You Find ‘Em Everywhere

Being stuck (at 7:43 on a Sunday evening) in what seems to be the only open pharmacy in the county is pretty sucky. Still, it’s made slightly more bearable when the (male) pharmacy tech looks at the knitting you fortunately remembered to bring and asks, “Are those bamboo?”

I’m excited to see Candy Apple Gable nearing the finish line, even though our temps have recently plummeted into the 50s. Brrrr!

While that means she won’t get much wear anytime soon, it also means that I can break my wool sweaters out of their bin! I got to put on Alexandra for the first time since finishing her last May, and so I had to rope my daughter into taking a FO shot that I actually like:

I love, love, love the lighting on my front step. Would you believe that this was taken at 5 p.m., in a covered doorway?  And by a first grader?

I’ve also started in on my Christmas knitting. I tried to keep the list short this year, but mild panic is still setting in. Eeek! This first project is simple, though — a scarf made from one ball of Rowan Tapestry (color Pot Pourri):

I’m basing this on a sample from the LYS — I cast 19 stitches onto a US13 needle, then began working in seed stitch, working every other round with a US6. (The uneven number is to simplify things — it makes each row start with a knit stitch.) This will be a gift for my son’s preschool teacher.

I was planning to just make two more gifts — a Cobblestone Pullover for my husband (the first men’s sweater to cause him to genuinely say, “Hey, you could knit that for me!”), and a Falling Leaves Stole for my grandmother — but then I started plotting to make something for my mother’s husband, one of the kindest people I know (watching parents divorce is also sucky, but it, too, is made more bearable by the wonderful people who might enter your life because of it). So, I’m thinking of adding an Aran Scarf and some sort of matching hat to the queue for him, too. I’ve also got two November birthday gifts to tackle as well — a cabled hat for my dad (based on the one a neighbor knitted for him as a kid — ah, nostalgia) and some Fine Cabled Mitts for my sister. All very feasible, um, right? Right?

Lastly, if you’re not already on the WEBS mailing list, I highly recommend signing up — their September catalog is a beaut! Only the prospect of imminently melting ice cream in my car was enough to make me put it down when it first arrived. And you really can’t beat the retail therapy fix of four lovely Valley Yarns patterns for under $6.00. Of course, I don’t know when I’ll ever get around to making the sweaters, but I’m sure I’m not the only who just likes having pretty patterns around.