I Detest a Siesta

Despite the intense heat, which has curtailed my bicycle commuting to work, I've somehow mustered the will to sit with a wad of wool on my lap, making progress on my brother's sweater. Who wants to knit when it's 106° out? I guess that would be me. Relatively cooler days lie ahead, but I hope my knitting fever doesn't follow suit and break. I'm on a roll.

Last weekend I finished the sleeves and got started on the body. I managed to get a lot done this week. The sleeves are attached and I've completed the first 12 rounds of the yoke. Three of the rounds up to this point have involved three colors at once. It was slow going on those, but I don't have any more coming up. The first decrease round is a few rounds ahead and I'm looking forward to it. Things should get a little less crowded on this needle later today.

So now, back to my knitting and a hot cup of coffee. I'm starting to feel that Noël Coward had summer knitters in mind when he wrote Mad Dogs and Englishmen.

Greysleeves

Nearly two weeks since my last post? So many of my blogging friends are so much more prolific and communicative than me. I haven't been knitting much, to be sure, so there hasn't been much to write about. But I did hit a bit of a milestone today.

The sleeves on my brother's Grettir Sweater are complete or at least as far as the armpits. I seem to be spot-on with the gauge. I've never knit a pattern in which the sleeves are made first so this is a little strange. They're set aside now, as I get ready to cast on for the body. It's essentially the same process, but on a larger scale, so I should be able to progress quickly.

I had an interesting knitting encounter today. A knitter/librarian colleague of mine, whose mother died earlier this year, brought in a project that her mother had been working on. We had a good time trying to reverse engineer what it was. Craft Scene Investigators: Special Knitting Unit! She thought that her mother must have been using a pattern, but it wasn't in evidence. It looked like the collar and the start of the shoulders on a top down sweater, along with what might have been a belt. It was made out of seafoam-green yarn, doubled, and with lots of interesting lacy details. I wish I'd thought to take a photo it was quite beautiful and she was clearly a talented woman.

Sleeve For a Sib

At long last, the yarn for the sweater I plan to make for my brother arrived. I've been neglecting the blog and not doing any knitting while waiting for it to show up. I picked it up Monday after work, riding my bike through heat in the mid 90s to get a bag full of wool yarn. How's that for filial devotion?

Then, I spent much of the week wandering around one of the levels of swatching hell. You know, the one where you can't remember whether to go up or down in needle size to get gauge, even though you should know better? And then you end up going back to the suggested needle size because it's as close as you're going to get? And then you start the cuff over because it's looking way too big, but then check the pattern schematics and realize you were doing it right before unraveling after all? Yeah. It was like that.

But I'm on track now. I executed (is thatnthe right term?) my first-ever tubular cast-on. It's pretty simple, and I like the effect. I haven't unwrapped it yet -- you can see the red waste yarn still on the edge of the cuff. The pattern suggests leaving it on there to keep the edge neat and tidy until it's time for blocking. I'll leave it for now.

My brother and his family are moving to Germany for several years. I've never knitted anything for my brother, and I'm really hoping he likes it. It should keep a Texas boy nice and cozy during chilly German winters -- with a bit of Icelandic flair. I'm also really hoping that Jeff and I can go visit this winter. Maybe I'll get to see it in action...

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I have to knit the thing first.