling over a handsome man just because he’s cute and has a French accent. In case anyone is really wondering, it was only a temporary insanity on my part. How could I even for a nanosecond think of trading in a man who gets up every morning and makes me coffee and breakfast, and who is at this moment cooking me something to eat out of the Cordon Bleu cookbook while I “work” on my blog? And no, he’s not for rent!

Ramen Noodles

No, this has not become a fast-food blog. Though ramen noodles do have their advantages. I did a fair amount of knitting on the lavender sleeve this week. Unfortunately “work” does not always translate to “progress”. I mentioned in my previous post that the armhole on the finished and blocked body is a little bigger than the pattern measurements. I will have to change the sleeve dimensions a little to make the sleeve cap fit into the armhole. Then I decided I want the sleeves just a little bit longer than the original pattern (I have gorilla-length arms). Sweater Wizard makes it possible to change every single dimension in the pattern on the schematic picture of the sweater; when you hit “enter” it changes the pattern instructions accordingly. I love this software! The original pattern instructions for the sleeve instructions were something like “increase every 4 rows 18 times, then every 6 rows 6 times”. The new instructions were to “increase every 4 rows 25 times”, then go to the every 6 rows part. I had just finished all the increases using the previous set of instructions, and briefly considered just doing more “every 6 row” increases, but figured I would end up with a sleeve that dragged to my knees. So I ripped it out back to the every 4 rows part and am ready to go again. You still with me?? Here is the ramen noodles part:

I rolled some of it back up before I took the picture, but 30-some rows of ripped out cotton yarn looks like purple ramen noodles to me. The good news is that I didn’t wait to decide to change this until I had finished both sleeves. Now I just have to remember what I did when I get to the second one.

Here is the non-knitting picture of the day:

My Christmas cacti appear to be confused about the season.
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You might have noticed a new link over in the Webrings and Buttons section on the left. I decided in a moment of temporary insanity to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short). This group of truly berserk people commit every November to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. This started in 1999, and this year so far there are over 39,000 people who have signed up. I didn’t decide to do this until the last couple of days in October, so I’m a bit behind on my word count. 50,000 words in 30 days means about 1667 words a day. As I’ve never written a novel before, this should be highly entertaining. I did convince my husband that I needed a laptop computer in order to complete this task. I will never hear the end of it if I don’t get to 50,000 words. If you join and start writing tonight, you only have to do 2083 words a day to get there…any takers??

I’m Depressed

The votes are in. Kerry/Edwards won by a huge margin in the election held right here at Knitting Doctor. The turnout wasn’t huge, but the mandate was clear: 15 for K/E, 6 for B/C. That means Kerry got somewhere around 70% of the popular vote.

Too bad the real world doesn’t mirror knitting blogs. Clearly, knit bloggers, and knit blog readers, are smarter than the average American.

I’m looking forward to 2008. Once W. screws things up even more that he already has, voters will most certainly put an intelligent woman or man in the White House. Until then, we all can take comfort in the fact that America has endured worse.

Now back to our regularly scheduled knitting blog.

I finally got the body of the purple sweater blocked. Here is a picture of the pinning ceremony. You can see my handy-dandy steamer in the background, waiting for its turn. Take note of my lovely home-made blocking board.

And here everything is ready to get steamed:

The lace detail:

Here’s where I am on the first sleeve. After I blocked and measured the back pieces, the armhole is a bit larger than the measurements given in the pattern, so I will need to adjust the sleeve width a bit to match. Last time I knit a sweater, I didn’t take this into consideration; this error led to an awful lot of swearing in the Knitting Doctor household.

In case you thought I am hiding the green striped socks from you, here are a couple of pictures. I finished the short row heel and am on my way up the cuff. This turned out better than I expected. It looks a little big on my foot because it is intended for my Bigfooted husband. He refused to model because he was too busy sobbing over election results.

I’m off to watch the concession speech.

Sleeve Island

I want to know if it’s OK to drink beverages with little paper umbrellas while vacationing on Sleeve Island. Though now that I think about that, maybe it’s not such a great idea. We were invited to a party last night and I took my knitting bag along, as it was about an hour’s drive from home. We got there about 2 hours before the party started (don’t ask; it’s a really long story, and it’s NOT my fault). The hosts were nice enough to let us in anyway and give us something to drink. I really wasn’t going to bring my knitting in to the party until the sister of the hostess arrived (also about 2 hours early, but then she was family). She promptly brought out her knitting and stated that she just couldn’t sit still without it. So I went out and got my purple sweater and worked on the sleeve. She very politely commented that working on knitted lace while drinking bourbon and watching a World Series game might not be a good plan. Well what the hell did she know? I just ignored her and kept knitting until I realized that I just had seriously f***ed things up. I finished the row anyway (never stop in the middle of a row, you know) and put it away until tonight. After looking at it awhile, I decided that I just needed to go back to the beginning of the row I had been working on. Then I realized that, in my bourbon-induced knitting zeal, I had done one whole repeat more of the lace pattern than what I needed to. I started to rip back the whole repeat, lost count, and just ripped the whole thing out. During tonight’s World Series game, I redid the lace border for the first sleeve. It turned out fine, which leads me to believe that it was the bourbon that was the problem, and not the excitement of the game.

I’m done with the back and both front pieces. I was too lazy to take a good picture; here’s a pile of knitted pieces;

And the sleeve, after the ripping and re-knitting:

Ack. Short Rows.

I know learning new things is good for me. It’s supposed to stretch my brain and keep my mind nimble. My green striped sock pattern is a toe-up version with a short row heel. I have never tried this before, and I’m beginning to see why. Now, I like the idea of doing the socks from the toe up. You can just knit till your yarn is half gone without doing all that guessing as to whether there will be enough to get the second sock done. I keep reminding myself that I wasn’t so hot at doing flap heels and gussets either, the first several times I did it. I’ve only ripped this sucker back once so far, but we shall see. It’s really not a difficult concept once you try it and just follow the freaking directions. Here are some pictures:

Let me tell you, I’m not feeling very guru-ish right at the moment, despite what this quiz says.

You appear to be a Knitting Guru. You love knitting
and do it all the time. While finishing a piece
is the plan, you still love the process, and
can’t imagine a day going by without giving
some time to your yarn. Packing for vacation
involves leaving ample space for the stash and
supplies. It can be hard to tell where the yarn
ends and you begin.
http://marniemaclean.com

What Kind of Knitter Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

If I sound cranky, I’m not really. It’s actually fun to do something new, even if it is a bit fidgety at first.

I promised Norma a picture from my yard the next time the sun was shining. I figured I better not wait till April to do this, so here’s one with the sun NOT shining. This is from our back deck.

Note that there is actually some blue sky there!

Crochet Lady

No, this blog isn’t going to morph into The Crocheting Doctor. I had one of those moments at work this past week that reminds me why I will always love being a physician. I had admitted an elderly lady with dementia to the hospital earlier in the week with a diagnosis of “altered mental status”. Basically she was sent in for placement in a nursing home because they couldn’t take care of her at the facility she was in. Always the optimist, I tinkered with her medications and stopped some sedating drugs she was on, and the next thing I knew, she was awake and alert. She was still quite demented, mind you, but now very alert and interactive. One of the staff had mentioned that she was once a knitter, so I asked her about it. She looked at me and promptly said, “No, crochet.” The next day I took her some leftover yarn (the leftover balls from this) and a crochet hook. When I took it out of the bag, she didn’t even wait for me to explain. Her eyes lit up and she took it out of my hands and just started in. I checked back periodically through the day, thinking she might need a bit of help. She never did get past that first row, but she crocheted one heck of a long blue chain. The yarn and hook were discharged happily from the hospital with her.

Many thanks to everyone who left birthday wishes. I had to work, but my guy cooked me a wonderful dinner when I got home. He’s upstairs making Ethiopian Doro Wat tonight. I have no idea what inspired this, but I’m not about to complain.

Just so I don’t get kicked out of the Knitting Kitty ring, here are some pictures of Lucy. Lucy found a pile of old papers that were slated for the shredder earlier this week. Note how she looks so freaking innocent in this one.

A while later I found her under the pile. This photo didn’t quite capture all the little shredded bits around her. I guess she was just trying to help.

You might wonder why there are rarely pictures of Willie. Will thinks he’s a dog, and doesn’t usually stay in one place long enough for pictures.

I have been slogging along on my three little projects, making slow but steady progress. Just because it’s so damned purty, here is a picture of Birch:

This yarn is pretty fidgety to knit with, but I adore this color. It’s finally getting to the point where I can see some progress! Oooooh! Little Birch leaves!

Wall of Yarn

My favorite part of the San Francisco trip was the little foray out to ArtFibers. All I can say is that it is probably a good thing for the sake of my credit card bill that I don’t live near this place. (Yes, I know they ship, but it ain’t the same…)

For those of you who have never been there, here is the Wall of Yarn:

I sat through FOUR whole days of medical conference just waiting for the chance to get done and go to this place. I learned many new things, and didn’t fall asleep once, thanks to my trusty knitting project. The conference had perhaps 400 attendees, pretty well mixed half and half, men and women. (Oh, I remember the good old days, when I was one of a minority of women physicians! “Lady Doctors”, we were called way back then.) I was the only person knitting, although there was one other woman doing needlepoint. I found it rather amusing that the only people that commented on my knitting were a couple of men sitting near me that said some favorable things.

Here’s what I worked on:

I figure I’m about a third done with this. It was great conference knitting, with those miles of stockinette that I didn’t have to pay any attention to.

Oh, I suppose you want to know what yarn I came home with??

The ribbon yarn in both of these pictures is called “Houdini”. The first one really is as red as it looks. The red shiny stuff with it is Baccarat, which is a nylon sequin ribbon novelty yarn. The red combo will be a long skinny scarf.

The other combo is the Houdini ribbon in a fall color blend, along with Kyoto, a silk/mohair/wool blend in a lovely gold color. This will be a wide rectangular shawl. The women in the store are unbelievably helpful in assisting you with pattern and color suggestions. I sort of had an idea what I wanted for a pattern for this, and the woman helping me sat right down and hand wrote a pattern for this yarn combo that I think will be perfect.

I’ve decided that as an incentive to finish that Birch shawl, I will NOT start either one of these until I finish that one. I tried to work on it while watching the VP debate last night, but got a little worked up and lost track of where I was. Maybe I won’t really try to finish it till after the election.

Busy, Busy,

Doing stuff other than knitting, unfortunately. We’ve had a houseful of visiting relatives the past 2 weeks. It reminds me of when we lived in Montana for a bunch of years. We used to say there were two seasons; winter and visiting relatives. I’ve also had one of those weeks at work where I look back and realize that all I’ve done for the past seven days is work, eat, and sleep. I have done a little knitting, but not so as you’d notice from these pictures.

First the lavender sweater:

I couldn’t get it to quit rolling around and be quiet for a decent picture.

Then the Birch shawl. This is a bit more painstaking to knit. Not difficult, just one of those “pay-attention” projects. Note the dental floss lifeline at the end of the last repeat.

And the striped socks. These don’t look like I’ve done much since the last pictures, because, well, I haven’t done much since then.

The good news is that tomorrow is Friday for me. And we are leaving the next day for a week. I have a medical conference to attend for three days, and we’ll play a little bit as well. The meeting will provide me with three whole days to sit in a chair in a conference room and KNIT! Lovely! I used to feel self-conscious about knitting in conferences. I’ve found that honestly nobody gives a rat’s ass if I knit or not, and it keeps me awake and attentive. I’ve decided that it’s probably less distracting than if I was snoring loudly during a lecture. The meeting is in San Francisco; anybody know any good yarn shops there??

I probably won’t get a chance to blog again until I get back. Have a good week, everybody!

You Can Do It At a Trot,

You can do it at a gallop. You can do it real slow so your heart don’t palpitate. Just don’t be late, do the Puyallup.

Yes ma’am, we went to the Puyallup State Fair this year; complete with three small children in tow. For those of you not fortunate enough to live in this heaven we call Western Washington, Puyallup is pronounced “pew-al-up”, sort of rhymes with gallop. This and other unusual place names is how we tell locals from out-of-staters. Sequim is another good test; locals know to say “squim”, the furriners say “see-quim”. Some people mistakenly think we keep these unusual names to honor our local native people. Wrong, so wrong. We do it so we know who the visitors are.

If you live around here, every year in mid-September that silly song runs through your head non-stop. And you just have to go. There are cows, chickens, rides, deep-fried Twinkies (really!). There are more varieties of fancy pigeons than you would ever believe. There are 4-H girls and boys showing their horses and pigs. I had a whole conversation with some very cute noisy geese with huge orange bills. I forget what variety they were. The only sheep I saw were in the children’s petting barn; I think the main sheep showing events are next week (yes, the fair goes on for weeks).

We ate, we petted, we admired, we saw the lady doing cowgirl rope tricks. Any other time of year this would have been unbelievably corny. I spent serious time in the craft pavilion admiring the many lovely quilts and knitted items. And watched the end of the fastest fingers contest. There were about ten women entered; they each got a ball of yarn and a crochet hook, and were timed to see who could crochet the fastest. Here are a few of the knitted things:

I dared John’s son George to ride the Extreme Scream with me. I would have one piece of advice: pee before you try this. You get shot straight up in the air at about a million miles an hour, then dropped like a rock.

I don’t look nearly as terrified in this picture as I really was.

As this is a KNITTING blog, here is another finished project. I have had the yarn and pattern to make fruit hats for John’s grandchildren for a long time. While we were hanging out here this week, I started and finished an eggplant hat for Penelope. It started out as a blackberry hat, but the little bobbley things were just looking too weird for me. The yarn is Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran.

Yes, that’s me in those fashionable slippers and robe behind her. We were all still in our jammies waiting for pancakes when I took these pictures. More pictures here.

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If you haven’t already checked this out, sign up for Bloglines. It saves a ton of time if you surf through a bunch of blogs every day. Kerstin and Wendy led me to this one. That little sign-up button in the upper left of the page will subscribe you to my blog and let you know when I’ve updated. Cool, huh?

New Pictures

This past week has gotten away from me. It was a hectic week at work, and this week we have a house full of family, with my husband’s two children and their families here for vacation. Between them they have three children under the age of three (seven months, one year, and two and a half). We all packed up and went to the state fair yesterday, which was an all day experience. I have some pictures from the craft pavilion that I might get around to posting later on. At any rate, I haven’t gotten much knitting done. Penelope, the oldest grandchild, is fascinated by knitting, and at the “why” age. Why are you knitting a sock? What are you doing with that yarn?

The sock in question is this:

The yarn is Rodel Sport & Strumpf Wolle, which I bought in Germany when we were there earlier this year. I was going to do the Cloverleaf Rib sock pattern, with that insanely fine gauge stuff I posted about last time. After about three starts and three frogs, I threw in the towel. I just don’t need this kind of stress at the moment. I’ve always wanted to learn to make toe-up socks, so decided that this was the time to learn. Starting was much easier than I anticipated: I did a crochet provisional cast on, then the paired increases were done in no time. My husband has already laid claim to these socks.

The lavender lace cardigan has seen a little progress:

That’s the back of the sweater. Now it will be plain stockinette up to the armhole decreases.

I will post an update to my finished project page today as well, with the Audrey sweater and the Montego Bay socks. Everybody is taking a nap at the moment (no small miracle with three children!), so I might get a little knitting done as well!

New Projects

Half the fun of finishing old projects is that you can start new projects without guilt. Not that I have much guilt about knitting; there is enough obsessive-compulsiveness in my work life that I just let it rip when it comes to my “fun” time. I digress; it’s probably that after-work bourbon again.

Anyway, I spend the last few finishing days of a project dreaming about what I will knit next. I do try not to have more than three or four projects going at once. I am a relatively slow knitter anyway, and it makes me too anxious when I am not making any perceived progress on something because I have fifteen different things started. Three seems to be the ideal number for me. I know knitters who freak out if they don’t finish one thing before starting another, and others who have dozens of things going at once, and seem perfectly content with that! I have decided that for me it is perfect to have one “big” project (defined this month as a sweater), and one “little” project (defined as a hat or a scarf/shawl), and a pair of socks for the third project. These definitions may well change by October, so don’t hold me to it.

The “little” project at the moment is the Birch shawl. I plan to do another couple of repeats this week and get a picture for you. It’s starting to look somewhat attractive, even if it is only an inch wide.

The “sock” project is still up in the air. I joined the Six Sox Knitalong some time back, and have yet to start one pair. The first pattern was of course due to be completed last month, but I hate deadlines, so purposely planned to start late. (If you believe that lame dog-ate-my-homework excuse, we need to talk.) The first pattern of the six is a lacy one called Cloverleaf Rib. I decided to make it in some stash yarn.

That color is just so wrong. In reality it is a cloverleaf/kelly green. I could not get it to photograph accurately. The yarn is from Ozyarn, a company from Australia. They don’t seem to have this on their site anymore, but it is a very light fingering weight mohair/wool blend. Their needles are great too, by the way. I started these the other night, but got very frustrated after the first row. Mohairy, almost lace weight yarn on US 0 double points was something I was just not in the mood for at the time. I’ll start these again later this week when I have a bit of time, before I give up on this yarn.

The “big” project is a sweater. I was planning on doing the Eyelet Cardi from Chicknits, and still will, but the yarn I picked just turned into another pattern. I have the Sweater Wizard software and really just needed to use it to make an adult sweater. I’ve done a baby sweater using it, and the software really does generate very easy to use patterns. The web site is here, if you are interested.

The yarn I am using is Sonata cotton in a medium lavender that I got at Elann earlier this summer. It will be a crew neck style cardigan, button up, and very plain with the exception of a lace border at the bottom and at the cuffs. Here is my pattern/gauge swatch:

And with this photo, you can sort of squint and imagine what the sleeve will look like:

I’ve finished the lace border on the back piece and am a couple of inches into the stockinette portion. This should be good mindless knitting except for the borders. This ought to be a great sweater to dress up jeans, or go with a skirt as a more dressy outfit. Yee-ha! I love knitting!

Vacation, and Finished Projects

Our vacation to Nevada definitely exceeded expectations! We stayed at Walley’s Hot Springs in Genoa, which is close to Carson City. It is in the high mountain desert, so though warm in the daytime, it was quite cool at night. We also had a full moon while we were there, which added to the beauty of the place. Of course we took lots of pictures, some knitting related.

Here is the view from the balcony of our condo:

This family provided our nightly entertainment (click to make it easier to see them!):

Walley’s was built in the 1860’s or so. It has a spa with several natural mineral pools.

We did day trips to Tahoe, Virginia City, and a long bus tour of Yosemite. We also spent a couple of days just hanging out by the pools.

We took a trip on Lake Tahoe on a paddleboat, the M.S. Dixie. Here I am waiting for the boat:

And on the boat:

Then there was the quality time on the balcony at the end of the day, with cocktails and knitting:

I finished this:

If I look like I had a few in that picture, I probably did. The photographer was probably also inebriated. I’ll try to get a better picture this week.

I also finished these:

Details of these two projects will be on my Finished Projects page when I get a little more time to post.

The only yarn shopping opportunity came while on the bus tour of Yosemite. On the ride home, we stopped at a Mobil gas station for fuel and food. Along with the usual things you might find in a gas station convenience store, there was this wall of yarn:

I didn’t buy anything, though I was tempted to do so just so I could say that I bought yarn at a gas station. The two girls at the checkout counter were learning to knit, and graciously allowed me to photograph them:

I’ll have updates on the new things that I am starting in my next post!

Last Post….

Until I get back from vacation, that is. We will be gone a week, so I’ll be knitting away, but not blogging away. We’re going to a hot springs resort in Nevada for a week. Only my husband would arrange a vacation in August in Nevada, at a hot springs. It actually does get cool at night there, so it should be pleasant. And it beats the heck out of working for a living.

I got the pieces for Audrey put together:

I’m not quite halfway done with the lace neckband. I’m taking that and my socks on the plane tomorrow. I should finish this sweater while I’m gone.

I have decided that I will start one more summery project before I get started on the Rogue sweater. I just can’t get into a heavy worsted weight sweater with cables and a hood in August! My next sweater project will be an Eyelet Cardi; pattern by Bonne Marie of ChicKnits. I have a stash of Elann Sonata cotton yarn in a nice lavender color that should be quite girlie when it’s done. You can find the pattern on her “Patterns” page, of all places.

Don’t have too much fun without me; I’ll be back in a week!