Baby's first stash

Monday morning, DD looked over and spied her birthday gift from Tanya & co.. "That's my yarn, it was a present for my birthday!" she informed me. Well. What a perfect opportunity to ask her whether she wanted Mummy to make her something from the yarn, or whether she wanted the yarn to be hers so she could knit with it.

Unequivocally, she made it known that she wanted to knit with it. "I'm going to make a baby dress!" she announced. "A baby dress, an' a sweater, an' a bra...for you! In orange!"

Trying gamely to stifle my laughter, I pointed out, "But that yarn is green. How are you going to make me an orange bra with green yarn?"

She barely missed a beat. "You will have to get me orange yarn! And then I will knit you an orange bra!" she finished, pointing to my chest.

Well. You can't fault that logic, eh? And what a knitter in the making - not even 24 hours after acquiring merino (thanks lots for the specs on the yarn, Mel, I'll be sure to label it before I stash it away), she's talking about getting more yarn.

(Why do I get the feeling that this will ultimately land us a juicy entry in this blog?)

So...sorry Tanya, I know your intention was for me to knit the green into something for my wee one, but it looks like she's going to take care of that all by herself. :) And you have obviously whet her appetite for yarn in vibrant colours. I've already promised DD a box of her very own for her stash (I have a single leftover empty one from the big 18-box purchase).

I can't believe I'm voluntarily giving up the chance to knit with merino (which would be new for me). Ah, well. A mother's love, and all that.

Garden Shawl for MIL

A few weeks ago, Rachel said I had been knitting up a storm. Well, the thunder was booming yesterday, boy howdy, because the body of this sucker is FINISHED! Calloo, callay! Now, as Carrie K said, after this, it's only the edging.

[Dramatic pause before the boom is lowered]

My rough guess is that the edging consists of over 25,000 stitches.

Yeah.

It ain't over 'till it's over, baby.

(Carrie K, now may not be the time to throw me any more clichés. ;)

Birthday knitting goodness

Sunday was DD's birthday party. (Yes, her birthday was last month, but she got monstrously sick the night before her party was originally supposed to take place and we had to postpone.) So I'd been spending a lot of the last week and a half desperately cleaning the house. (By zero hour, it looked great, I was amazed. Except for our bedroom, which was a complete and utter sty, therefore we kept that door firmly CLOSED.) This is relevant to knitting because it explains why I have very little progress to report on since Thursday's entry. When I was not fighting off the cold that I eventually succumbed to, I was frantically trying to make sure that we did not reveal ourselves as the total slobs that we truly are.

The party itself went fabulously, I thought. Many people ignored the 'presents not required' statement in the invitation and brought lovely things for our girl. But our friend Tanya - sweet, craft-enabling Tanya - brought a gift of YARN. And not just any yarn - but a skein hand-dyed by our friend Mel.

Mel, if you're reading this - thank you. It is fantastically vibrant. Also...do you happen to know the fibre content? (I did the geek thing and went through about seven months of your blog archive to try and answer this question myself, but could not find any mention of it.)

The card accompanying this gift implied that I should make something wonderful for DD out of the yarn, but I didn't read the card until later, so my first thought (silly me) was that this was the beginning of my daughter's very own yarn stash.

Dear reader, what do you think? Should the yarn become clothing for DD (which would be the selfish option, since I really would love to knit with the stuff), or stash for DD?

(Maybe I should ask DD herself. Hm...)

In other very cool knitting-related news, my grandmother brought along a gift bag to the party that she gave to me privately afterwards. There were some very cutesy gifts in there that DD loved when she opened it up the next morning, but the crowning glory for me was a cardigan that my grandmother had knitted for me when I was a baby. How freakin' special is that, eh? And when I lifted it out of the bag, it did actually look familiar (mostly because of the buttons). I LOVE IT.

My grandmother knitted for us a fair bit as we were growing up. Mostly, it was mittens, which I'm sure were put in garage sales once we outgrew them. But there were some other things, too. I think she knitted the original outfit for the 'Peggy' doll that is now my daughter's - but this was lost long ago and I had to make a replacement. There was also a dolly blanket with textured squares on it which disappeared at some point in my childhood. So I don't think I had any of my grandmother's knitting in my possession (and was unlikely to get any new stuff since I don't think she knits anymore).

Until now.

When she told me what was in the gift bag, I think my grandmother was rather gratified by my positive reaction. It must have been interesting to see my eyes get that wide. :)

Twizzle cardigan for DD

This project had stalled for the pure and simple reason that I'd lost the pattern. (Yes. Loser.) However, during the process of cleaning the house this weekend, DH found it! (And revealed that it was he who had hidden it away in the first place, thus proving that I'm not such a loser after all, haha.) So, Saturday night after my cold finally got bad enough to stop my relentless cleaning, I ensconced myself on the living room couch with this cardigan and our videotape of Robin Williams Live on Broadway. By the time I went to bed, I had both fronts done and both shoulders bound off together.



Next up: sleeves.

Garden Shawl for MIL

This had to be hidden away during the party so my MIL wouldn't see it. So I found it a home in one of my project bins. But it didn't stay there for long. I fished it out the next morning and brought it to work. Slowly, slowly, it is sloggingly approaching the end. There are three tiers of flowers in the last chart, and I have started on the third. Must. Keep. Slogging.

For Amy

In my last entry, I mentioned that I got to go home from the party at Lettuce Knit with several very cool people. Well, one of them was Amy of knitty.com, who at one point turned to me and asked if I'd ever made anything from Knitty.

To my great embarrassment, I had to answer no.

I hastened to assure her that I certainly had plans to make stuff from Knitty, but that I just...hadn't...gotten around to it...yet.

(I know, lame. But true, oh so true. In fact, I actually have a list saved on my hard drive of all the patterns from Knitty that I plan to make in my lifetime, and it's a big list.)

Flash forward to Monday of this week - we had a semi-annual presentation for our whole department, during which some groups did presentations of "cool stuff we've done lately". One of these presentations was interactive, where six audience members were randomly chosen and put into two teams to compete in finding information on the newly-revamped department Intranet website. Well, yours truly was one of the six hapless victims people chosen to participate, and my team won. To our surprise, there were prizes - we were each handed small, ribbon-wrapped cardboard boxes. I opened mine thinking it would be some meaningless swag, but instead found a $25 gift certificate for Chapters/Indigo!!!

How cool is that? I never win anything!

As luck would have it, Chapters/Indigo was having an online sale, in which Amy's new book, "Big Girl Knits", was 33% off. (Sadly, this special was not available in-store, where I could have avoided the $5.90 shipping cost. But still - 33% off online is better than a slap on the belly with a wet fish, eh?) Since I have been deeply coveting this book (I am not a 'big girl' myself but I do have designer aspirations and believe that owning it would be extremely helpful), I snapped it right up. It was shipped earlier this week, and if I'm really lucky, it'll be in my hot little hands before the weekend. Total cost to me was only about $11. Sah-WEET!

Hopefully this will redeem me in Amy's eyes. ;)

(Not that she reads my blog, but still. It's the thought that counts, right?)

Simple scarf for DH

On Saturday, DH headed off to an SCA event by himself. (DD never naps at these things and was still getting over a cold, and the temperature that day was supposed to go up to about 35, so we felt it best if we didn't take her, which meant DH going solo.) This gave me the time I need to finish the scarf. Saturday night I wrapped it up, and the next morning I gave it to DD as DH was starting to get up. She padded over to his side of the bed and handed it off with sweetly-lisped good wishes for Father's Day.

It was a success. :) DH put it on right away. He did remark later that it would be a while before he could really get any use out of it, but I think he liked it, and I think he especially liked that DD had helped to make it.

A photo will be forthcoming.

Garden Shawl for MIL

Just eleven more rows to go on the body! It's getting there! I just have to keep! Being! Upbeat! About! It!

Stornaway sweater for DH

The front is finished! The back has begun.

MP3 player cosy for moi

I cast on using my standard toe-up sock pattern and increased to 44 stitches. Then I just kept knitting, making double-yarnover holes wherever the buttons on the player were going to be. Once I got to the earphone plug, I stopped knitting in the round and started turning the work and purling back once I'd finished a row. Finally, I decreased to just a little flap and made that long enough to go over the top.



It was only after I'd finished doing all of this that I realised I'd completely blocked viewing access to the display window on the player.

Sigh.

I will be ripping it out and doing it again, this time making just a big honking hole in the middle where the window and surrounding buttons go.

P.S. - My friend Gillian had her baby! Yay! Congrats, Gill!

Interaction

Last night I went to the SnB at Lettuce Knit. It was actually a combination SnB/birthday party for the Yarn Harlot. Consequently, there were way more knitters than usual, munchies, booze, balloons, and...a 20% yarn sale in honour of Stephanie's natal day.

I, uh...I bought some stuff.

Foot-pampering socks for Mom

This is "Sea Silk" from Handmaiden. It is really cool stuff and I've been hankering (no pun intended) after some for a while. But the cost was always kinda prohibitive. At 20% off, though...I caved. This stuff is niiiice. It even smells like the sea (that salty seaweedy tang).

I bought it because I thought it would make absolutely fabulous socks for my mom. She blisters super-easily, and finds wool scratchy. I had bought some Austermann Step yarn - infused with jojoba and aloe oils - intended to be socks for my mom for Christmas. But lately I've been nervous that this yarn, being 75% wool, would be too scratchy for my mom even with the oil infusion. Whereas silk is absolutely not scratchy, and the advertised release of vitamins and minerals, anti-inflammatory properties and whatnot from the seaweed in the yarn strikes me as a huge plus for my mom's wussy feet.

The only thing is that there are 400m of yarn in this skein. That's enough to make a small lace shawl! (As evidenced by one lovely lady who showed up last night in a GORGEOUS dark purplish lace concoction made out of a single skein of Sea Silk. Harlot took a photo of it last night and will probably be posting it on her blog today, so go take a look.) And it's definitely enough for more than one pair of socks. So...what do I do? I mustn't keep it all for myself - that would be wrong. But it's so tempting! I really must use at least half of it to make Mom some socks. But the other half - what do I do with that? Make something small and snazzy for myself? Make Mom a second pair of socks? And then...what do I do with the Austermann stuff? Do I still make her socks out of it? Which socks will be her Christmas gift this year?

Sigh. I just don't know.

Another thing that happened last night was that Harlot brought some stash overflow and gave it away. Yes, gave it away. She put it on the ground and started a feeding frenzy. Seriously - inside of five minutes everything but the crochet books was gone. (That's right, she couldn't even give the crochet books away. Although I suspect this was due more to the quality of the books themselves than the crochet subject matter, because Drea - avid crocheter - flipped through at least one of the books and then put it back with a decisively-uttered "No.")

I hung back from the frenzy a bit, because I already had my Sea Silk by that point and was feeling pretty good about my stash enhancement already. And I didn't want to seem greedy, plus, other knitters clearly were more interested than I in acquiring free yarn. However, when I noticed that nobody seemed keen on the skein that had caught my eye when the bag first hit the ground, I waded in and picked it up.

This is Landscapes, a 50/50 wool/acrylic bulky yarn from Lion Brand, and I think it's kind of cool. I might make something nifty for DD with it.

Anyway, good times. Really good times. I enjoyed myself tremendously. And I got to go part of my way home with several very cool people, which was a great treat.

(Unfortunately, it all came crashing down when I arrived at the bus terminal and discovered that I'd missed the bus that drops me off at the end of my street by twelve minutes, and that the next one wasn't coming until 11pm. No thanks. I had to take another bus that took me to my general area but forced a 20-, 25-minute walk home. In 2" heels. And a fairly chilly wind. In the dark. Really late at night. Fun. Plus, you could tell that DH had been holding down the fort because this morning I discovered a towel bunched-up on the rod and DD's toothbrush stored face-down on the counter in the upstairs main bathroom. Sigh.)

Stornaway sweater for DH

The gussets on this project (of which Carrie K is a fan, and which is probably one of the few things about all this gobbledegook knittingspeak that Tanya understands) will have to wait for the moment, because I have placed them on scrap yarn, divided for the armscyes, and am working me way up the front of the sweater, baybee. This is fantastic, not merely because it is a major milestone in the project, but also because it allows me to finally spread out the work and see the pattern in all its glory:


I am pleased.

Garden Shawl for MIL

My work on this over the weekend got my momentum going again, and I've been working on it quite a bit so far this week. As a result, I am now on THE LAST CHART before the edging. Admittedly, the last chart comprises about 20% of the body of the shawl, but still, there is something so beautifully close to being finished about 'the last chart', even if I am totally fooling myself by thinking so.

Socks for DH's boss

At last! DH came home on Tuesday night and announced that he'd been able to covertly compare his shoes to his boss' shoes. He estimates that his boss' shoes are 1" to 1.5" longer than his own. This means, presumably, that his boss' feet are 11.5" to 12" long, since DH's feet are 10.5". DH also guesses that his boss' feet are a bit wider than his own, but this shouldn't be a big issue since DH says the socks I make for him have some give around the feet.

So I'm going to make socks the same girth as I always do for DH, but make the feet about 11.75" long. That should work. Yay!

The only disadvantage of this is that DH still won't have any handknitted dress socks. I'll have to get more black sock yarn and rectify that problem. But first things first.

Another interesting tidbit DH brought home from work was that his boss' wife is an avid knitter! Lace, cables, colourwork, the whole gamut. She also has a knitting machine. Hey, maybe she reads knitting blogs, too. So...Barbara? If you're reading this? Please don't spill the beans to your husband that I'm making him some socks. However, if you can give me more precise measurements of his feet, I would greatly appreciate it.

MP3 player cosy for moi

The earbuds that came with my MP3 player have this really neat doohickey with a plastic loop on it, so that you can loop it around the buttons on your coat/shirt/whatever, and thus have your clothes hold your MP3 player for hands-free listening.

But last week, the part with the plastic loop unscrewed from the rest of the earbuds cord somewhere on the subway and was lost, presumably forever. (But I am optimistic - I keep checking the ground in the transit system in the hopes of spotting it. I did see one this week and snatched it up, but it didn't fit my player. So clearly I'm not the only one who has experienced this kind of loss.) And you know what? It's really damn convenient to have hands-free MP3 listening. Because after I lost the doohickey, I realised that when I knit standing up on the train, I don't have a spare hand to hold my player. So I either have to slip it into a pocket (which most of my work clothes don't have) or tuck it into the space between two buttons on my shirt (yeah, that's a barrel of fun, especially when it slips out and tries to pull the earbuds out of my ears as it falls). Or not listen to the player at all...which sucks. I want my knitting podcasts!

Bottom line? I need an MP3 player cosy. Something socklike, with a hole for the earbud cord, a handle to let me carry it hands-free, and a securable top flap to keep it safely inside. And maybe some strategic lace holes so I can access the buttons without taking the player out of the cosy.

Hey, I think I've found a use for the extra yarn from these socks!

Simple scarf for DH

Monday night after blogging I ended up having some time to work on this, and it grew to be about a foot long. However, since then it hasn't been touch and I might be screwed for getting it done by Sunday.

Herald tabard for moi

At the beginning of next month, two friends of mine are getting a very spiffy SCA honour (membership in the Order of the Laurel), and this week they asked me if I could be the herald for their induction ceremony. Well, duh, yeah, I'd love to. :) Obviously, I will want to wear this tabard to look as spiffy as possible, and obviously again, I will not want it slipping off my shoulders. So I am going to try to finish it to my liking by the event.

And lastly - comments responses. Carrie K was very generous with her comments over the past few posts, and she said:

Not posting a pic of an unpublished (yet) pattern is sensible.

I thought so, too.

You self striping matching sock people! Y'all slay me.

Yep. I'm just that anal. I admit it!

Well, no doubt Spain left a big mark on South American culture and vice a versa so it's bit difficult to untangle the provenance.

I know. I think it would be okay, but I don't know - are modern-day Mexicans resentful of the Spanish influence? For, you know, repressing the native culture and trying to kill them off? I myself have no idea. Although...hm. My boss is half-Mexican. Maybe she'll know. I could ask her.

(I'm probably waaaay over-thinking this.)

We have to bitch about purling?

Apparently so. I have gathered the impression that generally speaking, knitting is the 'good stitch' and purling is the 'bad stitch'. But I could be wrong.

Newbie thoughts on purling

Over the weekend, DH got started back on his latest golf club cover project (no, his scarf project for me isn't finished yet; I'm trying to be the bigger person and have so far refrained from saying anything - not too tough to do since it doesn't really bother me much). He is now knitting using the continental method - I demonstrated it to him some weeks ago and on Sunday, he asked for a refresher. The piece is being worked flat in stocking stitch, so we started with how to knit continentally, and then the next row obviously was a refresher on how to purl continentally.

And that's when he made this comment:

"In some ways, this is easier than knitting. But it's still purling, and therefore we must bitch about it. Or they won't let you onto the blogs."

Out of the mouths of babes, eh?

In other news, even if you are not into listening to podcasts, I highly recommend checking out this week's episode of Cast On (#28). The song that is played at slightly before the 39-minute mark, "Knitta Please", is FANTASTIC. And hey, while you're there, you might as well take a listen to episode #25, too - in it, Brenda plays a comment I sent her, where I describe my somewhat harrowing experience knitting this blanket.

Garden Shawl for MIL

Saturday we went to visit my mom's cousin in Barrie for the afternoon, so I took this project. It was just about the only thing I could work on in front of both DH and my family without blowing a surprise for somebody.

At first I was pretty bummed. Here I was, the ultimate knitter in public - a person who knits on the subway every day, standing if no seats are available, who has knitted while walking down the street, at movies, the list goes on. Basically, I am totally willing to 'whip it out' in a public situation. And yet...on World Wide Knit in Public Day, I was not going to have the opportunity to knit in public beyond doing it in a car ride where hardly anyone would see me.

Fortunately, however, we decided to go out to Swiss Chalet for dinner with my parents after our afternoon visit, and so I did actually get a chance to KIP on the big day. My mom watched me and remarked on it with surprise - she hadn't thought doing that was entirely appropriate, so she'd left her crochet in the car. But she revised her opinion when I told her what day it was. :)

Stornaway sweater for DH

I'm approaching the end of ball #2, which means once again I will somehow have to break out the cone of wool and my ballwinder, and create a new skein without DH noticing.

I'm also fast approaching the division for the armscyes. Very exciting stuff.

Simple scarf for DH

I was hit with the realisation that Father's Day is this freakin' Sunday!!! So I tried to haul a bit of ass on the project this weekend. Didn't do too badly - the thing grew by probably about 10cm in the half-hour or so that I snuck away and worked on it. But I am going to have to work on it every evening between now and the weekend to have a hope in hell of having something long enough to be called a scarf.

DD also got into the action at one point. DH was downstairs, so I showed her the progress I'd made. She insisted on sitting down and doing some "knitting" herself. (Again, refusal of help from Mummy to get some genuine knitting done.) But the pretend knitting is sooo cute. She has the basics totally down. She sticks the right-hand needle into anything that looks like a hole in the work and waves the knitting around a bit, pushing back and forth with the needle in and out of the hole. What a kid.

Arabesque baby blanket

I recently found out that another co-worker is expecting! Now, I know I said I was going to limit myself this year and not knit for every baby that crosses my path, but one of the projects already in my yearly plan is a self-designed baby blanket, using a lace design based on a hispano-araby motif. I could use this project as the gift for my co-worker, at no cost to The Schedule or my sanity. Perfect, right?

Well, the first step towards consolidating this decision is to finalise the actual lace design. So I'm going to have to do some fiddling and come up with something that I definitely like.

The second step is to determine whether it is culturally appropriate and considerate OR culturally insensitive (given the horrible history of Spanish conquest in south America) to give a guy of Mexican heritage a blanket for his baby which has a Spanish design feel. Anyone want to help me out with this one?

Accomplishment

Self-designed baby hat/mitts

At last. It. Is. Done. I now have a completed hat/mitts set, and I have to say, they are pretty freakin' cute.

Carrie K asked if I would be showing pictures of them, and the answer, unfortunately, is no, although I would really love to. Y'see, I'm putting together a book of baby patterns which I hope, ultimately, to be able to publish. And I'm not comfortable with the idea of showing pictures of patterns that I intend to sell before I actually try to sell them. :)

As pleased as I am with how the hat and mitts look, though, I am really, REALLY going to have to change the pattern significantly before I ask other knitters to shell out money for it. There is just way too much duplicate stitching on the hat the way I just did it. Moreover, I think the motifs would look much more spectacular done in smaller stitches. So for the next iteration of the pattern, I'm planning to switch to stranded knitting instead of intarsia, so that the duplicate stitch is mostly eliminated (although there will still be a little bit to avoid torturing knitters with having to strand five colours over a single row). Also, I will be using fingering/sock weight yarn instead of sport weight. Hopefully I can pull it all off without driving other knitters totally crazy.

Self-patterning socks for DD

I kept going on sock #2, and found that I came up about two rows too short with the amount of green-and-white yarn I had left. That's okay, though. The next segment of the colour sequence was blue, and I had some extra blue, so I did two more rows of blue than were worked in the first sock, and - tadah! - at the point the blue finished, the colour sequence was back to being identical to the first sock.

Flash forward to the heel (not pictured below), when I discovered I had the opposite problem with the red portion of the colour sequence - in this case, I had more for the second sock than I had for the first sock. However, I didn't bother trying to even it out because it's not that obvious. So I kept knitting until I ran out of yarn for the second sock.

Sadly, this is what the two socks now look like:



Yeah. Olive green stripe at the top of sock #1, no olive green stripe at the top of sock #2.

But...I have a solution! I'm going to unravel sock #1 down to about three rows into the olive green. Then I'm going to attach the other end of the olive green to sock #2 and knit about three rows with that. Then I'll keep alternating olive green rows on each sock until the olive green is almost all gone and the socks are attached by only a very short length of olive green, which I will then cut in the middle.

But I won't have finished the socks yet. Oh, no. I still have a fairly decent chunk of blue yarn attached to the beginning of sock #2 (since I had to start sock #2 at a very specific point in the colour sequence in order to match up with sock #1). There's probably enough blue there for several rows on each sock. So I'll do the same thing with that leftover blue as I will do with the olive - join one end to sock #1, knit a row, join the other end to sock #2, knit a row, and continue until the blue is all gone.

And yet, I will still not be done. Because I will still have to cast off.

For that I will be using some leftover blue-and-white yarn from this sock project. Same yarn, different colour. Since the colourway of DD's socks is very 'rainbow', the addition of a new colour into the sequence will not seem at all strange. There should be enough in this leftover length of blue-and-white to cast off for two socks.

Then I will be done. And DD's socks will be identical, and she will love them, and I will have used up all the Fortissima Colori Socka Colour yarn that MIL gave me for Christmas. And I will be very, very happy.

This is the theory, anyway.

Stay tuned for the practical execution.

Taupe socks for Dad

Before I can start on my grand scheme for finishing off DD's self-patterning socks, I need to free up my second set of sock needles. And that means completing sock #1 of this pair. It's getting close - I'm just a few rows away from starting the top ribbing.

(And thank you, Carrie K, for saying the sock looks good. :)

Unfortunately, the number of stitches on this sock does not lend itself to my being able to perfectly transition the cables on each side of the sock into the ribs at the top of the leg. Phooey. I love being able to make cables transition seamlessly into ribs. So I'm going to have to come up with some other way to start the ribbing that looks good. I don't know what that way is yet, but I'm going to have to figure it out pretty soon.

Stornaway sweater for DH

Gussets are in full swing!



Right now I'm at eleven stitches on each gusset. Dividing for the armscyes occurs once the gussets are nineteen stitches wide. So I'm definitely getting there.

And after doing almost ten inches (on small needles with thin yarn) of the same motifs over and over again on small needles with thin yarn, it's really nice to be able to do something a little different now. It's sad to say that a gusset increase every four rows is saving my sanity, but I think it's true.

Birthday boy!

My dear husband is 45 today. By a coincidence, he is off work today and has decided to spend the time catching up on things like gardening. Not my preferred way to spend a birthday, but whatever floats his boat is okay by me. I am also off work - my purpose for the day is to do some of his chores for him so he doesn't have to, including the preparation of supper. Garbage and recycling will probably also make the list.

We had his birthday party last night - a small family affair with my dad's famous Aussie stew and my step-grandmother's even more famous chocolate cake. Naturally, I gave him his socks. He loves them. :) After I told the stories of my agonies getting the gauge and pattern identicalization right, and that I considered them the most perfect socks I have ever knitted, he loved them even more. Mission accomplished.

In comments...Tanya, I did indeed see your photo of my family on your blog, thank you so much - I would have commented on it and some other stuff but I'm not a LiveJournal user. However, if I didn't say it enough on the day, the dress is fantastic and you totally deserve the award. :) Congratulations.

Taupe socks for Dad

I just blazed up the foot on this one, boy howdy. You know that photo of the first sock I showed you in my last blog entry, of just the toe? Well, the next day I whizzed ahead like crazy and was turning the heel before the sun went down. I LOVE this continental thing.

After I turned the heel, I decided to do something different. I've been thinking about this for a while. All I've done so far are plain socks - simple stocking stitch with ribbing at the top of the leg. I was hankering for some variety and I thought my dad might like some classic-looking cables on his socks. And in taupe, they'll show up very nicely (it would have been pretty pointless putting the cables on his black socks).

So after I turned the heel, I did a bunch of increases and then started simple rope cables (4 stitches wide) all around the sock. A few twists later I decided having that many cables looked too fussy, so I ripped back and instead started doing two rope cables (twisting in opposite directions) on each side of the leg. I think it looks very handsome and classic, and I think my dad will like it.



The only doubts I'm having now are whether the twists in the cables are too far apart. I'm doing the cable cross every six rows, and I keep thinking it would look better every five rows instead. However, the more I knit, the less likely I am to rip all the way back and start again. I think I'm committed to what I've got.

Stornaway sweater for DH

What you are looking at is the first increase for the underarm gussets. Yes, I'm at the gussets! Whoopee!

Self-designed baby hat/mitts

Duplicate stitching on the hat continues.

I am SERIOUSLY going to have to come up with another way to get all these colours on the hat. This duplicate stitching thing was okay on the teeny-tiny mittens, but on the hat (which has ten motifs requiring embroidery) there is NO WAY other knitters will do it. (And even if there are knitters stupid driven enough to do it, they will curse me to oblivion during the process.)

The hat is looking good, though.