State of the Knits

It's been a crazy couple of weeks.  La finished school.  I went camping with the Junior troop.  The girls' soccer season ended.  La was sick.  El graduated from Pre-K.  It's been enough that I actually forgot that I was reading a book and trying to finish it.  I remembered it at the end of last week when things finally calmed down.

This is the project that has been my soccer knitting.  And keeping people company knitting.  And leader meeting knitting.  It is Sonnenblume.  I'm drawn to leaf motifs.  So, the beginning part has pretty much been a steady stockinette - 4 easy to find increases (except when the soccer is exciting) and purling back.  It has, however, gotten to the point where the rows are long (243 stitches) and it's time for the actual lace chart.  It is a little overwhelming - I need a chance to try it when no one is going to jump into my lap and also I'm not exhausted.  So I got it to the right number of stitches and put in a life line.  It's ready whenever I am.



I have two skeins of something nice wound up and ready to go, but didn't really want to make another pair of stockinette socks right now - I have kind of a lot and didn't really feel like making socks for someone else.

One is this Ruby Sapphire Treadsoft in the Chiasa colorway.  I probably bought it in 2007 and the etsy shop doesn't seem to be there anymore.    The colors in real life are like a purple iris with a super-verdant stem.  The repeats are probably just right for nicely striped socks.  But I didn't want to make socks.  I found this chevron scarf/wrap, shown in a very colorful sock yarn.  Vittorio.  Dude.  I paid for the pattern.  (I am notoriously cheap about this stuff - I'm never sure what the written pattern is going to be like, if I'll be able to follow the directions or not, how it's constructed, etc, and I'm usually just as happy to wing it.  This is not to say anything about designers being paid a fair rate for their IP and time, because they really deserve to be.  It is more about me being unwilling to take the gamble.)

The pattern is written out line by line.  There are charts, but there are two edgings and the charts for each part are separate (and don't seem to have a least common denominator) - the large saw tooth, small saw tooth and the center.  I have the pattern on my kindle, so the line by line method works better.  Except if you cast on while watching Chuck.  And don't have a good way to remember which line you're on.  And the kindle keeps going to sleep in the middle of a row.  So.  I cast on and started like three times.  And gave up until Saturday morning.

This is like 39 rows in.  I am having trouble printing the PDF, so I'm still using the kindle and developed an "index card method" to save the row I'm on.  Take enough math classes and "boxing your answer" becomes a reflex.  You can see the chevrons starting and some of the edgings.



You may be starting to notice a spring green and purple theme going on here.  This is the other skein that is wound and waiting to go.  It's Cascade Heritage Silk.  I picked a pattern for it.  I bought the K*TOG: Oklahoma Tornado Relief e-book.  It was mentioned in the Knitter's Review email this week.  It has some neat stuff in it.  This is going to be Targetty.  It was from looking at the K*tog stuff that I found the chevron pattern above - she has another pattern in the K*Tog collection.



Still this didn't solve my having something plain to knit problem.  So tonight I cast on a hat with some other green yarn.  There is no shortage of green yarn at my house.

In closing, here is this picture of a slug.  The girls saw it outside the front door before school recently and the 5 year old took a picture of it with my camera.  And let me know afterwards.  Speaking of slugs, Epic is a good movie.  You should go see it.