Drumroll Please...

This week was not too bad in knitting land.  I wound some yarn and tidied my stash area (just a little though, didn't want to get carried away).  I turned the heel and finished the gusset on the Enabler's second Appendisock.  Best of all though, yes, the moment you've all (not) been waiting for...

I finished my sweater!  It finished blocking over the weekend and it got buttons on Monday evening.  Monday was freakishly hot and humid over here in Winterpeg, which was amusing since it was the last official day of Winter.  I can't remember previously experiencing very many winter days of plus 25 degrees C with thundershowers (Climate change?  What climate change?).  Regardless, I finished it and of course put it on to check out the finished product, and almost immediately had to take it off because I was sweltering in it.

Tuesday evening was nice and cool, perfect weather for a photoshoot with my lovely and talented BFF Stephanie.  I learned last year that the Enabler can't be trusted to take a decent photo of any sort so it was a great excuse to hang out!

Now to start planning sweater #2...

 

Spring-ish

It appears that spring is here in Winterpeg, although the pessimist realist in me isn't really expecting it to stick.  As I write this it is 18 degrees C outside, and it's not even noon.  All of the snow disappeared this week, and I don't mean most of it but there's still a few piles of snow in the shadowy places.  No, I mean ALL of the snow.  I'm actually going to try to keep this pretty short because I don't want to squander away the precious minutes of lovely weather in case it starts snowing again (sorry, that's the pessimist realist talking).

This week was kind of crazy.  Shortly after I posted from The Enabler's hospital room last week Saturday, he was discharged and we went home.  All week he kept receiving gift and food baskets from friends and coworkers, and I would have felt a little left out but my mother-in-law bought me some gorgeous flowers.  There was more than one of them of course, but this was my favourite.

It's been a week now and he's doing great, however another member of the family is not doing so well.  Chairman Meow apparently broke his hip somehow and he had surgery on Thursday to have it fixed.  They called it a "femoral head excision" which sounds really strange.  What they do is they actually remove the "femoral head" which I guess is the ball joint in the hip.  For hip surgery in humans this would result in them replacing it with something, however in cats they just take it out and stitch them back up.  Over time the hip muscles will build up to replace the bone that was there, and they supposedly become good as new.  Sounds bizarre but I'm no vet.  I just give them my money and hope for the best.  That's all I can do, right?

He seems to be doing pretty well.  He can walk although it's a little wobbly, and he's already tired of being cooped up in the laundry room where we are keeping him so he doesn't run around too much or try jumping on anything.  If I sit in the middle of the floor he will walk continuous laps around me, good side in, so he can lean against me if he needs to get his balance.  Every so often he stops and looks up at me and meows as if to say "I'm doing good right?  I can go out and play now right?  Please?"  But perhaps I'm anthropomorphizing (I don't think I am).

I received my March sweet georgia sock yarn this week too!  It's called "spring garden" and I love it.  Although I am sad that this means I don't get any more...  Not sure what it will be but for right now I'm happy to just have it in my stash because the colours are so wonderfully springy!

The first of the Appendisox is finished, and the second cuff has been started.  I don't have a picture but I have something even better:  Proof that the hoodie is finally blocking!  I even have buttons for it!  I started the blocking on Thursday night, so as of tonight it will have been 72 hours (is that a rule?) but I think it's going to need longer than that.  I'm going to leave it at least until tomorrow night but it's only a matter of time before this thing is finally done.  It's too warm outside to wear it right now anyway.  Good thing I'm pretty sure it's going to get colder again before it warms up for real (sorry, pessimist realist again.)

And yesterday we were invited to celebrate St. Paddy's day with our friends that live just down the street.  I still hadn't made anything for their beautiful baby girl that was born on January 1, so I decided to make a hat.  I started it at 9 in the morning, and finished it at 4:30.  It didn't take nearly that long however, I had to take a few breaks in between for dishwashing, eating, and grocery shopping.  Total time from start to finish was probably around 4 hours.  I love baby hats!

The pattern is the Owl Tuque which I think is just the cutest thing.  I love owl cables, I can't get enough of them.  I'd made this pattern before with a ribbed brim for a little boy, but I thought for a little girl a rolled brim would be super cute.  It's too big for her still but the nice thing about knitting for babies/kids is that if you make something too big, you know it'll fit them eventually!

That's all for now, time to go outside and enjoy the warm weather (while I still can...)

Okay fine, so I'm a pessimist.

Appendisox

I had plans for today's post. I had planned to talk about how my sweater was blocking and the cowl was finished and blocked and you were going to be so impressed with my productivity.

Well you know what they say about making plans. Life happened.

The Enabler started having severe stomach pains on Thursday night, which then progressed throughout the day on Friday and resulted in an appendectomy last night. What this all means is that my post today is limited to what can be done from the poorly lit hospital room.

Yesterday all I had with me was the second Persnickety sock which I worked on for a couple of hours until my exhausted eyes couldn't handle it anymore. I hardly made any progress, partially due to the terribly fiddly nature of the sock and partially because I didn't feel like knitting it. It apparently is not a waiting sock. It is not a sock to be knit in stressful situations, because my stitches got so tight at one point that I could barely cross them over each other.

Once the Enabler was in surgery and I was free to go home and prepare for today's visit, I knew the persnickety socks weren't going to cut it. I found an already wound skein of scarlet Arequippa and a set of 2mm dpns and tossed them into an empty project bag to bring with me today. When I got to the Enabler's room this morning I first made sure he was doing fine, and then I cast on for Appendisox. No, that's not a pattern so don't look for it.

The last pair of socks I made for the Enabler are well loved but apparently a bit too big. Instead of 72 sts, this time I cast on 68, and I'm doing a 1x1 rib for a couple of inches at the cuff before I will switch to 3x1 rib for the remainder of the leg and top of the foot.

Simple. Soothing. Meditative. Just right for a hospital room.

And don't worry, he's doing great.

So close, and yet so far

The sweater is finished at last.

Well... sort of.  All the knitting is done and the ends are woven in.  Now I just have to block it, find buttons I like, and sew them on.  However, I have tried on the unblocked sweater and it pretty much fits so I am hopeful that this sweater will be totally awesome once I've finished the last couple of steps.

Never having made a sweater before, I have also never blocked a sweater so I'm not sure if it's better to use blocking wires or if I should just pin it out.  I think pins will probably be the way to go.  I just have to psyche myself up for it, which isn't the easiest task in the world.  Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe.

I've been slogging away at my persnickety Snicket socks, and finally finished the first one this week.  It felt like it took FOREVER.  Tiny splitty sock yarn, 2 mm needles, and cables every few stitches every other row through the whole sock makes for a very time consuming project.  Again I say, thank goodness I've learned how to cable without a cable needle, and once I had the stitch pattern memorized, it wasn't so bad.  

Plus, they are pretty awesome.  Even though they are The Colour That Would Not Be Photographed.  Just be aware that you're only getting about 25% of the awesomeness of these socks as that's all my camera can handle.

I started a new on-the-go project this week.  I have been wanting to make a Noro Striped scarf for awhile but just hadn't gotten around to it.  I finally decided that it was time, found the only pair of straight needles I had that weren't plastic, and cast on.  The needles are probably a bit too big for the yarn but I didn't mind the more open look of the stitches and it made for a fairly soft scarf.

But then I started questioning myself.  I liked the way the colours looked together, but I kept thinking about all of the other scarves that I have, and wondered if the yarn might be better as something else.  A shawl?  I wasn't sure I'd have enough for an adequately sized shawl (I have 2 skeins each of two different colourways of Silk Garden, so about 400 m).  Hat and mittens?  Like I don't have enough pairs of neglected mittens already.  Then Christina suggested a cowl and I thought about that for awhile and the wheels started turning.

After a couple of failed experiments, I decided to go with a simple stockinette stitch cowl, and instead of doing basic stripes I am doing an extremely simple mosaic pattern.  Mosaic knitting is a way of doing colourwork except only one yarn is used at a time, so it's not any more difficult than doing stripes. 

 

It doesn't look like much right now but I like the colours a lot and I am keeping faith that after casting off and blocking it will look much less like a dogs breakfast.  And if it still looks like a dog's breakfast, I can always rip it out and try again.

Plus it's nice and simple while still being interesting enough to keep me from getting bored.  Perfect TV knitting which is good because the Enabler and I started watching Dexter last night.  I am totally hooked already and we're just a few episodes in.  I'm pretty sure that I love it mainly for two reasons:

1. It's very macabre but also hilarious.

2. It's not Dawson's Creek.