Katzundyarner Bits

I have taken the radical step of scheduling a week away from work in February. For more than 20 years, I enjoyed the busiest time of the year in February but with my new job one level up, I can watch the admins working diligently at the admissions process and wait for the results of their labor to trickle to (other staff in) my office. I would have been plenty busy had I gone to work this week but I opted out. No email even (until Sunday, in anticipation of returning to work on Monday - I can't take the cold shock of returning to work without dipping my toes in the deep pool of email).

DH and I visited Starved Rock to see the eagles (no pictures, just watched their winged glide over the Illinois River), took a short side trip to my ancestral home and took pictures of my forebears' graves (great-great and great-grandfather were stone masons but most of the grave markers seem to have been replaced as I suspect the earlier markers were limestone which disintegrated in the intervening 80-100 years), and I started a new project - my ravelry page tells me I did not get around to making donation for the 2010 efforts of afghans 4 Afghans.

Current project: a sweater for the 7-14 year old set for the current youth campaign:



Pattern: "Rosemary's Little Sweater" (gotta love that one-piece knit project) in The Green Mountain Spinnery Knitting Book, using Patons Classic Wool using the singular "Bonne Terre" colorway. Trim is Lamb's Pride left over from a small wrist bag I made on impulse. I hope to figure out a mock turtleneck. Knitting from the bottom up made for a regular stripe though a diagonal slant. The varigation doesn't show the cables along the arms but these added some excitement to the knitting. I used a full skein for the torso instead knitting to the proscribed 12", in order to gain the length critical for these sweaters so important to keep the little kids of the region warm.

The sleeve is a second attempt because though the instructions say to pick up 60 sts then decrease over a couple inches down to 42, I slipped the first stitch of the front and back and could initially pick up only about 40. Julie confirmed today (coffee with Julie being another vacation treat) that the very start of the sleeve was narrow and floppy so I ripped back and took her advice to kfb to gain the 60 sts (when I knit the first full row, I twisted the picked-up stitches to tighten the join). The sleeve width is now more symmetrical to the length of the sweater and the cloth is dense (again, the purpose of the wool sweater is warmth).

I was in the spare room on Sunday, opening boxes and piling yarn on the bed with this project in mind, when DH poked his head in. "What are you doing?" he asked, and I know he was thinking I was making a mess. "Looking for yarn" was the obvious reply. When he closed the door without a word, I think he thought I had found plenty of yarn.