Back from Colorado

I'm back in NJ after a week in Colorado. Before going there, I finished my DH's sweater which is modeled by my DS on my other blog. (He needs a shave and, in fact, got one while I was gone. He prefers to let his beard grow until whenever and then shaves it off.)
I thought I'd get some knitting done while in Colorado but didn't get any done. My mother is too old (90 in Nov) to live by herself anymore especially since my sister and her family just moved from Colorado to Oregon. (My family and I just moved from England to NJ.) So our mother is now living in NJ with us. My sister and I spent a week at her house taking items to Good Will and also the Marion House, cleaning, and also filling up a 15 cubic foot bin. I hadn't done so much lifting for quite a while. Fortunately, her house was in pretty good shape and didn't have as much clutter in it as I had feared. We worked every day from about 8 in the morning to 10 at night with time out for meals. We also got a lot of visiting done.
In talking to her, I learned that there were children other than my own who had refused to watch "Sesame Street". Our children, when of preschool age, liked shows like "Winnie the Pooh" but wouldn't watch "Sesame Street". Mine even liked to watch "Mr. Wizard" at that age. There's just something about the voices that was condescending or, at least, annoying.

Tweed v-neck update

I'm making good progress with my DHs tweed-stitch sweater, if I do say so myself. I've finished one sleeve and have started the other. (The sweater has a white sheet of paper so that the v-neck will be more visible.) To start the sleeves, I took the 13 provisional cast on stitches off of the chain stitches used in the cast on and put them onto a circular needle (the one holding the sleeve stitches -- 6 onto one end of the needle and 7 onto the other). Then starting with the middle stitch, I knitted 6 sts from the cast on, knitted the last cast on st together with the nearest sleeve st, knitted to the last of the sleeve sts, knitted that together w the nearest cast on stitch, and then knitted 5 sts to reach the middle again. (The last sleeve round was a slip 1, knit 1 round.) Then to start the new round, I looked at the sleeve sts to see whether I should start w a knit or slip stitch and then worked the *k1, s1pw wyif* pattern around.
I'm almost through with a sock for my DD who's attending university in London. (one almost done, one to go) She likes to save money by keeping the heat low in her flat. So, I hope she likes the socks. She doesn't know I'm making her any. But, I think she'll like them because the last time she was here to visit us (and especially the cats) she borrowed a pair of mine. The sock has a Zokni pattern with a Widdershins heel. I posted a picture of it on the Sock-It-To-'Em knitalong (See sidebar for link.).

Knitting w cotton

I never thought I'd knit with cotton until I joined a dishcloth Yahoo group after hearing about it at knittyboard.com. It was strange knitting with cotton at first. It felt as if I was knitting with cotton string that I remember from childhood when you were supposed to tie parcels before sending them. But that strangeness left when I found out how nice the finished object looked and how well it worked as a dishcloth. Now I'm working on a new dishcloth twice a month through that KAL.
Since people at knittyboard.com were talking about cotton being a nice type of yarn to use for summerwear, I decided to make a summer sweater out of cotton yarn, specifically, Knitpicks Shine Worsted. I'm using a size 7 circular needle and assuming 4 sts and 6 rows per inch -- even though it's actually more like 4.5 sts and 7 rows per inch. (I'm glad I didn't check gauge. Otherwise, the sweater would be too large. It is stretchy.)
I like to keep several projects going at once. I'm making good progress, at least I think it's good progress, on my DH's sweater. I'm almost finished with the bottom ribbing. I like separation between ribbing and the rest of the sweater. So, I ended the tweed stitch with a knit round. Then I knitted another round to decrease the stitch count by about 10%. Then I purled a round and joined it to the previous one the way one joins round to avoid jogs. (Rounds start and end at the center front, and so I had to do something to keep the purl round from jogging.) Then I knit a round before starting the k1p1 rib.
I'm working on a dishcloth from the dishcloth KAL and a pair of socks with a Zokni pattern and a Widdershins heel. By the way, I looked up Widdershins in Wikipedia. Among other things, it means anticlockwise or in the opposite direction from normal -- which is what this heel is. It's a heel-flap heel knit from the toe up with only 8-10 short rows and no stitches to pick up.
We're getting the piano tuned as I'm writing this. The piano hasn't been tuned since we lived in Sweden about 5 years ago. We bought it in Ohio. Then moved it with us to Sweden and then England and finally New Jersey. I'd forgotten how much one of our cats likes the sound of the piano. (It was so out of tune that no one had played it since we moved here.) She's usually the one who hides under a bed whenever anyone comes to the door. Instead of hiding, she's in the living room with the piano tuner.