Two Views

There were a few moments a couple of mornings ago when the sun peeked into my window and I finally managed to capture the beauty of Kilcarra Donegal Tweed. Don't you love the rugged greenness? I, in fact, am so taken with this yarn that the thought of having no more to knit (since this project will have eaten almost all of my 1,660 yds) that another package of it is now wending its way from Ireland at this moment. Since great service and a great product deserve due credit, let me put in a plug here for the ebay seller Irish Yarns & Crafts. She buys this yarn coned from the Donegal mill and makes it available for a reasonable cost. There is even a sale going on right now, so it would be well worth checking out the link :)

Now as much as we would all like to pretend that our knitting looks like this all the time, it does not. No, it looks more like this...




A giant, poorly lit blob, entangled with various needles and threads hanging off in all directions. For those of you who are non-knitters (and have managed to last this long - bless you), I will interpret this picture. It is a sweater "in progress." The orange threads on either side of the sweater fronts mark off two inch lengths in order to help me pick up an equal number of stitches along the edge. The needles down the right side show where I have picked up stitches so that I can knit a button band. The sloppy mass at the top is a hood - the top not yet stitched together. And that little scrap of paper safety-pinned to the right side says "buttons." I am hardly one of those knitters who can remember more than one thing at a time.

Since this photo, I have actually knit and bound off the right band. It pulls in *just* a bit. (Please tell me this will block out perfectly). Now all I have to do is figure out what I want to do for buttons, pick up and knit the left side - including button holes, block the bands, seam the hood, weave in the rest of the ends, and try to steam the shoulder seams into submission. Hmm... now that I wrote all that out, it makes my by thanksgiving goal sound less than realistic.

The Sweater That Ate My Brain

Gets quiet around here when I'm up to my eye balls in a project, doesn't it? I think of how much I appreciate those people who snap photos of their wips at regular intervals and write detailed posts about the pro's and con's of button placement. Gives me some solace when I want advice from someone who has actually knit a sweater before. Also makes me think I too should leave some of these helpful posts in my wake as I stumble through this. Alas, I find I am not motivated to post when I can't get decent pictures. Where did the sun go?

The heap of wool on my couch is now starting to resemble a sweater. Sleeve one is seamed in and sleeve two is blocked, but still drying. I've picked up the stitches for the hood and made peace with the gaps between the neck stitches and back stitches by promising myself to go back and tidy those up during my final finishing of the sweater. Ever onward...