Knit ‘n Swatch

I have been totally felled by some kind of horrible illness that makes me sleep for about 15 hours a day.  This morning, with the best of intentions, I crept out of bed, took the oldest boy to the bus stop, came home, and just never managed to get dressed.  In almost 30 years in the working world, that’s only happened to me a handful of times.  I made the obligatory trip to pick up Ellie and managed to read a book (Lyle, Lyle Crocodile) to Ollie when he crept into bed with me, but other than that, I’ve been completely worthless.  I’m really much more of a go-to-work-and-whine-around-like-a-martyr kind of sick girl.  This has me completely off my feed.

To make matters far worse, I’m going to torture you with poorly lit, late-night indoor pictures if you want to see current knitting, because I was asleep through all the day light hours, and only emerged to watch the Daily Show and Colbert with the Judge.  Here is a bit of knitting before I go back to sleep.

First, Ellie’s Cahaba River Jacket.  The body is done.  I have sleeves left to do and then the collar and neck.  This jacket has to be lined.  I’m torn between using one of the literally hundreds of fabrics in my stash that would look great trying to find something that doesn’t look to awful down in my studio or splurging on some beautiful Liberty of London Fabric (all of my Liberty prints are blues and purples) to finish it.

Next up is the start of the first cuff in my Blue Moon Rock and Weave Socks.  My wonderful friend Carolyn got the pattern for me, and I’ve know since almost the minute I saw it that i wanted to use my Colinette Jitterbug yarn in Popsicle for this sock. The cuff is knit in linen stich, working horizontally, and you pick up stitches to go on with the rest of the leg and move on down. It’s very interesting.  I haven’t gotten very far because I keep trying to knit this one while drinking with friends.  Lesson learned:  Do not drink Sherri’s Margaritas and try to knit in linen stitch, because it will not work.

Finally, I have started swatching for Teddy’s first sweater.  I think I had better knit him a pile before he goes off to school in New England. This one started with the yarn.  He wanted an orange and green sweater — pretty complex for a 14 year old boy, and I saw no reason to not honor his request.  At least in swatch, the yarn I dyed up for him seems to fit the bill. 

Towards the bottom of the swatch, I played with it in linen stitch and
a wide rib, trying to decide how to border it.  I think this will just
be a simple basic sweater, using Ann Budd’s sweater book to write the pattern.  I also got this pattern from Knit and Tonic today, thinking ahead to his second sweater.