Cottage46 Knitter

Fall must be coming because I want to knit all. the. time.  I finished what may be my favorite pair of sock evah.  (Give me a minute while I figure out how to get a picture out of Flickr PITA redesigned page.  Gah.)  (OK, now that I've found it, it may be an improvement.  Still, give a girl a little warning.)

The pattern is Aragorn and the yarn is Cascade Heritage.  One pair done, another pair started:

Marlene in Colinette Jitterbug.  

I've been working a little on my swatches for the Master Knitter level 2.  These are practice swatches, especially since I did the lace swatches in worsted instead of fingering.  Sometimes skimming directions just isn't enough.  I should know that by now.  This level won't be done any time soon.  There's an argyle sock which I'm sure I'll procrastinate on.  And I've never done intarsia so I'll have to practice.  There's a vest that can be done from a pattern or designed.  It seems like designing would be good practice for designing a sweater in level 3.  That won't go quickly.

I spent part of last weekend organizing stash.  That was fun.  I was happy to find a little leftover Cotton Fleece that I used for my Cable and O's cardigan.  After I finished it, I decided the button band had too many stitches.  For reasons I don't remember, I bought a couple skeins from a Raveler to use for the new button band. 

This won't surprise anyone, but it wasn't the same dye lot.  Visibly not the same dye lot.  So I've been debating what to do about it.  I thought I had saved the yarn from the original band, but couldn't find it.  Well I found it last weekend so I'll soon be doing Cable and O's 3rd (and hopefully final) button band.  It's interesting how much heavier that Cotton Fleece (cotton/wool) sweater is compared to a similar sweater in Cotton Ease (cotton/acrylic).

The neglected garden seems to be getting its revenge.  We have tons of tomatoes on the plants, but only the grape tomatoes have turned red.  Do they realize it's the first week of August?

Coming up for air!  My current indexing project has schedule slippage and I'm making effective use of the time to knit and spin like a crazy woman.  I actually had to dust off Eleanor yesterday to spin on her.  I thought I might be rusty, but it's just like knitting and felt totally familiar.

I finished my first pair of Wollmeise socks.  It's the Cookie A mystery sock from the Sock Knitters Anonymous group.  I've never done a mystery sock, but I figured I couldn't go wrong with a Cookie A pattern.  They fit perfectly. 

I'm FINALLY knitting a project with handspun.  And it's a lace shawl.  Both firsts for me!  The fiber was an inexpensive wool that I bought when I took my spinning class last year.  It's a bit scratchy but I think it will work for a shawl.  It's about a sport or dk weight and the pattern is Traveling Woman.  I hope I have enough yarn.  You'll hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth if I don't. 

This is what the singles looked like.  They seemed so thin when I spun them but I ended up with a heavier yarn than I expected.   I can't image ever getting a 3-ply fingering weight.  Must practice more!

Kiki has been a sick kitty, but she seems to be on the mend.  She had been losing weight for no apparent reason so she's just finishing a round of antibiotics and steroids.  She's been ravenously scarfing down whatever we feed her and she's definitely gaining weight.  We'll take her to the vet for another round of blood tests next week, but she seems better.  Although that may not seem obvious from her facial expression here.

Despite our complete neglect of the garden, we will have bumper crop of tomatoes and zucchini.  Well, not complete neglect.  We managed to get the tomatoes staked up last week.  (Yes, I am aware that it is the middle of July.) The green beans and broccoli have been decimated by the bunnies though.  This alters how I feel about the bunnies and the bunnies would be smart to keep that in mind.