Think Spring!

Yesterday I stopped at Knitting Off Broadway to buy some sock yarn, and were they happy to see me! Apparently, Easter Saturday is not a busy day at yarn stores. The woman who taught me to knit socks was there, so we chatted a bit, and I received a lot of help picking out yarn. It was a little overwhelming, in fact. I wanted "manly" sock yarn, but everything they suggested, while beautiful, looked so sober and dull. I wound up selecting this Opal, just because it shouted "Spring!"



It's one of their Rainforest colorways, and it is called "Veronica die Wilde." Last night, I cast on and under the Ott light, the colors looked a bit fluorescent, and I was having second thoughts about my selection. But this morning, in the light of day, they looked much calmer, shades of green from lime to forest, plus gray.

Meanwhile, I finished the Blue Lagoon baby blanket.



When I rediscovered knitting a couple of years ago, I went overboard ordering yarn from Lion Brand, and bought enough to do three of these blankets, in three different color combinations. The first one was Sweet Cherries, and this is the second; one more to go and that yarn will have served its purpose. While the blankets are cushy and soft and colorful, they are also acrylic, which means they are machine washable but also not flame retardant. Wool, on the other hand, is naturally flame retardant, so I am starting to switch to that for baby blankets (superwash, of course). But waste not, want not - by God, I am going to use up that Microspun one way or another!

RDA

Do you have a Required Daily Amount when it comes to knitting? I find that, if I knit less than three hours a day, my fingers get itchy and I need a mini-marathon of stitchery to get over it.

The second best cure to a lack of knitting is a yarn purchase. I took my 40%-off-one-item coupon to Joann's Friday and bought a big spool of crochet thread. I wanted enough to play with unhindered while I learn the (literally) finer art of filet crochet, aka thread crochet. It's more than a little frustrating and hand-cramping, and I'm not sure whether it will become a new needle art in my heart, but it's always fun to try something new.

Meanwhile, the Jaywalkers are finally finished.



I don't know why I had so much trouble with this pair. I have made the pattern before, in the same yarn. The only difference is I made these larger, per the pattern instructions. I am glad to be done with them. I am also glad to have them on my feet this chilly morning.

Pattern may be found here. Yarn is Austermann Step (mit Aloe Vera und Jojoba). Needle size is US1.

In other knitting, the blob of powder puff pink is growing bigger. I seem to have plenty of yarn, so I am increasing the size of the shawl by two 10-row repeats. And I have been hacking away at the Blue Lagoon baby blanket. I would have pix but right now I am lacking AA's for my camera. I think it is time to switch to rechargeable batteries.

Hiberknition

I am not a native Hoosier but I grew up in the Midwest, so when I first arrived in Indiana, the almost constant gray of its winter was a bit of a surprise. I am not affected by SAD, but still. This weather is growing tiresome. If I could stay home and hibernate, it would not seem so bad, but I actually have to go out and drive to work while slush falls from the sky. Ick.

The missing stitch on the red-red-red (are you getting tired of that phrase yet?) sweater/hoodie magically reappeared, but now I have two extra stitches. There is nothing like the body of a 190-stitch-per-round sweater to make one lose one's attachment to perfectionism. No way am I ripping out 1900 stitches of stockinette (I think that is where the offending stitches multiplied - it's hard to tell because of the lace pattern crawling up the front). Jeeze - I never thought about just how many stitches a sweater takes. Hmmm... 190 stitches per round, 6 rounds per inch, tap-tap-tap on the calculator - that's 17,100 stitches just for the below-the-armpit section of the torso. Yikes! Some things are better left unknown.

The Blue Lagoon blanket is also loosening my grip on perfectionism, at least as far as slavishly following a pattern goes. I made some modifications to the Sweet Cherries pattern because I wanted to carry the yarn up the side but it was too difficult with odd numbers of rows for some colors. The Blue Lagoon does not suffer from this problem, but the pattern looks like water, so I'm going with a more random version of the pattern repeats. Just for fun. After all, it is all garter stitch, so I feel compelled to inject something different to stave off the boredom. And I am not carrying the yarn up the side; instead, I break off and knit the ends in as I go. This results in less yarn wrangling. The blues are very soothing, too, so this is an enjoyable diversion.

Unlike the Trekking socks. Yesterday at lunch, it took me nearly an hour to knit ten rounds on the sole. That's 780 stitches, 780 tiny stitches on 4 tiny needles. This is why we knitters work on multiple projects at one time. When one is driving us nuts, we can give it a time out and pick up its jealous sister for a while.