Lovely weather we're having...

The Gambler and I arrived in the Dominican Republic yesterday, ahead of the storm that is screwing up other people's travel plans. Nothing like watching scenes of snow filled streets while you are putting on sunscreen. In addition to a stack of books, I did bring some knitting with me - it is a secret project which conveniently uses a yarn suitable for warm weather. I ended up needing a last minute gift for someone, so last week I quickly knit up a cowl out of some Noro Kochoran that was sitting in my stash: It's called the Wave Cowl, and because of the short rows, it works nicely with long colour repeats. I have another skein of some Noro yarn (silver thaw?) sitting in the stash; when I get back I might knit another one of these cowls for myself. Somewhat uncharacteristically, I will have several days off after I return from holiday; I hope to at least start the second sleeve on my Poppy sweater, as well as knit up a pair of Chevalier (from the book Knitting New Mittens and Gloves)out of some Lamb's Pride Bulky that I have. Speaking of that book, the Hand Hoodies that I knit last year have worked like a charm: My fingers are sheltered from the wind unlike with regular fingerless gloves. I highly recommend them. Just in case you miss your flight to the Caribbean...

We'll have a Green Christmas...

The Gambler and I decided to deal with holiday stress by taking evasive action this year; on December 19 we leave for the Dominican Republic for a week. This gives us an excuse to not bother with putting up the Christmas tree this year (I don't remember what last year's excuse was...) So instead I knit a Christmas tree out of some Manos: With cat for scale: Decorated with vintage buttons (I inherited The Gambler's Nana's button collection): The pattern is available at Kniterary, my LYS away from home. Next year I might just knit 2 of these out of some bulky yarn and make festive touques for myself and The Gambler.

Knit a sweater in November - hahah that's a good one!

I am so out of the loop that I did not even realize it is National Cram an Insane Amount of Activity Into Thirty Days Month (NaCrInAmAcInThMo?) until I was dropping in on a SnB that I don't usually attend and someone mentioned that they were on track to knit their target number of stitches for the month. The person suggested that one could still meet a goal of 15,000 by knitting 1,000 stitches per day. Right now there are some weeks where I might be lucky to get 100 stitches in. Luckily, I have been off since Saturday, and between naps I have had the time to do some work on Poppy. I have started to do some decreases, and am quite happy with how the sleeve is fitting at this point. I'm very happy to have reached the point where I can perceive actual progress on the sleeve. Unfortunately, I am wondering if my somewhat irregular "jogs" where I switch skeins are too obvious, meaning that I should rip it back and start over: Does it look too Frankensweaterish?

Getting ready for The Games

Somerset and Greedo are hoping to make the synchronized napping team...

If I could knit during meetings, I'd have a drawer full of sweaters!

Sigh. Happenings of late have led to many meetings that I must attend - sometimes 2 or 3 a day. There is much need for contingency planning and trouble-shooting right now. And then there's that whole providing patient care schtick; it does tend to cut into my knitting time. Heck - it's cutting into my sleeping time - yesterday was the start of 3 days off, and my afternoon was spent taking a 4 hour nap. This weekend's project is socks: (I really really need to start taking pictures with my real camera rather than just with my Blackberry) These are socks for The Gambler that I started knitting while we were on holiday in September - I am calling them Tweedmanaire - the pattern is Luminaire, the yarn is Regia Tweed which Glenna passed on to me. I've just finished the foot of the first sock, and I am halfway through the heel of the second sock. The second sock is that far along because I got to a part of the sock where I had to refer to the pattern, so I slipped the stitches onto waste yarn and resumed work on the first sock to make it more transit knitting appropriate. Poppy is proceeding at a slow pace - the first sleeve is in a black hole phase where I knit and knit but it doesn't get any longer. (I'm not working on it this weekend because it is sitting at the condo - I brought it with me to Wednesday's SnB, and then stayed at the condo that night so that I could make it to the hospital at the crack of dawn.) I've already found my post-Poppy project: The Diagonal-Front Jacket from Debbie Bliss Home Of course it's that time of year where I am starting to think about Christmas presents...maybe this year will be a good year to give books!

Special Delivery

I ordered some yarn from Serendipitous Ewe a little while ago. In addition to some of her Sock Summit colourways, I also got a custom colourway: Hmmm - what's this? There's something about this colourway that looks familiar...

Call to Arms

Last weekend I had 2 days that I could devote chunks of time to knitting. This was the result: It's now resembling an actual garment! Only the sleeves remain. As the pattern is written, I should be knitting them from the cuff up, but I am going to try pickinng up stitches around the armhole and knitting them top down using the technique described in Wendy Bernard's book Custom Knits. My only concern is that it involves short row shaping at the top of the sleeve. Since I have at least 4 different dyelots (it is entirely possible that each of the 6+ skeins I have comes from a different dyelot), I am going to have to figure out how I can alternate skeins while doing short rows. Then there's that whole matter of all those ends at the bottom...

Picking up Poppy

Next week my parents are coming to visit us. Visits from my parents are always a great incentive to try to tidy up our place a bit. On Friday The Gambler decided to attack our loft, which functions as our office and also stores many books. It's also where I have a few plastic drawer units that contain yarn. Non sock yarn tends to go up into the office. When I came home (the joy of my new position is having to attend meetings at work that are held on my days off), he pointed out that there was much yarn in the loft which was not in a drawer. There was yarn in bags, yarn in the closet, and yarn in bins in the closet. Sigh. I don't want to count how many sweaters I have the yarn for that are just waiting to be knit up. So I am really really really going to make an effort to curtail the aquisition of new yarn, and start using up what I have. I hung out with Glenna yesterday; we had lunch and then went to The Purple Purl. I mentioned to her that amongst all that yarn up in the study was the bottom panel of a Poppy I started 2 years ago. She pointed out that if I had completed the bottom, that was a huge chunk of the sweater already completed. So last night, I picked up Poppy for the first time since we moved. The body was knit with Cascade 220 and Mission Falls, and the remainder of the sweater is being knit out of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted in Black Purl. Now, there is a bit of a story behind the Shepherd Worsted. Initially I got 2 skeins in exchange in a swap through the knitty board - it was a bit of a screwup, because I sent the other person sock weight yarn not realizing that she was trading worsted weight yarn. I subsequently sent her more yarn to make up for the difference. When I decided to knit Poppy using the Black Purl instead of Silk Garden, I tried to find more Black Purl. That was when the colourway was at the height of it's popularity, so I ended up doing another swap or 2 through the knittyboard, and one person was kind enough to send me several balls that she had leftover from a previous project. Needless to say, the yarns come from many different dye lots. So I am going to be switching between skeins very regularly (sometimes every row), and am going to have to try and balance out the amounts of some of the outlier skeins to keep some degree of homogeneity in this sweater. I guess it could be worse - it could be a solid colour yarn! I did promise some yarn pr0n; this was some yarn that I picked up in Italy at a little yarn shop in a small town called Monte San Savino. 1400 metres of laceweight wool for an astoundingly low price - I think it cost about 5 euros. The colours are great - purples with blue, red, and some bronze and green thrown in as well. I will have to find a nice place in the loft to store it.

Slow news day

Nope, nothing of note happening today... No siree Bob.

Have your toddler bring his driver's licence...

Oh dear, another one of those "Yes, almost a whole month has gone by since my last post, and even though there has been travelling and knitting and cute cat pics, I am quickly posting a picture I took with my Blackberry" posts. I do have a bit of an excuse - I have been promoted at work to Lead Intensivist, which translates into the person who makes the call schedules, attends all sorts of meetings, and tries to recruit new people to join our team so that I can have more time to knit. It also involves putting up with a not insignificant amount of crap from the person who was recently fired from the position, but that could be a blog unto its own. Will try to get some Actual Knitting Photos and even some yarn pr0n up this weekend.