I thought I was a grasshopper

But maybe I'm an ant?







7/15 blocks are finished, but I'm still enjoying this afghan. Have no idea who gets it in the end or if I will keep it for myself. I'm leaning toward keeping it.





In other breaking news, I restarted the 2nd bus sock. Two new skeins of sock yarn (from STR!!) arrived last week. While stash diving I also found a couple of skeins I forgot about. And I have 7 skeins in transport. I will have plenty of bus knitting which got me to thinking . . .

I won't want to remove my gloves to knit on the bus when it gets cold - in about 5 months. So I started some lovely handwarmers. The yarn is actually a dark sage. And it's from the stash! So bonus.

The Wheels on the Bus

Here's the current bus sock.

It's just a lot of reading about how to knit socks and not really any pattern. I can't remember the yarn - from the stash and the label was gone. I think it has something in it that is supposed to soften your feet for a while, but it's not the Lion Brand Sock Ease.

Had about 4 inches of the second sock done. Took a good look at it at lunch time while wearing reading glasses. Turns out knitting with sunglasses on is NOT the same as knitting with reading glasses on. Go figure. I dropped a stitch some rows back and didn't have a crochet hook with (my only reliable method) so I tried to finagle it with the double point. It was ugly but I continued knitting hoping it would absorb. After a couple of rows I counted an extra stitch. So I decreased. Does anyone else do this crazy stuff? Two rows later, a definite hole at the scene of the crime. So again not waiting until I had a crochet hook I frogged back past the hole. I couldn't get the thing back on the needles without a lot of slipping, lost my cool and that's when the wheels came off the bus. I just frogged the whole thing and I'll start over.

So I did the only thing a knitter can do in that moment. I went on line and ordered more sock yarn.

At Loose Ends

I've been working on this afghan since April. (Knit Simple Magazine Holiday 2006, Patchwork Afghan using the suggested yarn). I started it as a gift for a man I had started to see. The man is mostly gone. But I'm suddenly on fire to finish this thing. Weird, huh. I've finished 6 of 15 blocks. Now if this next bit is obvious to everyone in the world, please keep it to yourself. I came to the stunning conclusion that I should try to knit these squares by row, and do the finishing for each row as I go. Yeah, I know. Everybody else got there a long time ago. I'm a process person. So here's the blocking and weaving pic. There are solids in 4 colors and three pattern types. I think it's very masculine. Yarn is 70% wool and 30% alpaca. Lovely yarn. I keep one solid and one pattern block going all the time so depending on my state of mind I can work on it. I'll post a pic of a sewn together row later this week.