FOs!

Yesterday was a landmark day: I finished knitting my blankie for Karen's baby AND also the pink/purple/orange socks! Pictures coming up this evening!
Well, I almost finished. I still have to weave in ends and block them and so on...but all the stitches are knitted, and that's the most important part. I need to plan a blocking party, wash the blanket (the label says the yarn is machine washable...dare I believe it?) and dunk my green sweater, which has just been sitting and waiting for me to get back to it.

Boring, boring

How do those other blogging knitters ever find new things to post about every single day? I sure can't. Most of the time the only thing I have to say is "worked a few more rows on [fill in the blank] project."

Right now I am powering through this baby blanket--gift for Karen, or rather, gift for her NEW BABY (I am definitely excited!). Nearly there. Its one of these corner-to-corner blankets, and I am about 3/4 done, which means that I am working my way towards the last corner, and the rows keep coming faster and faster. Its sure gratifying. I should be finished with it by the end of the weekend, and then I hope to post pictures.

I don't think Karen reads this blog. Karen, if you do read this, you better comment and let me know, so I don't post pics until AFTER the shower!

Those pink/orange/purple socks are also nearly done, thanks to the long dry conference I attended yesterday. The conference was focused on new treatments and outlooks on schizophrenia. Though I was mostly focused on that baby blanket for Karen and then the socks.

I hadn't intended to knit on the socks (which are my back-up purse project). I wanted to get as much done on the blanket as possible, but it was so damned cold at the conference, my friends were all freezing. I was cozy with the baby blanket on my lap. But in the afternoon I took mercy on my friend Joe Morgan, who had no blazer on like I had, and I gave him my 3/4 finished blanket and he draped it around his shoulders to keep warm. He and it looked very nice together. I wish I had a camera so I could show the rest of you how he looked with the knitting needles around his neck! But alas, I still don't have my camera in working order. You will just have to imagine it.

So while Joe was wearing my one knitting project, I pulled the other (the socks) out of my purse and worked steadily through the afternoon. The result is that I have only the toe left to knit on the second sock. So those too should be finished by the end of the weekend.

The moral of the story is, always have a secondary knitting project in case one of your friends is cold and needs to wear your primary WIP.

knitting progress

Its a funny idea, knitting progress. Since knitting is so slow, the word progress doesn't really describe it. Knitting progresses kind of the same way the planets move across the sky. You know they're moving but you don't really see it happen.

In any case, I think I'm going to get my camera back in action tomorrow, so I'll post pictures of this wild sweater in "progress". I'm not sure about this sweater--it may be beautiful, or it may be spectacularly ugly. I guess we'll see. It will be striking.

twidding my needles

I need to figure out a more reliable way to get pictures onto the computer. My main excuse for not blogging is not having ready pictures of my WIPs. I actually do have some progress to report. My green sweater that I am knitting continental style is coming along--the front and back are both done and I am working on salmon-colored sleeves for it. It will be wild when its finished.

I really struggled with the neckline of the sweater: the wool yarn I am using for the body is so stretchy, but the soft fuzzy stuff I am using around the neck is actually pretty inflexible. So it took some creativity (adding lots of extra stitches around the edge during the bind-off process, as per my friend Zelphia's suggestion) to make the neckline lie flat.

I went back and forth about whether the sweater needed sleeves at all--since there is a whole set of sweater-vests in the latest issue of Vogue Knitting, I flirted for a while with the idea of leaving this green sweater a vest. But once I saw it put together I decided that the shoulders were too heavy looking to be left like they were. The sweater needed sleeves.

In other desperately interesting Abby's-knitting-news, the socks I am knitting out of the pink, purple and orange Sockotta are coming along magically. Done with one, working steadily on the foot of the second. I can't wait to wear them--since I am, for the first time, keeping these socks for myself.

And Karen's baby blanket is about half done. I need to finish it soon, though--the baby shower is coming up soon!