Knit One, Purr Too

Tilting blocks afghan #2 is *almost* done! Or rather, I tied in the final skein of yarn last night, so the end is in sight. Plus, the first of my current pair of socks-in-progress (I’m using a basic broken rib pattern) is finished and I’ve got nearly an inch of the second one done. Progress!

In the meantime, I’ve signed up for Dishrag Tag again, and this year I even get to be a team captain. Plus I’m doing a dishcloth swap with some friends from an online forum, so that means I’ll get to make a teeny little dent in the sizeable stash of cotton.

On an unrelated note, I’ve seen this fun interview floating around in the knitting blog-o-sphere, where knitters ask their non-knitting spouses (or significant others) knitting questions, and thought it looked like fun, so here’s me, jumping on a bandwagon, and Richard very nicely playing along.

The Interview

Me: What is your favorite thing about my knitting?
Richard: My favorite thing about your knitting? Comfy socks for me!

Me: What is your least favorite thing about my knitting?
Richard: Hmm. There’s really isn’t anything about your knitting that bugs me.

Me: What is something I have knitted that you recall as being good?
Richard: Ooh, there are lots. I like the knitted penguin, and the illusion Tux scarf, and I like all the socks you made me.

Me: Do you think knitters have an expensive hobby?
Richard: No

Me: Do you have any hobbies?
Richard: I like to write and I like to play on my computers. And I like to poke at the cats.
Me: Well, yes. We both do that (poke at the cats).

Me: If we compared money spent on hobbies, who would win?
Richard: I think we’d come out even.

Me: Has my knitting in public ever embarrassed you?
Richard: Nope.

Me: Do you know my favorite kind of yarn?
Richard: Nope. Sock yarn, I guess?
Me: Well, I’m not sure I necessarily have a favorite kind anyway (heh).

Me: Can you name another knitting blog?
Richard: Another knitting blog? Uh. Yarn Harlot? Is that a blog?

Me: Do you mind that I want to check out yarn stores everywhere we go?
Richard: Nope.

Me: Do you understand the importance of a swatch?
Richard: Yes
Me: What is it?
Richard: It helps you display your mastery of a particular stitch, and it also demonstrates what can be done with a particular type of yarn, and..uh…they make good cat toys? Is that a good answer?
Me: Hee. Close enough. It’s usually for gauge, but I do use them a lot for testing out stitches first.

Me: Do you read Knit One, Purr Too?
Richard: Yes. Except when you tell me not to (Occasionally I post about something I’m making for him, so I ask him not to read, and he’s very good about doing so)

Me: Have you ever left a comment?
Richard: I don’t think so.

Me: Do you think the house would be cleaner if I didn’t knit?
Richard: No. You’d find something else to spread everywhere.
Me: Pbbbt (grin).

Me: Is there anything you would like to add in closing?
Richard: Knitting makes you happy and therefore it makes me happy. And I get worried about you when you’re unable to knit for some reason.

Apparently I only do knitting these days if I can do it in pairs. Still plugging through the second tilting squares afghan, and I *do* have a pair of socks on the needles (although nothing very exciting there, just using a broken rib pattern because the yarn is multicolored and I wasn’t otherwise inspired), but my latest knitting is the result of a little knit-along in my Thursday night knitting group. One of the other women just got the pattern for the Baby Surprise jacket, and I bought a copy a while ago but never got around to making it, and a few of the others thought it looked interesting, and suddenly, poof, a knit-along was born.

I dug out some yarn (Sirdar Snuggly Magic DK) I bought a year or two ago, and on the appointed day, I showed up and cast on. It’s a fun little pattern - for being all garter stitch, at least it keeps your attention focused, because there’s always something you’re supposed to be doing for each row. It’s not the most clearly written pattern - frankly, I suspect few of her patterns are - but anyone who can knit should be able to work out the confusing bits eventually.

I finished up the first one in record time, mainly because this is a baby sweater, after all, so there’s not a lot there in the first place. And then, since the first only took a little over one and a half skeins, and I had four skeins total, I decided I might as well immediately cast on for another one, just to use it up.

The funny thing about this whole endeavor is that when I started I didn’t have anyone in mind for the finished sweaters. But by the time I was done with the second one, I’d had a chat with my little sister, who told me that our cousin is pregnant - with a little girl - and it turns out my coworker’s sister is going to have a little girl, so…it all worked out, just as I expected it would.

Here’s the first one, seamed up yesterday and buttons attached this morning so I can take it into work and give it to my coworker for the baby shower this weekend.

When I bought the yarn I also picked up the cutest little matching buttons, so here’s a close-up of those.

It’s a fun little pattern and it makes a cute little sweater and the shape of it - pre seaming - is rather intriguing. But now that I have knit two of them I think I can move on to something else.

Goodness. How did it get to be July already?

The kitchen is continuing along nicely. They started installing cabinets on Friday, so there’s only a few more weeks to go, which means I’m starting to get antsy because it’s so close that it’s hard to be patient for that much longer. In the meantime, I’ve been plowing slowly through a stack of Red Heart I’ve had in my stash for quite some time now, as part of my continuing effort to whittle the stash down a bit. That particular bin was pulled out of the yarn closet before the kitchen renovation started, so didn’t require any acrobatic efforts to work through the maze of boxes, random cabinet parts, a ceiling fan, and assorted furniture that now litter the floor of the guest room where the yarn closet is located.

I’d hoped that I’d be able to use up all the yarn making an afghan. This afghan, to be exact.

However, the first one only used up 4 of the 8 skeins. Yes, I did say ‘first’, there, didn’t I. What better way to continue with the oh-so-appropriate for hot weather knitting then by immediately casting on for Tilting Blocks afghan #2? Same pattern, same yarn - at least it’s easy to memorize. And the second one’s going much faster than the first. I’m already nearly finished with the second skein, and I only cast on a week or so ago. Taking the train down to the in-laws and back (three hours each way) for the 4th of July certainly helped, as has camping out in front of the television working our way through all eight seasons of Red Dwarf (which, after my recent birthday, we now own on DVD).

I haven’t been posting much here lately mainly because I have been working (very slowly) on an afghan. For some bizarre reason I keep choosing to start large, unwieldy projects right when the weather is about to get hot enough to make knitting large, unwieldy projects not so fun. But I’ve got all this yarn that I really want to use up, and two different sweater attempts just did not pan out, so…afghan, it is. Considering how cold it gets in our 100 year old house in the winter, what with those single pane windows, and also how much the cats really like sitting on knitted things (and how much easier knitted things are to wash than entire pieces of furniture!) I think it is safe to say that I have a long way to go before I have too many afghans.

But as I said, I am working very slowly - most of my knitting these days happens only at knitting groups - and that has more to do with the upheaval in our house than the weather right now. Last week a bunch of guys came in and demolished our ugly awful kitchen and started the long process of the much-anticipated kitchen renovation. In the meantime, most of our kitchen is packed away into boxes stacked anywhere we could find space, and what remains is crammed into the bay window side of the dining room. We cook using a toaster oven, and wash our dishes in the tiny little sink in the bathroom and dry them in a rack set up in the bathtub. The cats are all locked downstairs for the duration. Getting to my yarn is a task that requires significant rearranging of furniture and boxes to clear a path to the doorway of the closet where it lives, which is yet one more reason why I working only on an afghan. Or rather, I did brave the maze to dig out a ball of sock yarn, just to have something small to keep my hands occupied last weekend, but I suspect any new projects are just going to have to wait for a few months because I am not feeling particularly motivated to try to work my way back in there again any time soon.

I finished my Nutkin socks and finally got a picture of them.

Then I whipped up another pair of socks, this one just regular stockinette-in-the-round, because the color striping was plenty of pattern for me (I really like the color striping!). This is a Trekking XXL colorway.

I started a new pair of socks - this pair for Richard and I left the sock-in-progress on the coffee table one evening and when I looked the next morning I found this.

Hmm. How *could* that have happened? I am sure a certain yarn-eating tortoiseshell cat had *nothing* to do with it. Right, Rosie?

Ever noticed how good cats are at looking completely, utterly innocent?