Extended Long Weekend

My Labor Day weekend had a couple of extra days tacked onto it, including today. It's been a good time to decompress. I had time to knit, sleep, read, and catch up on household chores. On Saturday, Vova spent the day at an icon show with our friend, Dennis. I sat outside for a couple of hours with my laptop, knitting on my secret project and enjoying the beautiful weather.

Sunday consisted of more relaxing and another trip to the icon show. This time, I went along. I knitted on the secret project the whole way, of course.

Yesterday I finished another element of the secret project, so today I decided to knit another round or two on the Coquette socks I'm making for my neice, Gillian. The pattern for these come from 2-at-a-time Socks. This is a new method for me since I've never used a circular needle before at all, let alone for knitting two socks at once on the same cable. I'm using the leftover Trekking yarn from the first pair of socks I made for myself. I carefully wound the yarn into two balls of equal weight, checking several times on the digital kitchen scale. Since Gillian will be eight in a couple of months, I figure it probably won't take as much yarn because her feet are smaller than mine and these socks are anklets.

The casting on went well. The first rounds went well. I picked them up today after not having touched or even looked at them since last Thursday on the bus. So, I was thinking I would start the next round on sock A since I had finished the previous round on both socks. I used different stitch markers (thanks to Mom for last birthday) to tell which sock was which. However, something was wrong. There I was, staring at sock A, twisting it this way and that, trying to figure out why the mechanics of this contraption weren't working. I checked the directions; nothing helpful there. I pored over the how-to pictures, still no clue as to what I was doing wrong.

Vova was completely unsympathetic, "Why don't you write these things down in your blog?"

So, I finally looked at sock B and it all clicked. The working yarn has to be on the cable. The sock that has the working yarn on the cable has to be worked before the other sock can be worked. I worked the next round on sock B and was then able to work sock A.

Working yarn on cable -- ready to knit

Working yarn on needle -- ignore it until you've done another round on the other sock.

Not a Virgin Anymore or Socks for Cait

I tried to post my first entry almost two months ago, but lost my Internet connection and have not had time to get around to trying again until today.

My fourth niece, Cait, was born in June, which gave me the inspiration to set up a blog about my knitting. I had just started the Baby's First Sock pattern for her, free from Knitting Daily.

I finished them yesterday on the bus on the way home from work. They were fun and easy to knit. The basketweave stitch is also very forgiving when it comes to ladders, which I'm still having a bit of a problem with. This is only my third pair of socks, so I'm hoping I will conquer them over time.

I usually have only two projects on the needles at once -- a small project that I can work on during my commute and something larger to work on evenings and weekends.

So, now, I need to come up with a new bus project, which will probably be socks for my niece Gillian.

Cait

I would tell you about my other project, but it's a secret for the time being. ;)