Stalking patterns

I hope the lady I stood behind at the grocery store didn't mind me intently staring at her skirt. I was thinking, "That would look nice knitted up. . ." so I sketched it in Paint:

Time out knitting

Every once in a while I hit a real knitting slump. Either I don't knit at all, or I try making knitted things that don't really engage my brain at all. During the next-to-last bout of this, I cast on a 72 stitch garter afghan square, and then, after knitting about 10" of it, discovered I'd made a funky something way down near the cast on, and needed a crochet hook to address it. That square, instead of merrily beginning the "eat up all the stash and make a blanket while you're at it" effort, is now languishing in a bag in time out.

Meanwhile, even though I'm being pretty good at not buying yarn, more yarn came to my house. In a bag. From a friend. Not much, and I moved the stuff I wasn't thrilled with right out of the house, but just enough to make some wee baby things. I figured, my wonderful niece deserves a little spring hat, no? And I, the dorky knitter, deserve to knit something that is soothing and repetitive, and easy enough that I don't spend my usual 30% time ripping and re-knitting. Every project I finish is usually about a 130% project.

At any rate, check this out. The amazing cuteness of the wee baby face makes up for every silly thing about the hat. I must immediately knit more things, so her cutie-fu spreads to more knitted items, no?

The other one

This Sunday was The Other Team's day. Four high school teams, a beautiful sunny day, with just enough of a hint of a breeze to promise the storms which hit last night. Unfortunately, my two favorite players had spent the week being very sick, and weren't up to their very best. They still did the frisbee trifecta of run, catch, throw, and it was a wonderful day. Good games, good parents to hang out with, and I even got some knitting done.

The kid runs fast, even when sick.

Nice bid, but not everything is completed:


The next trip down was more like it:



So cool she is.

I'm not going to be cool until this sweater gets much bigger. So far, I think the other knitting project looks like an alien chest protector:


Mix of bamboo and silk handspun (the green) and two colors of Cascade EcoWool. The body and sleeves will be chocolate, with something else along the cuffs and bottom. Some echoey pattern, probably. Anyhow, almost instant gratificaton, unlike the mitten project, which received a couple of rows' work last night.

Another one suits up

On the verge of heading off for a full day of Frisbee and knitting (child and me, respectively), I felt like posting evidence that it's not going to stop any time soon:



She's not the tallest player, and she did sprain her ankle the first game out, but she's got a lot of heart and I'm sure I'll be driving her from tournament to tournament for the next few years, too.

All done, with thumbs

We all know that we'd be up a creek without the ability to paddle without our thumbs. My mittens (Rav link) are happier with them, it turns out. Also with duplicate stitches. And blocking. And woven-in ends. All add up to mitteny happiness.

Here, perched on the overly-abundant lime tree, just to give a shot of sunny weather-type plants to anyone up to their duplicate stitches in snow:


Thumbs! And also, varied tension on stripes. Maybe over time they'll even out. Or not.


Some people are unhappy with gussetless thumbs. They don't bother me so much. It's not as though I'd like to do some kind of hand-intensive dance, such as Balinese dance, in them, but since I'm not likely to do that at any time, I figure these are good. They fit fine.

It took me much longer than I'd like to admit to figure out that the duplicate stitch went in the little in-between diamond thingies, not the fronds. Fortunately it unpicks easily. And I really don't like duplicate stitch much.


It makes an already-poppy mitten just that much nicer (unlike the obvious mistake in the photo above. Oh well.) They're done.