So (a knitting ramble)

[treeskin]

classics_cat came over Monday afternoon for hot water and conversation. I finished the heels on the Greco-Turkish socks, she tried them on, they fit, life was good.

As a reward to myself, I finally started on The Sweater--fair isle, 9 sts/8 rows to the inch, Celtic spirals and a key pattern, the whole shebang. Pulled out one of the Addi Natura bamboo circs By's mom sent home with me, size 2, and cast on 416 stitches. In two colors. Started the 2-color corrugated ribbing, got 3 rounds done, and the damn needle broke. The brass ferule that joins the cord and the bamboo had sliced the bamboo needle tip off. (Insert favorite rude word here.) I was vexed, but (!) I still had another needle that will work (By's mom had sent a matched pair home with me for doing socks on two circs.).

Only, an hour of knitting and a round and a half later (corrugated ribbing is very slow), that needle breaks too. Same break as on the first one. I scrambled and managed to rescue the 50 or so dropped stitches on double points, but, I had no more circs to put the work on. Trip to Yarn Barn is added to Tuesday's schedule.

Now very much vexed, I decide to pull out an old UFO (unfinished object, for the non-knitters brave enough to read this) and make progress. The UFO was the Lopi sweater, which I'd put down because the bottom of the sweater didn't hang right, and I thought I had just made the body too short.

Nope. Not that simple. Seems I'd made the thing too big over the hips (I'd wanted it a little wider there, but 66" was WAY too much). So I spent (with By's help) most of the evening unravelling a nearly-completed sweater.

Grrrrr.

Double grrrrr, even.

Cast on for the sweater again, got a few rounds done, went to bed and hoped Tues went better.

Tues, I got about 6" done on the body of the Lopi sweater while surfing the net. Not bad. Still have 12" to go, but not bad. And the sleeves were ok on the Lopi Sweater 1.0, so I kept those.

All Yarn Barn had by way of circular, wooden, 3.0mm needles were the fancy German rosewood or ebony ones. Expensive, but I went ahead and got the rosewood. As long as it's going to take to do The Sweater, I really don't want to do the thing on metal needles. I did get one of the teflon-coated Inox in the same size, just in case. *crosses fingers*

Am now 5 rnds into the corrugated ribbing (just over 1/2" deep), and am ready for the second shade of blue--nothing garish, just a bit lighter than the first one. (Did I mention this was going to be a multi-hued, many-splendored thing? No? Shame on me.)