WIPs and pieces

I was knitting in public the other day, at the Little Turtle branch of our local library system, when a woman stopped to ask what I was knitting. Usually it is non-knitters who initiate such conversations, but this woman (whose name I neglected to get) is a knitter and a spinner. In fact, she invited me to the local spinners guild, which I know about but have yet to attend. She also clued me in on how to knit tube socks for kids: use this spiral pattern so they are more likely to stay up.

Now I am itching to finish the current socks so I can try out the spiral ones. This pic of Vintage Kitchen is just before the heel turn, one of which I completed today. Heel turns require good light and a quiet atmosphere so I can hear myself count. Rarely do I finish more than one a day.

I was hoping to hang out with the knitters in Slow TV National Knitting Eve, but the dialog is in Norwegian, necessitating the reading of subtitles. Some knitters can knit without looking, but I am not one of them, especially when working a heel turn. I watched a bit, but decided I would rather knit to acoustic music from Spotify.

The top down sweater is coming along, slowly but surely. I work the front until I reach the end of a skein, then work the back to the end of a skein. The pattern is six rows long, and I can listen to a book on CD while working it (current listen The Plague of Doves, by Louise Erdrich).

So I have a big project for knitting on the sofa and a portable one for hauling hither and yon. When the sweater is finished, I plan to complete the stalled poncho. Then there is another sweater's worth of yarn that might become a cabled pullover. And then I added a sweater to my queue today that is knit in fingering weight yarn. I think my knitting eyes are too big for my needles!