Actual Knitting Content!

It seems like it's been forever since I had any significant knitting to show. Trust me, it's not like I've had too much knitting time lately. But I have made a little visible progress, so I'm going to show it off.

I knit endless thousands of tiny stockinette stitches and finally arrived at the part of Paper Crane where I bind off for the armholes, do some shaping, and knit the wee front panels. I say "wee" because they are pretty short. Here's a close up for you:


Here's a bigger shot, so you can kind of see the construction:


Now I knit up the back to the neck, and then cast on stitches for the rest of the fronts. I know I'm nowhere near done (sleeves, anyone?), but reaching this milestone makes me feel like I'm getting somewhere. Still in love with the yarn, cat hair and all.

But it's also August. The Fall knitting mags are beginning to come out. August makes me want to knit sweaters. Yes, I know Paper Crane is a sweater, but it's laceweight. It's thin. It's not a sweater sweater. When I think of nippy air and fall leaves, I think thicker wool, more rustic... cables.

Enter Hallett's Ledge, a pattern from the newest issue of Twist Collective. A search through the basement cedar closets yielded the perfect yarn, a discontinued rustic worsted weight wool from Louet, most likely purchased from Elann.com several years ago. Perfect. Swatched and gauge was spot on. Cast on and now have this:



The bottom done through all the waist decreases. Worsted weight on size 8 needles goes much faster than laceweight on 2s!

The kids are still home, but I can at least get a little knitting done here and there. School starts September 7th. No, I'm not counting the days. Really.

This morning I got on the treadmill for the first time since I injured my ankle. I've been brace-free for the last couple of days without any pain, so I wanted to see how the ankle would handle a brief walk on the treadmill. My plan was to start with a 1 mile, moderate speed walk. If things felt good, I would slowly work my way back into things, walking faster and longer before I attempted to run again. I don't want to aggravate or reinjure the ankle and be immobile any longer than I have to be. I'm not quite sure what to conclude from my attempt. I can feel my ankle in a way that I don't feel the uninjured one. It's a bit achy. I don't know if that's the injury or if it's simply stiff from it's forced inactivity.

Whatever I do, I will take this slowly, even though my brain is screaming "Want to do more! Nao! Faster pleez!"

In a future post I will write about all the books I managed to read while I was gimpy, but I do want to recommend one I'm in the middle of right now, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell, who also wrote the marvelous Cloud Atlas. It's really wonderful. Hard to put down, which leads to later nights than I need.