Horrors redux

This weekend I had what I'm pretty sure was my first ever knitting nightmare. It seemed very real at the time and it freaked me out. I dreamt that I went on the subway for work, with my knitting. All very much as usual, except that I had multiple projects with me. It wasn't until I reached my station that I realised I had gotten the yarn of all my projects caught between the train doors. Projects on the inside of the train, yarn on the outside...which had happily been unwinding and trailing behind us ever since I'd boarded. Shudder. It took me a few minutes after waking up to really realise that it was NOT REAL and my projects were just fine. Yeesh.

I discovered on Friday afternoon why the universe had been giving me feelings of horror. It was to restore the balance. Because at lunch, my supervisor (currently on mat leave) came to visit us with her 5-month-old daughter, who is just one of the cutest, sweetest, most charismatic babies I've ever met. I really enjoyed the baby fix. The only drawback was that she is currently going through a 'making strange' phase and cried tragically anytime I or anyone else other than her mummy tried to hold her. Real tears, too. Very pathetic. Particularly since she reverted to happy-as-a-clam-ness the nanosecond she was back in her mummy's arms. And now I shall attempt to make this story knitting-related by telling you that this was the baby who received this knitted gift.

NEW - Socks for DH

My husband's feet have a tendency to hurt (which, of course, is Bad). This is why he wears slippers instead of just stockinged feet around the house, and why he must have a rug on the floor around the work area of the kitchen so that he has some padding between him and the tiled floor as he cooks. This weekend I was informed that even the socks he wears can make a difference. I noticed on Saturday that he was wearing two different socks. "Yes, I know," he said, when I pointed this out. Apparently, he wanted to wear a specific pair of socks because they were nicely padded, but he could only find one of them, so, in a burst of 'screw it, something is better than nothing' philosophy, he put the padded sock on one foot and any-old-sock on the other foot. Hence the mismatched pair. However, hearing this story gave me food for thought. If I found some really nice, comfy, cushy yarn and did up socks for him, his feet would stand a much better chance of not-hurting (which, of course, would be Good). I've never knit socks before...but it can't be that hard. (Famous last words.) I have no idea what kind of yarn to use, though. Hopefully something in my stash will suffice. I will be happy to entertain any suggestions that anyone has for what sort of yarn would make cozy, cushy socks.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

Surgery was performed, and disaster was averted. I un-Moebiused the sweater without ripping the whole thing out. Instead, I unravelled the first ten stitches of the round all the way down to the bottom, cut the unravelled strings, untwisted the project, and re-did the knitting all the way up those ten stitches, joining it at each side of the opening. I am a demi-god. I refrained from assigning myself full-on god status because I was impatient and didn't take the extra time to perfectly mimic knitting at the joins. Thus, you can tell where the fix is. However, I still think it looks fine and it saved me gobs of time. Knitting continued on this project over the weekend and I'm now on the main pattern. Before I left for work, it looked like this:

A few more rows were done on the ride to work. Now that there is an honest-to-goodness pattern going, the work is going much faster. Or maybe it just seems that way because it's less tedious. Either way, I win.

A Very Harlot Poncho for moi

Poncho looks the same as it did before, just longer. Several additional inches were accomplished over the weekend. It now looks like this:

Still looks like a lump of yarn, right? Well, what can I say. It'll look much better once it's done and off the needle.

Persian Tiles afghan for master bedroom

I worked up the gumption to talk to my husband about this project on the weekend. He surprised me by being really blasé about the idea. "Yeah, that makes sense," he said, when I said we didn't really need an afghan since we now had a comforter. I thought he'd get all upset at the idea of my frogging huge amounts of work. Nope. Just a little teeny bit of regret on the subject, and a brief, "As long as you're okay with it." Sigh. And I thought I knew him. The afghan is no longer. Instead, it looks like this:

Rest in peace.