I’m Knitting As Fast As I Can

The return of Daylight Savings Time can mean only one thing. There’s enough light when I get home to take blog photos!

Progress toward completing my NaKniSweMoDo goal has been sporadic. When I finished the body of my Honeycomb Vest, I set the project aside. I guess I was getting a little sick of the unending cables.

I fully intend to finish it because I love the way it’s working up, but a new sweater project is getting all the love lately . . . Slinky Ribs from the book, Custom Knits.

Yeah, it’s top-down, but it has set-in sleeves that are picked up around the armholes. I’m using Rowan Felted Tweed and I only have 5 balls. So hopefully I won’t have to rip back the sleeve because I run out of yarn. We’ll see.

As for the Felted Tweed, I’m kinda on the fence about it.  I love the colors and it’s nice to knit with but the sweater seems really scratchy. The alpaca fibers look like nasty guard hairs instead of the softer, downier fibers. Am I the only one who thinks this???

Both sweaters temporarily took a back seat to two felted projects. I don’t know why, but I seem to worked felted projects in fits and starts. Both of these are shop samples for my LYS.

Nantasket Basket in Cascade 220

And a Basic Felted Bag with Homestead Heirloom leather handles in Debbie Bliss Donegal Chunky Tweed.

In addition to the knitting, there have been gifts and acquisitions.

Handmade, glass buttons from a friend:

A wonderful fabric project bag given to me by Margene (don’t forget that Margene’s birthday is Saturday!):

And Cheryl‘s gift of a seed stitcher has already been put to good use, picking up dropped stitches from the Slinky Ribs project:

I’ve showered myself with gifts, too.

A lovely batt from Yarn Pirate:

Some perfectly dyed roving from Lauren’s Etsy shop:

And a kick-ass fountain pen . . .

. . . that matches my infamous boots . . .

I know you want those boots, Shelley.

Alas, a trip to Rhinebeck wasn’t in the cards for me this year. But I had a wonderful time in NYC.

We’re lucky to have family members in Brooklyn and we stayed in their fantastic brownstone near an awesome coffee shop.

There was also an LYS nearby and I was able to snag a copy of an OOP book that I’ve been searching for. Best of all, I got it for the list price of $14.99, not the current price on Amazon. That was a nice little surprise.

I crossed off a goal on my life list when we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan:

And DD crossed one off, too, when she went to a Broadway show (just days before it closed) and waited at the stage door to meet the lead, who was also a reality TV show star.

And DH got his wish, . . . a real corned beef sandwich:

One of the best things we saw, though, were the Sukkahs built on the balconies of this apartment building in Williamsburg (click for big):

Adieu, NYC:

I’m done fooling with the process of reworking the Scroll Stitch scarf. I love the stitch pattern because of the undulations it creates but I think it just can’t be worked in my handspun yarn. The yarn is too sproingy and I don’t want to ruin the clean lines of the stitch pattern by adding a border. Possibly a flatter, less elastic yarn might result in a scarf that doesn’t curl so much. Gosh, even acrylic would work better since you could block the hell out of it and never worry about it springing back to life. So the handspun is going back into the stash and the process has come to an end with no final product to show for it. Sad.

But frogging the scarf freed me to finish a baby cardi I’ve been working on. It just needs buttons and a blocking and then I’ll share all the details.

And a third process has also come to an end. My son has finally decided which college he’ll attend in the fall. Oye! What a painful, drawn-out process. Although my husband and son bore most of the organizational burden, I bore the lion’s share of the stress. It was a difficult decision for him and it came down to a choice between Macalester and Occidental. In the end, the lure of year-round golf in Southern California tipped the balance in favor of Occidental.

Can anyone say, “Los Angeles yarn shopping.”