mid-February lace dishcloth

The Yahoo dishcloth KAL has such lovely dishcloths. Here is the most recent one. The ones at the beginning of the month are usually knit/purl pictures. The ones mid-month are usually lace or cables or bobbles. This is obviously a lace one.

I've finished my feather lace socks for February just in the nick of time. A picture is on the SAM3 KAL. An in-progress close-up of the sock is in the Feb 8 post here. I'm glad that I didn't give up on it. And I'm glad of Fleegle's post on left-leaning k2tog's. It's made those k2tog's so much easier to do and so much better looking.

I've finally figured out what to do for my next sweater. But that wasn't until after I'd frogged 1 finished sweater and another that had been in progress for years. The yarn for this new sweater is from the sweater that I'd had in progress for years. I liked the pattern the sweater was knit in but not the yarn. I started the now-frogged sweater with size 5 needles, then switched to size 4, and finally reached size 3 needles. This is going to be a crew-neck raglan with a reddish garter stitch "collar" and with knit and purl rectangles to keep up my interest, all done with size 3 needles. The picture is of the yarn ball and the back of the sweater. (I haven't detached the red yarn yet just in case I decide that I don't like the sweater and decide to start over. I've already changed the size of the raglan seam to fit the pattern.) This is basically a make-it-up-as-you-go sweater. If it turns out, I'm planning on giving it to my mom (who lives with us). Though, her short-term memory is bad enough that she probably won't know where the sweater came from. (She's had several heart attacks and strokes.) I just hope she'll like it.

Washington's Headquarters in Morristown

On the spur of the moment, my DH and I decided to visit Washington's Headquarters in Morristown, NJ. (We were driving by, saw the sign, and decided to stop in.) Luckily, we got there just as a tour was starting. We were surprised at how interesting it was. It's a largeish house, but, at one time, there were 70 people living there. They had guards at every door, both interior and exterior.
None of the furniture in the house was Washington's. He had to move his furniture there from Virginia when he moved in. (The owner of the house moved most of their furniture into the attic -- though they did keep a couple rooms for themselves.) Then he moved his furniture out of the house when leaving. Pictured is the bedroom where he and Martha slept plus some furnishings of the time. Martha spent her time mending shirts and knitting socks. (I didn't notice the knitting until after uploading pictures from my camera.)
On another subject, my California DS sold his first half car!
Finally, on the subject of my knitting, I discovered this morning why one should knit in good light. I was redoing stripes on my next sweater when I discovered that I needed a little bit of yarn to finish the stripe. It wasn't until this morning that I discovered that I had finished the dark navy stripe with black yarn. I'm considering leaving it as it is as a reminder. But, I'll probably redo it. I've knit and reknit that sweater so many times.
I'm also having trouble deciding what to make for my February sock for SAM3. A lady at the knitting group said that the socks I'm currently working on would look good as knee highs. However, if I did that, the socks wouldn't be finished until March. So, I'm going to put them aside and knit the mystery pattern from the Sockamaniac sock-along Yahoo group. The February pattern looks interesting.
added the next day:The February pattern is nice. However, I decided to use the advice that I gave to someone else who was worried about finishing socks by the end of February. A pattern knits up faster the further along one is. So, I now am going to finish the socks I was working on before beginning socks in the mystery pattern. -- And I redid the sweater's stripe.
On another subject, my DS in Calif just sold his first whole car!

Feb sock started

I started my Feb sock for SAM3 with the intention of making the Monkey sock from knitty.com. However, I couldn't get it to look like the picture. Plus, I wanted to make it a little narrower. I made a half-hearted effort at another sock, which looked good. But, I couldn't get my heart into it. Then finally, I thought: I've got a whole book of knitting charts that I've been wanting to try out. Why not try one out with a sock? -- So, I picked out something called feather lace. Here is how far I've gotten. I'm debating on whether or not to try to make it into a knee-high sock. My one try at knee highs didn't turn out.
Earlier this week, I went to my first knitting get-together. It was really fun. I'm looking forward to going back.

Sweater 2

Happy Groundhog Day! I heard that Punxsutawney Phil didn't see his shadow, and so the winter will end in 2 weeks instead of 6.
I've finished my second sweater for the year for the Sweater KAL. It's a 3-color variation of Tubey with a square neck bordered with garter stitch. The sleeves are a little over 3/4 length and have cuffs in garter stitch. There is a narrow stripe at the elbow with a change of color after that. The sleeve is basically straight. The only striping for the lower garment is in the 5" or so under the front neckline. Details are here. It's also linked in the side bar under the name TSquared. And this is a picture of me taking a picture of myself modeling the pullover. I'm obviously not good at taking pictures of myself. ... And this is the best of the lot.
I've now frogged my old Tubey and am going to remake it in this style. The four balls of yarn are from the sleeves, the upper garment, and the lower garment. It will have more stripes than the one just finished, but the last stripe for the tube part will be at my waist. (I tried it on as I was frogging it and discovered that if the stripes ended at my waist, it looked a lot better on me.) And I'm planning to make bell sleeves as in the original. I'm also planning on making it smaller around.
I was planning to make the first of my SAM3 socks in KP Essential using the Monkey pattern from knitty.com. However, the yarn I was going to use (the Peruvian) doesn't show lace as well as the (Italian) Essential that I used for Zokni. So, I'm debating whether to find a pattern more suited to the yarn or to use a different color (from the Essential skeins I have of it that were made in Italy). I wonder which is the "new" Essential. Oh well, part of knitting is finding what pattern the yarn wants to be knit into.