First a Kitty

Musette. That's not her tail, it's a mushed up kitty pi. That makes a total of 3 knitted items in which she is nesting. The red thing, knitted by the illustrious Laura, is a sweater which I've altered but still need to reknit the button band. Hi Laura. The rainbow thing is the circular blanket. This had to happen. All the little packages finally got the upper hand. It was like the scene in the first Harry Potter where all the letters are shooting in through the fireplace and the mail chute and flapping around trying to get attention. I need to tie a needle gauge to it.Oy. I'm working on this now. It's going to be a stole. The pattern is Swing Stitch from Barbara Walker #2, p. 264. I spent a good 2.5 hours knitting tonight only to end up having knit one more row than when I had picked it up. Counting Fail. Lifeline Win! The lurid green highlights are due to having messed with the color values to get the knitting to be this shade of purple. I think it's pretty accurate. It's interesting that the color of the unaltered picture was pretty close to the pictures in the online stores. Maybe I'll get another skein after all.These are finished. I finally located the original pattern! I had to have help from the Patterns forum on Ravelry. They are called Rise and Shine socks. The author is Tikru who blogs at Made By Myself. Forgive me for posting so many pictures of them. I love them so. I'm working on another pair. If I don't watch myself carefully I'll frog the plain one and reknit it as a Rise and Shine sock. Maybe I'll make the zigzags further apart.

I'm invited to a wedding, but I need your help. Chicken, fish, or vegetarian?

Well, gosh darn it.

Sock Alert!

Sock Alert!

I finished my Jitterbug Socks--over a week ago. Are not they pretty? (I love how thin I look from the ankles down.) They feel reallynice: soft and warm, but firm and springy. The heels could be a little deeper, but the fit is not distracting. Let's take a closer look:Now from another angle:

Hold the phone! What's that on the left heel? My plan (insane laughter) to take over the entire sock drawer is thwarted!

What is it about "knit every even numbered row" that you don't understand?

It turns out that my friend Natalie French (Not French Natalie and not "the other Natalie") is going to have a grandbaby. Whee! So I've decided to make Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket. I've got a bunch of balls of a self striping Regia sportweight sock yarn (Crazy Colors) and thought to make it in that. My gauge was a little smaller than 6 per inch, which is the gauge specified. Plus, I want to make the jacket bigger. I have seen examples done up and they are pretty newborn-ishly sized and this will be a spring/summer baby. I want to make something that fits at the appropriate time. After swatching with a larger needle size, to no avail, I hauled out the cotton I frogged from my two-tone purple sweater and stranded it with the Regia. I swatched a couple of different needle sizes and it was still too small. It shouldn't have been, but it was. So I decided to double strand the Regia. Well, I thought that was too heavy. I remeasured my swatches, this time with a ruler, and discovered that I had miscounted my stitches. I thought I was knitting 14, but only had thirteen. As it turned out, the gauge with the purple cotton was just right! After a frantic run during rush hour, in the blowing snow, to Ruhama's to get size 4 circs and back before the guys installing my new water heater could finish, I began my project. It took me numerous tries to cast on 160 stitches in the long tail method without running out of yarn. I finally accomplished it by using WAAAAY too much and breaking off the excess, as I have lots and lots of extra yarn.

Only this is where I ran into trouble. See the picture. See the mitered corners in the picture. See how the mitered corners in the picture are more like dolphin noses than corners. See Kathy have faith that she is doing it right despite the fact that the corners don't look right. See Kathy trust the pattern. See Kathy reread the pattern. Read, read, read. See Kathy start to wonder when the jacket will aquire some length between all the shaping. See Kathy clean her glasses and reread the pattern one more time. See Kathy eat 85 Girl Scout cookies and go to bed. Good night, Kathy.