I lied. It's just me.
But there IS knitting news. Does that help? First up, one completed trip to sleeve island:
Eric the Red sleeve #1 - unblocked - plus gratuitous cat shot. Unfortunately the cable doesn't show up very well here, but hopefully a post-block daylight shot later in the week will show it off more.
Sadly, the second trip to sleeve island for this sweater will have to wait because this yarn was killing my wrists and I need a break. It's a coned yarn from Webs (Valley 2.6, yes - clearance) and still has all that wierd oil and stuff they use on those commercial-type yarns, which makes the yarn a little stiff and unyielding for handwork. Stockinette is no big deal, but the cabling really sucked ass. I know from experience that this stuff washes up clean and soft and "blooms" into a beautiful yarn, so I'll do two things before I start the next sleeve. The first is that I will wash and block this sleeve to make sure all is well with size, gauge, etc., and the second is that I think I'll go ahead and skein up the rest of this yarn and prewash it. I know that sort of defeats the joy of the coned yarn, but what the hell? I like my wrists, and they're worth it.
Next up, River:
Pattern: River from Rowan #38
Yarn: Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud in Autumn - soooooooo soft and yummy. Love it. This is a pretty accurate color representation, too.
Needles: Clover Bamboo straights (finally. it took several tries before finding the right needles for this yarn/project.)
That's right, straights. It's quite an adjustment since I knit almost everything on circulars now because of the convenience and portability - crowded train knitting made easier and all that. This is 10 or 11 rows, up to the beginning of the repeating part of the pattern. Oh, and maybe it's just because it's my first lace, but even though I'd been warned on more than one occasion, I was unprepared by how hard it is to keep knitting something looks like total crap. Here's where I learn to get over it and knit on faith. It's a valuable lesson, but it's a bit like learning to love spinach.
Oh, and because who DOESN'T love it when we play around with our cameras' Macro abilities, here's a close up of the heathered colors of the Alpaca Cloud:
p.s. New blog alterations coming along nicely. There are some new albums over there on the sidebar, but the layout changes have yet to pass the "obsession test". With any luck, no one has even noticed those couple of bad hours last weekend.
