Well! Since my last post one short week ago, you probably know that I contracted COVID and have had to keep the store closed for the week. Thanks for all the concern and well-wishes, so very nice of you to take the time. Bad news first, I’m still testing positive as of Monday morning so I don’t know whether I’ll be able to open the store come Wednesday or not. Good news, I’m feeling better than I did a couple days ago, although I know I’m not 100% yet, so all I can promise is to let you know how it goes from here.
I haven’t done much knitting this past week. It was enough to close out the month and the quarter and pay some bills, get a shower or two, do a bit of laundry and make sure Purl got her walks and the requisite amount of attention. (and food – don’t forget food!) I did nothing at all on my plain little fingering-weight raglan that can be put on the back burner at any time because it’s not for the shop, it’s just for me. I’ve started a sleeve because I hate doing them at the very end, and the magic loop is a little too fiddly for me right now. Ooh, I just took it out to take a picture and it feels so nice (Smooshy Cashmere is so lovely) that I may want to get back to it now. Here it is:
And I want to point out that the orange thingies that are holding the body stitches are Purl Strings, which Karen gave me for my birthday, and I love them so much that I’m stocking them at the store now. They’re so handy for putting things on hold without using up extra needles or having to put things on yarn and then having the stitches be so difficult and time-consuming to put back onto a needle. I’ll demo at some point but even though it’s simple, it’s too much for my brain right now.
So I wasn’t wanting to work on a fingering-weight sweater where the gauge is 10 rounds to an inch, so I had a couple balls of Eco Tweed Chunky wound up at home and started this nice sweater from Brooklyn Tweed called Bellows:
I’ve always liked this cardigan for the texture and the style, but it’s in pieces and I know you all don’t want to sew things up any more but by not getting comfortable with a bit of seaming now and then, you’re eliminating a lot of great patterns from your knitting life and your wardrobe! And I wanted something that at least started with some easy knitting, where I could make some progress. I already knew my gauge matched because I had swatched the yarn before. So, I cast on! And then I ripped out and cast on again because I looked at the wrong number for my size. So, a slow start but now things are moving along.
This is the back, which is all in broken rib (AKA garter rib, well-known to knitters of our Napa Pullover). In Bellows, the bumpy side is the right side, so there’s a ton of texture. I’m doing a few things to make finishing easier, such as doing decreases a stitch in from the edge, using short rows instead of bind-offs so I can use three-needle-bindoff at the shoulders instead of seaming (which, I don’t care how good you are, stepped bindoffs look awful at the seams) and whatever else I can think of – I’ll take notes, I promise.
Karen has something wonderful brewing:
Fuzz alert!
This weather is so marvelous. I got out one of my woolly sweaters and am sitting here cozy and warm and every now and then, I get a tiny whiff of lavender Eucalan – wonderful! I hope you are out and about and enjoying this beautiful day.
