What a Life!

It’s time for a knitting update, complete with eye candy.

Yes, I have been knitting lately. I don’t think a day goes by without at least a few moments of knitting. I got really clever the other day, set the camera on top of the tv, set the timer, and took a picture of myself knitting. I needed to try out the timer feature on my camera, okay?

Yes, that’s me on the couch, I-cord jacket on the back of the seat on my left, knitting bag below it, sweater I’m designing in my lap, and planner with a piece of paper where I’m recording my pattern notes on my right.

[If Steve saw this picture, he would so laugh at me. He saw my before-and-after desk pictures on the computer the other day (I was going through my pictures) and thought it was the funniest thing he had ever seen! He laughed out loud! Oh my! …No, he doesn’t read my blog. It would be perfectly fine with me if he did, but I haven’t encouraged it because he would find some serious fodder for teasing me. Just saying is all.]

Moving on here…

I finished the sleeves of the I-cord jacket I’m making for myself. The i-cord around the edge, though, is progressing rather slowly. That cotton yarn doesn’t give like wool yarn does, and it’s doing a number on my hands. So I only work on this in small spurts. I started on one side, have gone across the back and am now working on the bottom front (where you see the dpn in the picture).

I keep thinking I’m going to come up with a better idea for doing the i-cord that won’t hurt my hands, but it hasn’t happened yet. So I’m probably going to have to keep plugging away at it. Hopefully I’ll get it finished by the end of the month – that is my goal.

Next on the needles would be the little sweater I’m designing for my cousin’s baby, Jack.

I borrowed the stitch pattern from one of the little sweater patterns in the current issue of Vogue Knitting(Spring/Summer ’07). I must say, usually I like stitch patterns because they make it more interesting, but this one only happens every sixth row so you have to count every time you do it (instead of just looking at your work) so it’s a major pain. It looks nice, though.

I am knitting it flat, up to where the sleeves join the body, and then I will join everything together into one piece and work raglan decreases while I continue to work flat because I am dividing for the neck at the same point. Usually, garments in this style are knit in the round or piece by piece and then seamed at the end. The only seams I’ll be doing are under the sleeve and the side seams. I’ve decided I prefer knitting flat to knitting in the round – my hands don’t get so tired when they have the variety that both knitting and purling offer when knitting flat. But I don’t think seams at the raglan decreases are necessary for structure either, so I’m not doing them. Thus my interesting way of assembling this sweater.

Here it is waiting to be joined into one piece.

I would have joined it and perhaps even finished it last night, but I got to the point where everything gets joined togeter just as the sun went down, and I wanted to get a good picture of it at that stage. So it got set aside until this morning.

But I still wanted to knit, of course. So I finally cast on those Bells & Whistles socks I mentioned a couple weeks ago. I was wondering how that Reynolds Whiskey was going to knit up since it looks so woolly and fluffy. It feels rather nice though, and it works quiet well at sock yarn gauge. Though I haven’t tried the sock on yet, I’m quite please with it so far.

I am so loving the color of that yarn! I’ve knit so much blue for my boys that I can hardly stand to knit blue anymore. Blue used to be my favorite color. Though I’m not quite ready to admit it yet, I’m thinking some version of pink is now my favorite color. Pink is just so…pretty!

Steve’s had a miserable cold for about a week now. It started with a sore throat and moved on from there. This morning I woke up with a sore throat and that feeling you get when you’re coming down with something. I mention this in my knitting post because if this cold makes me as tired as Steve’s looked like he’s been, I’m not going to have much energy in the next few days. I’ll be couch-bound with my fatigue. And you know what that means…lots and lots of knitting!