Knitting

So, the red and black norwegian sweater is coming along, slowly but surely. The body is about half done and I need to start the sleeves so I know how big to make the steeks. I guess I could do the sleeves top down, but I'd have to reverse the pattern and I'm too lazy. I guess I could always do a different pattern on the sleeves but if it wasn't similar, that would be strange. Either way, I need to make a chart for the sleeves and do the math to figure out size and such and I'm feeling more like knitting than thinking these days.

And in my room is this big, overflowing basket of yarn. Well, this picture is a big basket overflowing with yarn, there are actually several more baskets and a lot of plastic boxes and one giant black cloth box full of yarn in my room too . . . but we can ignore those for the purposes of this post. (And we'll ignore the boxes and bags of yarn in the basement forever, thank you.)

Not only do I have all the yarn in this basket, most of which is sock yarn, I have several new and very lovely sock books as well. So I wound most of the sock yarn into balls and then knit little swatches of each color to see what it would look like. Some of this yarn is for me, some for the hubby and some for the girls but who actually gets each individual color is up in the air for the most part. Hubby has claimed the two orange balls on the right side of the basket and even though one daughter would dearly love to steal it, he gets it. I have claimed the brownish ball in the front of the pile, but that same daughter is trying to steal it from me.

That daughter would like for me to make her the Monteray sock from The Eclectic Sole: Socks for Adventurous Knitters out of that orange or brown, but she's willing to settle for the Tofutsies in pink & yellow (no, I do not know the actual name of the colorway as the yarn was a gift from a generous friend). So I test knit a swatch of the pattern to see what it would look like in the yarn. The gauge is off and the sock construction is not normal, so I need to try to get gauge on a different needle.

That same daughter likes Hydrangea from The e Eclectic Sole. She was supposed to get one ball of the Numma Numma Toasty for Needlenook that I won, so maybe I'll make those for her in Shirley's Breakfast Blues.


The other daughter gets the Mountain Colors Bearfoot - can't remember the colorway, maybe Meadow? This yarn matches the Mountain Colors Weaver's Wool that I bought a while ago and made a diagonal sweater out of for this daughter. She's been too busy to look thru the pattern books and pick what she wants, but usually she prefers for me to knit her own inventions so we'll discuss that when I'm ready to cast on.


I want to make Rivendell from Eclectic Sole for myself. It would look good in the Numma Numma Toasty for Needlenook in the Lou's Brews or Shirley's Breakfast Blues if the girl decides she still wants the gray . . . .


That leaves the Malabrigo sock yarn in Stonechat left without a pattern, but never fear, I have other books that haven't been cracked yet . . . . .


And if you look at that basket of yarn, you'll see some more sock yarn that hasn't been claimed or labeled yet - some gray handspun, some green and some orange Elann, among others. The blue and white and the big hank of purple are for a knit along that is supposed to start in March - you guys might want to do it too as it's being led by Joyce Williams.