My First Tribble

While looking through posts for the monthly dishcloth Yahoo! group, I saw a link for a Tribble Scrubbby. It looked easy to do and would use up left-over cotton yarn. And it was and did. I used another type of increase than the kfb and also did something akin to a 3-needle bind off to bind off and attach the 2 ends at the same time. I haven't used it for its intended purpose yet. It's too pretty. The two pics are the finished product and the scrubby before the bind off.

I've also finished the March Monkey socks that I'd been working on. A picture is here.

The sweater I'm working on is working out nicely. It's a top-down raglan. I've gotten to the bottom "hem", which, right now, is in moss stitch. And, I've detached the red ball of yarn that was used on the neckline. In other words, I like the way the sweater is turning out well enough to make the step of detaching yarn.

And, finally, since I'm intrigued by lace at the moment, I'm trying to knit a curtain for my DDs bathroom here to replace the Venetian blinds that are there now. I'm not ready to post a picture yet since I'd hate to post a picture of something that may be frogged at any minute.

In other news, my DS1 has a car now. (He had been walking to work -- a 20 minute walk, and still may be.) But, it was probably time for him to get a car. He lives in California and works at a car dealership.
My DD has a summer internship.
And I just received my last issue of the Atlantic! Before it changed its name, it had really interesting articles. But now it has articles that one can find just about anywhere.

Sweater 3

I'm one of those people who do not have "second sock syndrome". In fact, when I finish a sock, I can't wait to work on the second one to see whether it will turn out the same (ie, to check reproducibility). The same is true for sweaters. So, here is sweater #3 for the Sweater KAL. It's the almost the same as my second sweater except in black and with more stripes and with bell sleeves.

The other picture is from the dishcloth KAL. It's supposedly a bunny. My best guess is that the picture is right side up here and that the bunny is facing away so that one can see its tail. It was fun to do a diagonal dishcloth.

Thanks to knittyboard.com, I've started watching Knitty Gritty on HGTV. It's a fun show. On another tv subject, I'm disappointed that we don't get the cable station that carries the new BBC version of "Robin Hood". I'd seen an episode or two in the UK last fall and had been looking forward to seeing the series here.

Finally, despite my best intentions, I'm working on Monkey socks for my March socks. I had started them toe-up a couple of times. They didn't look quite right. Then I joined a Yahoo sock KAL so I wouldn't have to worry and/or think about which sock to choose and decided to do whatever sock was chosen for a particular month -- at least, for the time being. Well, the choice for this month is the Monkey sock. So, I'm doing my first cuff-down sock for a while and finding out that it's fun to follow a pattern almost exactly for a change.

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.

Blocking Adventure

After thinking about it, I remembered that I had blocked things before. Many years ago, when I would crochet a doily, I blocked it by washing it in hot water with Dawn detergent, rinsing out the soap, pinning it to a towel on top of something that pins would stick into, and spraying it with spray starch. More recently, I've started knitting dishcloths. I block a dishcloth by putting it in hot water with vinegar added to set the color, wringing it out to get rid of excess liquid, and then placing it on the back of a sofa.
So, for the sweater that I'd just finished (which is half wool and half alpaca), I put it in the sink with a bit of detergent in tepid water, rinsed it in cold water and vinegar, squeezed the liquid out without wringing, and then wrapped it in a towel to get even more liquid out. By then it was just damp. So, I put in on the back of our sofa. One of my kitties helped with the blocking. Here is an unblocked picture of the sweater. Details and a better picture of the sweater are here on my other blog.
The Tubey that I'm currently knitting is coming along -- without too much frogging and reknitting. I thought that it would be done by today. But, I decided it would look better if I made some changes to the order of the stripes.

Sweater number 1 finished

I've finally finished my smocked top-down raglan based on the Smock it to me pullover in Knitty.com. Mine is knit in the round with Mystic Inca forest green wool/alpaca yarn and size 3 needles. (I bought the yarn on ebay.) Detailed details on how I made are here. It has a garter stitch crew-neck neckline. It looks a little bit long in the picture. But due to the nature of smocking, it will be shorter in real life. It also looks a lot better when worn. The sleeves have a little bit of puffiness, which I like. This is sweater number 1 in the sweater a month KAL. I still need to block it. I've never blocked a sweater or anything else for the matter. So, we'll see how it turn out. At least, this time I did swatch before starting.
I've already got great plans for my second sweater. I love Tubey, but there are a couple of things that I don't like about it -- namely the fit around the neck and the fit around the arms. I was about to frog my old Tubey and knit something else from the yarn when I thought: Why not make the shrug part with an underarm seam? There's nothing in the basic construction of Tubey that says it would ruin the look. My second thought was: Why waste all that yarn around the neck when it just gets rolled under? So, I've got an idea of how to proceed.

green pullover

Well, I'm almost done with my green smocked raglan pullover based on Smock it to me in knitty.com. It's done with some yarn -- 50% wool, 50% alpaca -- that I got over eBay from Mystic Inca. I thought it would be very tedious knitting a sweater with size 3 needles, but it went fast, as least I considered it fast. The smocking pattern in the lower half of the garment and the lower half of the sleeves gives it interest. I'm knitting it top down and have now started the smocking on the second sleeve. Though, I may go back to the main part of the garment to make it a bit longer. I've already made the first sleeve a little longer than I had planned in order that the smocking would cover the top of my hand, if desired and if cold. If it's warm, I can push the lower half of the sleeve up to make a 3/4 sleeve.
I thought I was almost done knitting a pair of socks. The pattern for the socks is one of Chrissy Gardiner's. The heel is Fleegle's. I was test knitting the pattern for Chrissy with some yarn that I didn't particularly care for and decided to try out Fleegle's heel at the same time. (The yarn is KP Essential in pumpkin. I like the yarn but don't know what I was thinking when I ordered that color.) To make a long story short, I liked the pattern so well that I'll have to a second skein of the yarn in order to finish the second sock of the pair.
Finally, I'm knitting dishcloths as they appear on the Yahoo monthly dishcloth KAL.
My Sony camera is in the shop again, and I'm using my daughter's Sony camera. She gave it to me when she got a new (non-Sony) camera for Christmas. Her old camera takes pictures except that you can't see them on the screen until after you've taken them.
I have plans to start making Monkey socks soon. I hadn't heard about them until I finally decided to upload all my Turkey pictures to my yahoo picture albums. I took a lot of pictures and so the album is quite large and took a long time to upload. While they were uploading, I decided to read through past Yahoo sock group posts and found that a lot of people were making those socks.
We were in Turkey for over a week. In addition to a magnificent solar eclipse, we saw quite a bit of Turkey: Istanbul, Troy, Antalya, and Cappadocia. (The interesting rock formations in Cappadocia were where the pod races were filmed for Star Wars.) Troy was the most interesting. Cappadocia was the most beautiful.

Happy New Year

I'm really behind on posting.
Christmas and catnip
We decided to get our two cats catnip for Christmas even though they usually play with it for a couple of hours and then basically ignore it. This Christmas it was different. One of our cats opened her catnip present Christmas morning -- and she did open the one with her name on it -- before the rest of us got up. And then the two of them played with it and the other catnip present for the rest of the day and a lot of the following days.

The Nutcracker
My DH and I went with our two DSs and the oldest son's girlfriend to the Nutcracker presented by the New York City Ballet. We were underwhelmed by it all. Most of the dancers seemed to be just going through the motions.

The actor who plays Monk
My oldest son and his girlfriend went to a Broadway play featuring the actor who plays Monk on tv. They were quite surprised to say the least. My DS likes Tony Shalhoub and has seen him in quite a few movies including Big Night and also Galaxy Quest. Nothing prepared them for the role he played in the play. My DS thought the change of pace from Shalhoub was funny. They saw more of him and heard a more varied language than they were expecting, even though they were on the wrong side of the theater for the "best" view. At least, they got in for cheap $15 student seats. I assume though that the acting was good. It's not clear, however, whether the play will make it to opening night.

An empty feeling house
Two friends of my DD went back to Ohio last Wednesday. My oldest DS and his girlfriend went to California on Thursday. And my DD and other DS went back to London on Saturday (after their Friday flight to Chicago and then London was cancelled). So, now it's just me, my DH, my mom, and the cats.

2 here, 1 to arrive later

The house is starting to feel more lived in now. We picked up 2 of our children at the airport Thursday night. The plane was delayed because of fog here. The flight was scheduled to arrive at JFK from London around 10:30 -- but the estimated arrival time was changed to just before midnight. So, we drove to JFK's terminal 8 and timed it so we would get there just as they were clearing immigration and customs. When we got there, we were surprised that less than a dozen people were waiting for an international flight. Well, we stayed in the lounge for a while (over half an hour) and visited with a lady who was waiting for the same flight and had been there longer than we had. Finally, I walked over to the AA desk and asked when the flight was going to arrive. The lady said it was arriving at terminal 4 since the international portion of terminal 8 closes at midnight (the immigration and customs people stop working at that terminal then). (As far as we know, there were no announcements to that effect. If I hadn't asked, we would have been there for a long time.) So, we drove over to the other terminal and arrived about 15 minutes before our children (home from college) came into view. We didn't get home to NJ until 2:30. But, at least, the traffic was good.

I'm starting to knit a scarf for my other DS's girlfriend. She's arriving here the day after Christmas. I'm using my usual scarf pattern, which my DD likes. My DD has the three previous scarves I made with the pattern. She says it's so soft. It's also very easy to make. I'm using a navy colored worsted weight yarn and size 7 needles and cast on 30 sts because I wanted to make it a bit wider than the other ones I've made. After starting it, I wondered about my directions for the slipped st edging. (I didn't know the "correct" way to do a slipped st edging back then. I hadn't realized there were so many online resources. So, after trying different ways of doing one, I settled on slipping the first st with the yarn in front.) It gives an edge that faces out instead of lying flat as the usual edging does and which I like better than the usual one.

a version of Smock

I'm happy. The version of Smock that I'm making is turning out nicely -- after a couple false starts. Here is an in-progress picture. I think I stood too close for the flash on the camera. The hanger turned out white instead of a light brown. The smocking is turning out well. The biggest difficulty is counting to 6.
For the sweater, the first decision I made was to use a garter stitch neckline instead of a ribbed one. (I think it looks nice with this sweater.) I also decided to make it into a top-down raglan with a k3 raglan seam. My false starts relate to the type of neck. I started it with a boat neck and then decided that I really didn't want the front of the sweater rubbing against the front of my neck. Then I restarted it with my usual crew neck pattern (which I keep changing). Then I thought "why am I doing it this way?" So, I frogged it back to the neckline and proceeded with a new plan (which is slightly more pleasing to me than the old one). Details are in my other knitting blog.
-- When I get around to it, I'm going to change the directions for the men's v-neck tweed linked to in the side-bar of this blog to reflect my change of mind regarding how to make a crew or v neck. It's just a minor change. I decided to start wrapping and turning with the backmost sts of the front raglan seams instead of the middle.

I'm happy because the children are coming home over Christmas break. Two of them are coming home at the end of the week. The other is coming here Christmas eve. Plus, a very good friend of his, whom we all like a lot, is coming the day after Christmas. It will be nice to have a full house. (We'll be having other friends of the children coming by as well for a brief stay. None of them lives in NJ.) I don't know how my mom, who is living with us, will take the change. But, I guess, if I write it all on her calendar, she'll be ok with it.
On another note, I finally got up the courage to wash my KP shine worsted pullover. It came out wonderfully. It was damp dry coming out of the wash machine. I then decided to try putting it through the dryer. It came through all of this with flying colors.

alpaca/wool blend

The yarn I bought on ebay from MysticInca is really nice. Contrary to my usual practice, I even swatched it (5.5 st, 9 rows per inch with a size 3 needle). I first washed it by hand in cold water. The gauge didn't change much (6 st, 8.5 rows per inch). Then I hand washed it in hot water and soap. The st gauge didn't change, but row gauge did, but only a bit (6 st, 8 rows per inch). Then, because I had always thought that wool shrank, I put it in with my regular laundry on a warm setting. The gauge stayed the same from the hot-water wash, and there was minimal felting, if any. The only thing all the washing did that I could tell was make the fabric a bit thicker.
So, now I'm considering making Smock out of the yarn. As I'm basically incapable of making a pattern as written, I'm making it in the round, from the top down, as a raglan, with a garter stitch neck. I haven't gotten to the point in Smock where the smocking begins -- so I can still change my mind. The smock pattern begins on the sleeves at the elbows and a bit under the armholes on the main part of the garment. The fabric feels a little too flimsy now, but I have great hopes that after washing it will be less so.
On another front, I accidentally put my v-neck in KP Swish into the wash with my regular laundry. I didn't notice that I had done that until I was getting clothes out of the dryer. Luckily, there was minimal shrinkage. Though, next time I use Swish, I'll use a size 7 needle, as recommended.

Anastasia socks

Just a short update: I've finished the Elfine socks in KP autumn stripes. I'm currently working on some test knitting for Chrissy aka Knittin' Mom and also a pair of socks in KP bubblegum parade. I'd started the latter socks with the Wyvern pattern, but that didn't work for such bold colors. However, the Anastasia pattern is perfect. I got to the ankle, however, before realizing that I had the wrong length of pattern repeat. With this yarn and size 2 circs, I had a sole and instep of 26 sts each. So, what I should have done initially and have done now is to make the repeat 13 sts (half of 26) -- ie, k9, k2tog, yo, k2tog, yo, for the sock I'm making now. It'll be the opposite, but still 13 sts, for the other foot.
A few more details on this sock: To more or less center the pattern, I started w k5 and ended w k4 on the first pattern row. Also, I used a Turkish cast on for the toe and am planning on using a Widdershins heel.
I've also made my first yarn order over ebay on Wednesday. I can't wait to see the yarn.

England

It was so nice to be back in England again and especially to see the children. We had a wonderful time. It wasn't hard at all to readjust to driving on the other side of the road and to use British phrases. You'll have to forgive me for slipping back and forth between American and British usages. (My "best" combination of the two was a month after we moved back to the States. I left the LYS by saying: "'Twas nice meeting y'all." -- We lived in NC many, many years ago.)
We had a busy time. On the Saturday we arrived there, we went to a soccer game in High Wycombe with the whole family (even our DD). It was a fun game, which Wycombe won. We didn't recognize any of the players. However, one of the assistant coaches was a very popular player while we lived near there. On the way back to London, we drove past two of the houses we rented. They looked pretty much the same, but the towns they are in had changed a bit. (The third house we rented in the 4 1/2 years we were in England is east rather than west of London. We moved once because they were going to up the rent on the house we were in while rents in general were falling. That house was also a Feng Shui disaster. We moved house a second time because the company my DH worked for was bought by another company who decided to close the office in High Wycombe.)
We didn't do much except miscellaneous sightseeing until Wednesday, when one of our DSs had his graduation ceremony. It was a grand ceremony with over 1800 people graduating. The picture is of our three children on the way to the graduation ceremony.
The next day my DD and I met at the British Museum. We had lunch with a friend of mine there. Then we went about looking at the sights. (My DH joined us there, as well, even though he had been there a year ago.) There are rooms and rooms of antiquities that the Ottoman Empire sold to people who then donated them to the museum. When we were in Turkey, we saw one of the palaces and several of the mosques that were made possible through this influx of cash.
The British Museum is perfect for anyone who loves ancient history. The museum has several giant (and I mean giant) winged horses from the Assyrian Empire. It has friezes from the Parthenon. It even has statues from one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Masoleum at Halikarnassos, and a couple of pieces from another, the Temple of Artemis (aka Diana) at Ephesus. It also contains the Rosetta Stone plus several rooms of mummies. Here is a picture of part of the family resting on the steps of the British Museum after a lot of walking.
The next day my oldest got us tickets to "Spamalot". He had to go to four different ticket agents before finding one that had tickets. It was a very enjoyable play. My two DSs especially liked it since they are Monty Python fans. When we were in Scotland once, we saw some of the sights from their movies. Though, the clerks in one store were taken aback when I asked them for directions to the Bridge of Doom. They weren't able to direct us there but did direct us to one of the castles in one of the movies.
On our final full day in England, we drove up to Leeds to watch a game at Elland Road. On the way, we stopped at Sherwood Forest. For a change, Leeds won the game. It was the first time my DH and other DS had seen Leeds win. It was the second time I'd seen them win -- though the first time probably shouldn't count since it was a testimonial game against Cambridge United who were a couple or more divisions lower than Leeds at the time.
Our trip back was uneventful except for immigration at Newark. The immigration officers wouldn't let people in our line go to another one since the one in that line wanted to go on break as soon as possible. (He went on break while there were about 10 people in our line.) Then the one for our line decided to go on break after we passed immigration and while the two people behind us in line were trying to help someone who spoke only Spanish complete the forms.

off to London

My husband and I are off to London on Friday to go to our son's graduation next Wednesday. It will be nice to see the children again, all three of whom are attending university in London. We lived in England for 4 1/2 years. (We had a lovely back garden for the last house we lived in there. Plus, it was near a continuation of the White Cliffs of Dover. Years and years ago, the Spanish Armada went past that part of the coastline.) It will also be nice to be back in England again. Besides the graduation, we have plans to attend a football game with our other son and to go to the British Museum with our daughter.

I'm planning to take along sock yarn to knit a pair of socks for my DD while there, probably using the Wyvern pattern and Parade yarn with size 2 needles. I'm also working on a v-neck sweater for myself with KP Swish and size 5 needles and getting a gauge of 4 1/2 st and 6 1/2 rows per inch. I'm using the tweed-stitch v-neck pattern that I used for my DH's sweater except for doing a plain knit stitch instead of a tweed stitch. I cast on 100 sts divided 35 sts for the back, 9 for each sleeve, and 47 for the front. Because of this, I had to end quite a few more short rows with k2tog and p2tog. Also I didn't knit any sts together at the base of the v. I would post a pic, but sts in navy don't turn out well. (Of course, it could be that my camera still needs a little fixing.)

Obviously, we got our camera back from being serviced at Best Buy. However, we still haven't gotten back the laptop we took in for servicing over 2 weeks prior to that. We had hoped that it would be ready by the time we left for England. It's our son's laptop. He's had to share his brother's laptop for the first month of school -- which is hard for both of them. Well, there's a couple more days left for them to finish with it...... If nothing else, we can bring out there the laptop that I'm currently using which I inherited from my other DS -- though it's far from state of the art.

It's so nice to knit with better yarn like the yarn from KP. And so I'm redoing sweaters in wool or a blend that I had originally knitted in acrylic. The original sweaters have since then "melted" in the wash machine. (Too high a water temperature causes a sweater to double in size.)

Square summer raglan

I'm so happy. I've finally finished the summer sweater I was making in KP Shine Worsted. I redid it once because I didn't like the joins. But I finally found one that looked ok with a cotton blend (knit 1 st w new skein, knit 1 st w old skein, then continue w new skein - tying the loose ends in the back until weaving them in). Then in the middle of the project, I had to order more yarn. I finally ended up using all but a few inches of 7 skeins of the yarn -- and that's with ultra-short (8 or 9-row-long) sleeves and a simple bind off (knit or purl then slip st over). I didn't have enough yarn to do ribbing on the sleeves and so did the sleeve pattern there instead. It was really touch and go. I would have had to order more yarn if I weren't so short. I usually knit a medium size but take off an inch above the armhole and another inch below. To save yarn (and to make it more form fitting), I also shaped it around the waist by decreasing 4 sts every 10th row above the waist and increasing every 5th row below. (Added 12/17/06: I've changed the chart to show the underarm diamonds as well. In the underarm diamonds, one can see the first 2 decrease row. I've also changed the chart to show the full sleeve pattern.)
It looks really nice, if I do say so myself. A picture of the sweater in progress is at my August 8th post. I used a size 7 circ and got 6 rows and 4 sts per inch when slightly stretched. (I didn't do a swatch first. I just assumed that a size 7 with worsted would give that gauge. But it worked out ok because the material did stretch.) Here's how I began the sweater. Line 1 of the garment chart is line 45 of the sweater as I made it. (Also line 45 of the sweater is line 1 of the sleeve.) The pattern is knit across on even rnds. I also fitted a couple of diamonds under the armholes themselves - which is now charted here.

Neckline:
CO 92. Join.
Work *p1, k1* around for 6 rounds, starting w the p1.
*p1, k11, p1, k33* twice
p91 (ie stop 1 st before beginning of round)

Upper Body:
R1: *m1, k1, p1, k1, m1, knit to 1 st before next purl, m1, k1, p1, k1, m1, knit to 1 st before next purl* twice (For the first k1 on the first time knitting R1, p1 instead -- to complete the purl around.)
R2: knit the knit sts and the m1's, purl the 4 purl sts

Continue alternating these rnds to 17 increase rnds total and 238 sts total. Continue making just R2 until 45 total rnds for me (51 for most people) not including the ribbing. (The 45th rnd can be used to start the pattern by replacing R2 with: purl the knit st, purl the purl st, *k3, p3* around, p1.)
Then to start the lower part of the sweater: *k1, put the next 13 sts on a spare circ, co9 (w single cast on), k66* twice. (152 sts total)

Tempting II finally finished

It took a while, but my version of Tempting II from knitty is finally finished. It took a while because I frogged it after it was finished because I had made the yoke too long . Because of the ribbing and the length of the yoke, the sweater's neck was riding up around my neck. To make it worse, the arms were also too tight. It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't made it top down.

However, I really like the neckline. I might use it for another sweater -- but a raglan this time. Here's how I started:

Neck:
CO 90 sts (chain cast on), join.
Round 1: p90
Round 2: k90
Repeat these 2 rounds for a total of 14 rounds in garter stitch On the next to last knit round, increase more or less evenly to 108 sts. End w a knit round. (There will be a line where the rounds begin.)

Body:
(yo, k1) 108 times
(p1, k1) 108 times (216 sts in round)

Continue working in p1, k1 until the sweater is about 1 1/2" shorter than my normal sweaters. Then divide the sts w 41 sts for the sleeves, 65 sts for the garment, and casting on 13 sts under the arm with a single (not provisional) cast on.

Zokni socks finished

My DD is modeling a pair of Zokni socks in KP Essential that I finished a couple of days before she left to go back to university in London. Universities in the UK start classes around the first of October. Hopefully, they'll keep her feet warm this winter.
They're made toe up with 2 circ size 1 needles, with a Turkish cast on, a round toe, a Widdershins heel, and a crocheted bind off (single crochet 1, chain 1).
Here's how I started the sock:

Wrap yarn around 2 circ needles 9 times (under, back, and over). k9 off of top needle. k9 off of bottom needle.
R1: k1, m1, k..., m1, k1 on top needle, k1, m1, k...., m1, k1 on bottom needle.
Repeat R1 to 19 sts on each needle
Alternate R2 (k across) with R1 to a total of 25 sts per needle
Do R2, R2, R1 to a total of 29 sts per needle
Do R2 on top needle and k across on lower needle. (31 sts on top, 29 on bottom)
After that, work the Zokni pattern across the 31 top sts. Knit across the bottom.

Approximately 4" (for me) before the end of the foot, start making increase as in the Widdershins pattern. Since I wanted a heel flap of 28 rows and 31 sts wide, I increased to 51 (= 28 + 23) sts then worked the Widdershins heel on the middle 23 sts.

I'm currently working on finishing Tempting II, which I hope to finish in a few days, hopefully before it gets too cold to wear. Though, it has been warm here recently -- a lot warmer than I thought it would be here in NJ.

Karen's Sugar-Free Diabetes Walk Socks

Karen's Sugar-Free Diabetes Walk Socks is an easily knit cabled sock from KnittinMom in sportweight yarn for size 3 needles (or thereabouts). Information on ordering the pattern plus a picture of the completed sock are also in the sidebar. Proceeds from the sale of the pattern will aid in the fight against diabetes.