The State of the Knitting

Lots on the needles here and out of it all I've got four active projects going. The ubiquitous traveling sock of course, a pair of stranded mittens, a scarf, and a sweater.

The mitten is for working on when I can't sleep. Every now and then I get up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep. I toss and turn. Rather than wake Jim up with my restlessness, I go to the spare room and knit. Usually less than an hour will get me in shape for going back to sleep. The mitten is really cute, but I'll save the pictures for when its done.

The scarf was born out of an irresistible urge to try out that Wild Geese Fibers that I got in exchange for my leftovers.


This is the Trellis Scarf Pattern, from Interweave Knits. Since my yarn is fingering weight, I'm doing it on a larger needle. I'm thinking it may be more stole-sized when blocked. The loveliest thing about this pattern is the point of the diamonds. They look like swirly knots. (You can sort of see it if you click the picture for a bigger view.) The maneuver where you create 5 stitches by knitting into 7 is a little tricksy, but not so bad. My trick is to knit it on the point of the needle.

The softness of the alpaca is a nice treat when I need a break from the sweater I started for Jim just before Father's Day. The yarn is acrylic/viscose blend and starts to feel like rope in my hands after a while.

This is the Aberlady Sweater from Alice Starmore's Celtic Knits. I think I'll call it Aberlord though since this is for Jim and will be more of an interpretation. I'm using a heavier weight yarn than the fingering weight called for. But since this is a gansey style sweater, I don't expect too much trouble switching it around. I swatched, measured and calculated to get the correct number of stitches to cast on. The pattern has arm gussets, which I plan to fudge, and I want to change the neckline. But at least the sleeves are knit down from the arms, so I can just pick up a reasonable amount and figure it out as I go.

Damn, that all sounds so nebulous! Does it help to say I'm confident? I guess because I've designed a gansey on the needles before, it doesn't seem so intimidating. Still, I'm going to stick this thing on a longer needle and slip it onto Jim to see if my initial calculation was correct before going any further.

I'm in a lovely state of anticipation for all these projects, because one week from today I will be on vacation. We don't have much of anything planned, there's a family picnic and the company picnic. Actually, I do have plans. I plan to relax!