Monkey sleeves complete

From the back porch at my house, this is a Saturday entry in "I'd Rather Be Knitting." Brought to you by beautiful spring weather, wireless, and NPR on the radio inside. :)

On the way home from work yesterday it was sooo nice out, so I decided to stop in at my LCS (local coffee shop), get a rusty slide (ice cream and chai), sit in front of the open front, and knit, hoping that someone I know will wander by and say hello. The mission was a full success: I finished the second monkey sleeve for Mist and some friends happened by. Perfect way to start the evening.

I came home and set out to block Mist. I had a lot of concerns about the color bleeding -- less because I worry about the sweater losing color, but more that I expect I'll have to sacrifice some of my towels (all light-colored) to the bleeding dye. After a little bit of consultation, I tested my swatch with a dash of vinegar in the water, and it looked a lot better than I'd remembered from the original swatch washing, so I filled up the sink with fresh water, soaked, and extracted. I think ti would ahve been really red without the vinegar. I'm not sure why it's so orange, but I'm trying not to think too hard about that. Thanks for the tip, Mom!

In fact, I didn't get any red dye on my whiteish towels, and my pretty towel seems to be just fine under the drying pieces. Is it dry yet? It's not dry yet. I'd really like to wear it tomorrow on a little adventure to Circles, the Arboretum for a picnic, and of course,to show it off at Knitsmiths. I've got the doors and windows open, and hopefully it will dry quickly! That's another think I'm looking forward to in Colorado - stuff dries fast!

On Gyrid progress, I finished the back last night after getting some input from my class group at Circles that, despite not observing the length corrections, it seems to look ok. I got a couple rows into the chart before I went to bed. At 2. It seemed like a good time to stop; trying cables at that hour would not be smart. I'm actually impressed that I was with it enough at 2am to know that it was time to stop. I think this afternoon will be spent with Gyrid out here on the porch.

Webs Haul: First in a Series

I've photographed all of my haul from Webs, but I think I'll spread it out a bit so that you don't ruin your keyboard drooling, and so that I have some filler when I'm too lazy to take pictures of the stuff I'm doing.

The first thing I put in the basket was this Tencel. It's for a sweater called "High Tide" by Chris Bylsma. (Picture here, about midway down the page.) You use two colors at a time, AB, BC, CD, and DE. I'll use the colors in this order, with the warm colors at the top and the cool colors at the bottom. Since this stuff is rather fine, I probably need about 4 strands (swatching in progress!), so I could do a lot more shading than what's written in the pattern. We'll see how much I want to pay attention to it when I get there! I probably have a pound of each color, so I'll certainly have leftovers for something else.

Response to Comments

I realized the other day that I hadn't replied to a slew of comments, and I wanted to make sure I did that. Brenda, I'm sorry we forgot your lobster. All that yarn went to our heads and we got a little carried away. I'll see what I can do about it.

Ingrid in Canada: I have to admit that I've never skiied. I think my labmates next year will be ready to help me correct this. Your flashy lace weather will come!

Alison, I'm glad you got to meet my mom last week. She's excited about the pattern, but I'm supposed to look for something else at Circles that might have the same cable and then should would be able to figure out more on her own. Maybe I can tell you about it tomorrow.

Em, I'd love to meet you at Knitsmiths! You'll be here for our swap, right?

Speaking of which, Sandy, I was thinking of putting the Flash into the swap, but you've still got dibs if you want it. I'm still up for a Circles gift certificate if you want to do that, or we could talk yarn for yarn; let me know. See you tomorrow?

And finally, thank you all for your support this week. I've been touched by your responses and really appreciate them. I'm going to write a letter and card to the family this weekend and offer services like errands (they live near me) and that I could knit a blanket if they'd like. If you have any clever ideas about how to phrase this, please let me know. I don't want to make any impositions on this family. Work will offer the mother her our standard three months paid maternity leave, so I don't know if I'll otherwise see her before I move. I think in a few weeks I might send another note and invite her for coffee. She was one of my supervisors for a few years and we worked closely on several projects, and it would be nice to see her again if she's ready.