Phew, next please

I bound off the last piece of my sister's big blue sweater yesterday evening.



There they are, all the pieces, in all their freshly knit, crumply glory, as I desperately try to make use of what little natural light we have here today - it's a rather dull grey winter day, and rather cold to boot, -15 C. Once the bathroom sink has been cleaned, I'll be able to block them, and then they can be seamed - I find the seaming process feels a lot smoother with blocked pieces.

So, am I planning to clean the bathroom sink right after posting this so that I can keep moving towards having a complete sweater? Heck no. Though I am very likely going to go into the kitchen and wash some accumulated cooking detritus so that I don't end up hating myself tomorrow when there is, um, more to do.

Instead, I've been winding some yarn for a sweater for me! I'm halfway through the batch.

Is it yarn for Runcorn, which I was practically slobbering over in December?

Heck no! I had the good fortune of picking up Elena Nodel's Thursday Special as a Christmas freebie, and it promises 'interesting construction' and the sample images provided by one of her testers made me think this piece would be fantabulous for my work-appropriate wardrobe, which means I am now mentally drooling over this one. I dithered around a bit on yarn choice - do I go solid or tonal? I've decided to use my batch of Knit Picks Swish Worsted in Merlot Heather, which is a dark burgundy colour, uniform enough to look solid until you look really closely, and then your eyes can pick out the subtle heathered variations. Should be a good pairing, and I have lots - take that, yarn chicken.

I also started a new cowl yesterday - I had booked the car in for an oil change, and wanted to have something to work on while I waited around the dealership. It's a Boomerang Cowl, and I'm doing it up from a skein of madelinetosh tosh dk, and it is very very satisfying. As I was getting going with it yesterday, the receptionist from the dealership took notice and wandered over to take a somewhat closer look - I had cast on at home and worked a few rounds of edging just so I wouldn't have to juggle a bunch of stitch markers in public casting on, so I didn't have much to look at when she came over, but she was attracted by the yarn. Can't say I blame her - madtosh yarn is sort of crazy beautiful. But she came by, and exclaimed over how lovely the yarn was, and said that she'd never really gotten into 'that' (meaning, knitting) before - she was an older woman, not elderly, but certainly well into middle age, I'd say - and I replied, Well, it's never too late to start. Because, really, it isn't! She hesitated a moment before replying, No, I suppose it isn't, and then commented that it appeared to be so relaxing. I agreed, saying that yes, I do find it to be relaxing, and we joked about how it was certainly something nicer to focus on than the news story that was playing on the lounge TV about the current free fall in the price of oil. Then she headed back to her desk to get back to work, and I continued on my merry way with the cowl.

And discovered I'd miscounted somewhere in setting up the first round of the pattern stitch.

I slowly tinked back to where the error happened (one too many knits), wondering vaguely about how relaxed knitting really made me feel at that specific point in time.

Either way, it's gone well since then, and I'd show you a picture, but I hadn't initially planned on talking about that cowl in today's post, and now that I've done it, the light has entirely faded for the day - welcome to Canadian winter, where decent light after 4 PM is a no-go. Not that the light was great today to begin with. Oh well. Next time. Maybe even a finished cowl - it is moving quickly.

Now. I guess I should probably wash those pans.

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