O Yarn Goddess, I Beseech Thee

Normally I am very paranoid when I estimate how much yarn to buy for a sweater. I hate the thought of running out and I like to account for the possibility of extensive swatching. I usually get at least one more skein of yarn than I think I will need, just in case.


This is Dark and Stormy, done except for the sleeves. I reduced the front button band to 2 inches from 3 inches.


This is all the yarn I have left. The two little balls in front were my swatches. So, to summarize: about one and a half skeins to do two full-length sleeves. Shit.

Erica (Ms. Squoosh) very kindly offered to dye up an additional skein for me, but I'd be concerned that one skein dyed at a different time than all the others would end up looking too different in the final sweater. So I'm just going to weigh my total yarn, divide it in two, and knit down as far as I can go. Short-sleeved and three-quarter sleeved sweaters are fashionable right now anyway. Sigh.

I really love this sweater, too, despite this:


strange pooching in the shoulder area. I'm hoping this comes out in the blocking. I can tug at the collar when I'm wearing it and it disappears, but nothing is final until the sweater is blocked, of course.

I have been doing little else this break, knitting or spinning-wise. The kids are home, Mr. T is at work. We're hanging out, playing, getting stuff done. Sr. Jr. and I both needed new glasses, so we went for our vision appointments yesterday. Both boys have projects to do for school that are due after break and require supervision, of course. You know, the stuff of everyday life.

I started mitten liner #2 for Susan, and I need to get back to it.


Jr. Jr. and her son are both in the school's big Geography Bee next week, which would be a perfect time to give them to her. So now I have a deadline.

I really, really want to start spinning this:


I'm sorry for the not so great pictures, but SOMEONE apparently didn't catch the SUBTLE HINTS that I wanted a light box for the holidays. This braid is so gorgeous in person that I wish I could accurately capture the colors for you.

Christmas was very nice and low-key here. I think Jr. Jr's favorite present was his now-traditional bottle of apple juice. We had "Jewish Sweet and Sour Brisket" for dinner and Jr. Jr. even asked for seconds! So much for the hour long, layer your flavors Cook's Illustrated Recipe; he likes the one I found on the Internet that uses ketchup and and has only 5 ingredients. But it was tasty, so who am I to complain? Less work for me.

I'll leave you with a picture of my boys, playing nicely together. We had to capture the moment, since it happens so rarely, LOL. They were playing with Jr. Jr.'s math dice:


Have a Happy New Year!

Partied Out, with Reading Report

Oy. It's been a long string of holiday events and parties. Every day, sometimes more than one per day, for a bit now. I'm tired. I'm ready to stay home and cocoon. And knit and spin and read and bake and try new recipes, of course. I'm ready for Winter Break.

Hasn't been a whole lot of knitting going on. I did start the lining for the second Fiddlehead mitten for S. I will get those to her after break. I failed at finishing them by the Winter Concert. Oh well. Other than that, it's been a row here, a row there of nothing much.

But! I did finish plying that enormous bobbin of singles that I finished spinning before Thanksgiving. I lost a little of it in some plying mishaps, but I still managed to get a nice long skein. I first started plying it on my Ashford, which has a jumbo flyer unit on it that can handle a lot of fiber. But it was acting wonky and frustrating me, so after just a little bit, I broke the single and moved back to my wheel of choice. Shortly after I started plying on that wheel, the single broke and I couldn't fix it. After that, however, things went along swimmingly.




I ended up with about 417/8 yards, chain plied. It's a little bit overplied, but hopefully not enough to have an effect on the project I will knit from it.

I chose a simple shawl, the Lacy/LazyKaty shawl (Rav link), and I wound the yarn into a ball:


I really want to start knitting this right now. Now! But I can't. I'm trying very hard to be good and finish up the mittens before I start working on this. We'll see how that goes. I also want to start another spinning project, but that may have to wait until after Christmas.

I have been reading, some good, some okay, some eh. I tore through Tana French's three books, mysteries/psychological mysteries set in Ireland over the last 20 years or so, encompassing some bad economic times, better economic times, and back again. The first one, In the Woods, was my least favorite, but still good. The narrator/main character of the book is kind of dumb and self-deluded, which made it a little frustrating. The rest of the book was great, but not liking the main character detracted a little from the experience. I would still recommend it. Her other two books were much more enjoyable. I found myself searching Amazon to see if she'd written any more, but no. I'll just have to wait for the next one.

I also read Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen. I enjoyed this book, too, however, I didn't think it was the Great American Novel that all the reviewers seemed to think it was.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu, was also well-reviewed. It definitely had a clever and interesting basic idea. Its focus on language and story reminded me a bit of some of Jasper Fforde's work in the Thursday Next books, but this book was more serious than those, dealing with a son's search for his father, literally and metaphorically. Unfortunately, there are long stretches of the book where I read it thinking "Is anything going to happen?" Then something would happen, leading to more long stretches wondering whether something else would happen. In the end, I'm glad I read it, but maybe a better editor could have tightened it up a bit.

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We celebrate both Chanukah and Christmas, which can sometimes tax the imagination. This year's been particularly tough, between the early start of Chanukah (right after all the work I put into hosting Thanksgiving) and the kids getting to a point where the things they want cost more money and begin to bump up against our ideas of how much stuff kids their age should really get. If they had their way, they'd get multiple new video game systems and games, and Jr. Jr. would be getting an iPod Touch. Sorry, boys.

I don't feel like there are any real "wow" gifts for them, but at least they're getting some fun stuff. And in the meantime, we'll have our traditional Christmas morning Belgian waffles, and Sr. Jr. and I will try a bunch of new recipes. The guys are planning a Star Wars marathon, too. So it will all be good :)

Holiday Rush

Ah, yes. The days of half hour lines at the post office, the mad rush to the mall to buy outfits to wear to holiday parties, not to mention gifts, etc., the seemingly never-ending round of school concerts and parties...

Tonight is the elementary school Winter concert. I can predict, with my psychic powers, the entire evening: the orchestra playing Hot Cross Buns and Jingle Bell Rock. The chorus singing a selection of different holiday songs from different traditions. My husband ridiculing the school's chorus teacher. Sweating away in the multipurpose room. The mad rush to the sweets table when the concert is over. Jr. Jr. is playing trombone and gets to play the glockenspiel as everyone enters and takes their seats. Good times.

Tomorrow is Mr. T's firm party, and also the neighbor's annual Christmas party. We rush from one to the other. This year the firm party is at the firm, so I can dress a little more casually and not be overdressed for the neighbor's party. One of my least pleasant chores every year is trying to find a dress for the stinking holiday party.

I sound a lot more Scroogey than I am. These things are all fun and I have wonderful memories of past concerts and parties.

But wow is it cold here right now! It was 20 degrees at bus stop time this morning. I was decked out in handknits, which helped immensely. Handknit knee highs rock. I highly recommend them. The only part of my body that was cold was my face. Poor Mr. T is getting extremely cranky because he hasn't ridden in a while. It needs to warm up a bit or he's going to go all Redrum on us.

Knitting still goes in bits and pieces, and there's no spinning at all at the moment. I finished the second mitten for my friend, but I haven't started the liner yet:


I was half hoping to have this done by tonight to give to her, but it'll wait a few more days.

I finished up one of my String Theory stripey socks at my FILs this weekend. (That went really nicely. I think they appreciated the help, and appreciated spending the afternoon with us. We'll go back again right after New Year's to help take things down and get the tree out of the house.) I started the second, but didn't get too far:


Then I decided I needed to have another stripey sock on the needles as well, so I cast on another pair of Twisted Fiber Arts socks, this time in the Ember colorway:


But the most fun I'm having right now is with Dark and Stormy. I'm still loving the sweater, the yarn, and the knitting. I'm almost to the point where I can stop knitting downward and do the ribbing:


Sorry for the flash picture, but the others came out too dark. I tried it on and I think it's going to be perfect when it's done. It's nice and warm, too.

I keep planning to get that big bobbin of singles plied up, but then I end up not having the time. Errands pop up, Jr. Jr. gets sick, and the day goes by. I really want to have a good chunk of time to do that, and chunks of time are rare these days.

One week until winter break! I'm looking forward to sleeping in, working out, cooking with Sr. Jr., and relaxing with the whole family.

In the Valley

Here we are in the brief and perhaps non-existent valley in between the holidays. Technically it's not really "between the holidays" for us, since we're in the middle of Chanukah right now. But so far it's been very laid back after all the frantic preparations for Thanksgiving and before all the holiday parties and end-of-the year activities.

We went to two very lovely Chanukah parties this weekend, where we hung out with friends, drank amazing vodka from Siberia, and discovered that Jr. Jr. likes brisket, as long as it's not mine. The bicycle menorah is a big hit. The present-giving has been a bit haphazard, since I didn't have too much time to shop, but that's ok.

This weekend we will go to my father-in-law's house to put up his Christmas tree. His lung cancer has advanced far enough that he's in too much pain and is too fatigued to be able to do it himself. We want them to be able to celebrate the holiday and have all their familiar and loved ornaments to see and reminisce about. We'll go back on January 1st or 2nd to clean it all up, which works out well, since his birthday is January 3rd.

No! I haven't finished Paper Crane yet. Stop nagging me. Anyway, it's a very light sweater, which wouldn't be too useful now that we're in the Winter chill. That's right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

And, no, I haven't cast on the second Fiddlehead mitten for my friend S. It's cold out, and I know she could use the mittens. Stop making me feel guilty! I'll do it this week, I promise. I will! Maybe.

None of this has nothing to do with Dark and Stormy. Really. I swear. Just because I can't stop knitting on that, doesn't mean that I don't still love Paper Crane. I mean it.

I've gotten past the part where I separated the sleeves from the body and I'm down at the waist shaping. The pattern only calls for one round of decreases for a very subtle bit of shaping at the waist, but I'm going to add another round, just to give it a little more shape.



I love how this is turning out so far. Simple, yet interesting. The knitting holds my interest, but I don't have to concentrate too hard. The yarn is such a pleasure to knit with.

In the midst of this Dark and Stormy love-fest, I did manage to finish up another pair of stripey socks. I can't haul Dark and Stormy with me to piano lessons and to hang out at Temple while I wait for Jr. Jr., so socks come along with me:


(You can get much better sock pictures if you have someone else to take the pictures!) The yarn is Gothsocks Laudanum, her MCN blend, in Faery Folk. Soft and warm.

I'm hoping to finish one more pair of socks before the end of the year. Should I go all out and say that I'll finish the second Fiddlehead and Dark and Stormy, too? What about spinning? I still have that bobbin of singles to ply up. I'm not going to make any promises to myself, because there's a lot going on in these next few weeks.

Wandering Eye

Thanksgiving is over. Everyone's gone. We had as nice a time as we could have had.


This was the first time the family has all been together for Thanksgiving in a long time, since years before my mother died. Given that there are some entrenched hard feelings and champion grudge-holders in the family, I was worried. But everyone was great. The food was good (if I do say so myself) and it was very nice to have everyone together.

And, just after I've recovered from that, Chanukah starts tomorrow night. I'm sorely behind in my gift-purchasing. Some gifts have been ordered, but just haven't arrived yet. Jr. Jr. runs into the house every day after school and starts searching for the presents. He can't find any. He swears he's going to find them under our bed, but all he finds are empty boxes. Little does he know that some things are hiding in plain sight...

I didn't knit at all for several days over Thanksgiving week. I was just too busy. All my stripey socks are stalled. One pair is almost done, but I haven't finished them off. And I tried to get back to Paper Crane. Second sleeve -- it's almost done! But, oh, endless stockinette on tiny needles gets boring.


That's 72 rows of knitting. I have another 96 rows just to get to the armhole shaping and armscye. You can see my problem, right?

I needed something more interesting. I needed something less laceweight. I just bought a pair of cream-colored cords that would look really great with brown boots and a brown sweater, so...


I strayed. Forgive me, for I have been adulterous in my knitting. The culprit? Dark and Stormy. Here's the Ravelry link. Knit in one piece from the top down out of worsted weight, with cabling to keep things interesting. The yarn is Squoosh's Merino/Cashmere worsted. I love it. It's round and squooshy, with great stitch detail. I don't think this one will pill quickly, like a lot of more loosely spun and plied cashmere blends.

I still have that bobbin of singles to chain-ply. I don't know when I'll get around to that. Maybe this weekend, if I can tear myself away from Dark and Stormy.

This Post Brought to You by the Number 1

One sock:


One mitten:


One very full bobbin of singles:


One part of one other sock:


...and one finished pair of socks:


(Like how I snuck that last one in there?)

This is what happens when I work on many things at once. Luckily, they're small things, but it does feel a bit scattered to me. The top sock, by the way, is Gothsocks. The mitten is a Fiddlehead mitten for my friend Susan. She just tried on that first one a few minutes ago and seemed very happy. The last pair of socks is the Yarn Chef Plum Waves pair.

I managed to get the whole 4.something ounces of fiber onto that bobbin, thank goodness! That's a very fine single, but when I looked back at my first picture from this spin, I realized that I started out a bit thicker. It's taken me at least 3 weeks to do all that spinning, so I'm not surprised that I'm a little inconsistent. I hope the finished yarn isn't too bad because of that.

I'm hoping to get that plied up this weekend, but I don't know. I'm hosting Thanksgiving this year, so there's a lot of cleaning and prep work to do. Of course, I decided that the guest room needed a little facelift before my alleged* guests arrive next week, so right now the room's a shambles. Sanity prevailed, however, and I decided not to attempt to repaint the room while I was at it.

An emergency call to the plumber pushed to the forefront our plan to renovate the boys' bathroom. It's working, but right after Thanksgiving I need to start the process of finding a contractor, getting estimates, etc. I really don't want to have to go through this, but hopefully it won't take too long. We'd just be gutting and redoing, without moving walls or anything.

So between suddenly having to host Thanksgiving, Chanukah starting right after Thanksgiving (and I still have no gifts!), and needing to get moving on the bathroom reno, I'm a bit stressed. And I won't really be able to knit or spin to relax, either.

I can't wait for January.

* I say "alleged" because while my brother has apparently told other people he's coming here for the holiday, he hasn't actually said anything to me yet.

A Former Favorite

Once upon a time, Fall was my favorite season. I loved the crisp air, the changing leaves, the holidays. I loved walking through a pile of leaves just to hear them crunch. Fall hikes were my favorite because it's not too hot, and everything's so beautiful to look at.

Lately I've come to loathe Fall. Maybe "loathe" is too strong a word. Mourn? Remember it wistfully? Pine for it? Maybe those give a better sense of my feelings.

These days, school starts, after school sports start, cyclocross season starts, and those things take up all of our time, leaving little or no time for just plain fun. Earlier this season I mentioned to Mr. T that I really missed going for hikes in the Fall and he helpfully checked his calendar and said "The only day I can give you is ____." (And then I re-injured my ankle and couldn't hike that day, anyway.) There are things around the house that I really need familial help with, but there's never any time to do them. Sigh.

The holidays seem to come quicker and quicker, too. This year is going to be really tough, because Chanukah starts something like 3 days after Thanksgiving break ends. Everyone's coming to my house for Thanksgiving this year, so I don't know when I'll get my Chanukah shopping done. This is where the Internet saves me... I can order some things to have on hand at least.

Speaking of Chanukah, I got the cutest menorah this weekend at the temple:


A bike for the bike racers! It's even got a wee little water bottle in a holder, too :)

I continue to plug away at the spinning I showed you earlier. Well, I didn't spin at all last week. It was a busy week. But I got back to it this week. I'm getting close to the end, sweating every inch, hoping it will all fit on this bobbin:


I have no idea how consistent this bobbin of singles is. I feel like it's getting thinner and thinner as I keep spinning, but I see lots of inconsistency, too. I'm aiming to have the bobbin finished sometime tomorrow, and then hopefully I'll get to do the n-ply over the weekend.

I also finally finished the first sleeve of Paper Crane, and cast on for the second:


And then I set it aside. I promised a friend that I'd make her a pair of Fiddlehead Mittens like the ones I knit for myself last year, and mitten weather is fast approaching. Fiddleheads generally go pretty quickly... with the qualifier that "quickly" is a relative term when you take into account knitting only gets done in spare bits of time.


I'm also continuing to work on stripey socks, slowly.

The school decision continues to confound. I went to a required meeting at our home school yesterday afternoon and came away unimpressed, frankly. I didn't feel like the presentation was very dynamic or that it gave me a compelling reason to send my child to the school. The school is one of the top high schools in the country, so I'm clearly missing something. But I do know from our elementary school experience that the leadership at the top isn't necessarily what makes a school great. The big factors are the quality of the faculty, the motivation of the kids, and involved parents. I know the school scores high on all of those factors. For now, we'll continue with the lottery process and see what happens. We may not even have to make a decision in the end.

I Don't Have Much

Sorry to say...

I haven't really knit or spun in a while. It was a busy weekend, and now Jr. Jr.'s home sick with me. It will be a really busy week, too, so I don't know how much I'll have to show you in my next post. Bear with me.

But I do have some leftover stuff from last week to share.

First, spinning: I'm about 3/4 of the way through my current batch of spinning. I'm trying to get one long single out of this braid, and then n-ply it on itself for a 3 ply yarn with long color repeats. The braid I'm spinning was slightly more than 4 oz. Here's the 3/4 on the bobbin:


Here's a better shot of the color, although you can't see some of the reds that show up every now and then in the braid:


And this is how much fiber I have left to try to squeak onto that bobbin:


It's going to be close. I really hope I can fit it all on one.

I've still been knitting on my various stripey socks and the first sleeve of my Paper Crane, which is finally far enough along that I can show it to you:


I'd love to finish this sweater sometime this century. Of course, at the rate I've been shoving food in my mouth lately, it won't fit.

Halloween was fun and had its bit of excitement. In a change of pace from years past, Jr. Jr. was NOT something that required wearing a long black robe and a scary mask of some sort. He's been some sort of ghoul, Scream guy, what have you for the past few years now. But this year he went as "Guy Riding an Ostrich," a costume which was voted funniest in his class:


He and Mr. T went out trick or treating for a little while, until his upset tummy forced them to come home (a harbinger of what was to come this morning, clearly). Sr. Jr. helped by carving the pumpkin and handing out candy. We didn't have a huge number of trick or treaters this year.

Then things got interesting when fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars showed up at our troubled neighbor's house. This neighbor has no job, no driver's license (lost it because of drunk driving), and does nothing much but drink all day. His son lives with him off and on, as well as a skeevy roommate who appears to crash there in between stints in jail. Lovely, huh? We suspect that there's some drug dealing going on there, too. They carried the son away on a stretcher with a neckbrace on, after doing some tox tests. I hope they spent some time searching the house, too. The cops keep a close eye on the roommate and the house, but perhaps it's time for the neighbors to do some more vocal complaining.

On the school choice front, I'm still as undecided as I was before. Tracey from the comments has provided me with extremely helpful information and perspective, as have some other parents with kids in both schools. I'm torn, but I think we'll go through the application process and then Sr. Jr. can make the decision for himself.

I'm hearing reports that there are kids in his grade who are already smoking pot, which freaks me out. It freaks me out even more because I'm pretty sure I know which kids are involved. There's also been some vandalism at a local school/playground which I hear was caused by the same group of kids. I used to worry about why Sr. Jr. wasn't hanging out with the other kids after school more, but now I'm thankful that he tells me "You don't want me hanging out with them, mom, really!" I guess they're not the same cute little kids they were when they were 7 and building paper airplanes in my house.

As much as I want to wring his neck over some things, I have to admit that Sr. Jr. has a pretty good head on his shoulders. Whew!

Bleargh

Well, it's not been a lovely week. Or weekend. I'm looking forward to more un-loveliness coming ahead. I'm cranky. At least one of the crank-inducers has been resolved: an unauthorized transaction on my Paypal account. I caught it right away and initiated the dispute. Called my bank, too. All's well that ends well, but it was nerve-wracking.

Before I get to the fibery stuff, a note to Tracey, who suggested I contact the school superintendent with the thoughts I expressed about pushing kids too fast in my last blog post. Thank you, Tracey! That was a good idea. I emailed him, but I haven't heard back yet. As a teacher, do you feel like your voice gets heard in these kinds of curriculum decisions? Also, you said that you have a 9th grader at that school. Is he or she in the IB program? Are you happy with the school? I'd love any input you could give me.

In my limited fiber time, I've done a little work on the Paper Crane sleeve, which I haven't photographed lately. It's not interesting enough yet to show.

I also started working on the Gothsocks that I showed last time:



I like how this yarn is knitting up. The stripes look watercolory and the cashmere makes for some soft knitting.

I'm also spinning some more. After last week's freewheeling woolen spin, I'm back to spinning thin worsted singles. I plan to n-ply this yarn for a 3 ply final yarn.

The braid comes from Cloudlover. It's a Falkland wool in the "Bonfire" colorway:


Here are a couple of views of the singles. I'm almost halfway through:



I know it's Fall and I'm attracted to these colors, but after several different projects in this color range, my next spinning project will definitely be in another color palette.

The Art of Compromise, or The Tale of Two Bobbins

Sometimes spinning fiber is like raising a child. You get your raw material, and it's lovely, but you can't force it to be something it's not. You can shape it, and make it as lovely as it can be, but it has a definite personality of its own.

Enter Squoosh's October Fiber club braid, a BFL/Silk blend called Crunch:


My first glance at it had me thinking of a thinnish three-ply yarn, one long single, n-plied. So I broke off a bit of the fiber and started spinning. Blech. It did not like that. It didn't spin smoothly. There were blurps of fiber. It didn't feel nice. I did not want to spend my spinning hours fighting with the fiber. Spinning is supposed to be relaxing, after all. So when I finished that bit of fiber, I set it aside and put another bobbin on.

This time I just started out by grabbing hunks of fiber and letting it go. It finally settled down into a happy state. There were still some fiber blurps, which will require a bit more attention on my part when I do the final spin, but on the whole, the fiber was very happy being spun woolen-style, not too thick and not too thin.

In the meantime, I went ahead and n-plied the first bobbin of singles, just to see how that would finish up. Both samples got hanked up, washed and beaten up a bit.

The n-plied thin singles came out a bit crunchy, not soft. The colors seem a little harder, too:


It looks pretty in the picture (and it is in real life, too), but when I pick it up and feel it, it doesn't make me want to knit with it.

By contrast, the singles are softer. Woolen spun yarns will generally be softer than worsted spun yarns, but this was clearly the more appropriate form for this fiber. The colors also softened up and became more inviting:



Now, THIS yarn made me want to grab the needles and start knitting.

So, I will go with the flow and spin the rest of this braid to resemble the squooshy singles.

If I ever get to, that is. I was planning to spin it today, but then I forgot that I had Comcast coming in for a long install today. That pushed the spinning until tomorrow, except that somehow the install got messed up, and they're coming back tomorrow.

Thursday. I hope.

I also finished my Vintage stripey socks, here modeled by the very latest in blase-style cats:


Then I wound up some Gothsocks (OhMyGoth, Faery Folk) for the next pair:


Some of that has been knitted now, I just haven't taken any more pictures.

On a totally different note, last night was High School Information night. Sr. Jr. and I went together because he's interested in applying for the IB program at one of the local schools, and we wanted to learn some more about it. I came away generally impressed, but with some concerns (that are not limited to that school or program).

Several of the local schools are offering some of the ninth graders the opportunity to take AP World History. School officials readily admit that most 9th graders who take the class are not at all ready for that level of work. Only about 5% of the 9th graders who take the class get a 5 (the highest possible score) on the AP test. The vast majority get 1s and 2s.

So the school that houses the IB program has a summer "introduction to advance placement" class for the kids who will be enrolled in the class. There are before school help periods and Saturday morning help periods. As a result, the majority of the kids in the class in this school get 4s and 5s on the AP test.

Sounds good, right? But then the principal said that they noticed that the kids' scores on AP tests then dropped when they got to 10th grade. They realized it was because the kids didn't have as much support as they did the year before, and it was affecting their scores. So they added more support.

The intended message of the story was "Oh, what a great school, they provide so much support for the students." And they do. And it's very nice.

However, I wonder whether anyone stopped to think whether all this was really an indication that the kids aren't quite ready to take AP classes and tests that early. Because that's my takeaway from the evening.

I'm all for challenging kids and working to get the best out of them that we can. But I wonder whether the hyper-competitive environment that we live in is blurring the lines in our minds and in the minds of school administrators between challenging kids and in pushing them too fast. If so much support is required to get the kids to do well, they're not necessarily being challenged, they're being given crutches.

The hard part for me is that I'm pretty sure that Sr. Jr. will be one of the kids who is offered the opportunity to take that class. I know he's very bright, but I also know that he's not used to working hard at school. His study skills are not very evolved or sophisticated. I don't know if he would thrive or struggle in that environment. I guess we'll see.

(But yes, he came away wanting to apply to the IB program. There are 84 slots, and it's a lottery. We'll see how this goes.)

Sweater Weather

Hallett's Ledge is done, blocked, dried, off the board, and in the armoire. I took advantage of the cooler weather to try to get some good shots of both it and my Pas de Valse, which I finished a while ago.

Here are some Hallett shots:




The cat was complaining that we just weren't paying enough attention to her.

Hallett's Ledge was great knitting. I had no problems with the pattern. It went quickly but held my interest.

Here's Pas de Valse:


I think both sweaters are serviceable, but I'm not in love with either of them. I feel a disturbance in my sweater force. I used to make sweaters that I loved (still love) and wear all the time. I feel like I haven't made a sweater that really makes me happy in a long time. If Paper Crane disappoints, I'll be very sad. I'd like to finish that soon, so I can get on to some other patterns in the queue, hopefully ones that I'll like.

I did also finish the first of my Vintage socks:


I love these socks and I love this yarn. I got my sock club and fiber club installments on Tuesday and I love them both. I'm not posting pictures out of respect for Kippi, who hasn't received hers yet.

So, back to Paper Crane sleeves...