Three Weeks Later...

So much for my resolve to blog more often. The last couple of weeks have gone by in a flash. Thanks to a long spell of good weather, much of that time has been spent outside painting the trim, doors, and stairs on our house. A week ago Sunday Cameron and I had a marathon painting session and I didn’t knit a stitch the entire day. Believe me, that doesn't happen very often.

With most of the outside work now out of the way I have once again gone back to my knitting in earnest. In about three days’ time I managed to finish one afghan block and crank out three more. This one would have been done a lot sooner if I hadn’t screwed it up and had to rip back about 35 rows.

But it was well worth it since I think this is my favourite so far.

Despite how complex it looks, this square by Kathy Zimmerman knit up quite quickly. I really love it too but then I am a sucker for cables.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t really inspired by how this one looked in the book but I actually enjoyed knitting it and like it a lot more in real life.

And finally, Square #10. I'm kind of ambivalent about it.

Ten down, fifteen to go. There are a couple of good ones coming up in the next row. Although I didn’t start out planning to knit them in order, after a while I decided I needed some sort of system so that I wouldn’t do all the good ones first and be unmotivated to finish the less inspiring ones. So I’m doing them row by row but not necessarily in the order they appear in the book. So far this seems to be working.

Sockdown 08-09 has now begun and one of September’s challenges is to knit socks by Cookie A. Even though the pattern itself is not very challenging I am doing Monkey, since these are socks I have wanted to knit for practically forever but never got around to until now. The pattern is very simple so I expected to be done long before this but for some reason I seem to have lost my sock mojo and they are taking an eternity. Maybe, just maybe, it’s because I keep getting distracted by other projects like this.

I fell in love with the Autumn Rose Pullover as soon as I saw it and immediately sent away for the kit. Although my swatch has been done for over three weeks, I only just got around to casting on for the sweater a few days ago. I don’t have much experience with stranded knitting but so far I am enjoying the challenge of holding one yarn in each hand, knitting English-style with my right and Continental-style with my left. The most difficult part was working the purl stitches of the ribbing with my left hand but eventually I got the hang of it and was able to build up a rhythm.

I had really hoped to have my Berry shawl done by the time I receive my new Year of Lace shipment at the end of this month but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I still have four more repeats (80 rows) to go before reaching the halfway point, with each repeat taking about 2.5 hours. At one time I thought I could manage if I did one repeat a day but I just haven’t been able to maintain that focus—there are so many other wonderful things to knit!

Speaking of, have you seen the latest issues of IK, VK, Knitty, etc.? It’s a conspiracy, I tell ya.