Beyond the Charts
I finished the charts last night just before switching over from Once Upon a Time to the baseball game (Go Red Sox!). I've got a bit over 7 inches now--just 8.5 to go, in pattern, until the arm-hole decreases! It might take a while. I'm about halfway through my second skein and I need to get to the middle of the fourth skein by the end of October. You may commence prayer, candle lighting (just not near the wool, please), smudging to cleanse evil spirits, whatever you think might help get me there. I shall do my part by knitting. I may have overstepped myself attempting to do this sweater while, you know, living my life. And knitting a Phoenix (socks! They helped the Red Sox win, I swear!) and I also spun for a class, but I think it might be my only. I'm quite swamped. NEWT first, other stuff later. Prioritites. I must get my first wand.
Anyway, progress:
The ribbing is a bit looser than I'd like, and it's a little hard to see the 'stained glass windows' pattern...
but it's coming out well enough and it will certainly be the warmest sweater I've ever knit. It's very tight--I'm on size 2 needles! and I think it'll be a little less stiff once I wash it. When I washed the swatch, dirt came out in amazingly larger proportions than when I washed the skeins, and everything softened up a lot. And got tighter. But softer.
Keeping the brain occupied
So, I spend a lot of time watching TV -- mostly Netflix except for the odd foray into ABC-land for Once Upon a Time. I've watched several whole series since I started this project: Beauty and the Beast from the late 1980s (I learned 2 things: George RR Martin hasn't changed much in 25 years, and Ron Perlman must have been Benedict Cumberbatch's smoldering professor); Alphas, Continuum, and I've just begun Arrow.
But there are other things to do while you knit or spin! I've been listening to audio books--I just went through all the Circle of Magic books by Tamora Pierce, a re-listen for me--and I'm currently listening to The Alchemyst which is happily also a Fantasia workshop this term. And I'm also reading. According to Elizabeth Zimmermann, knitting master and creator of the February Lady Surprise Jacket among other awesome patterns,
Some may gasp and stretch their eyes, but knitting and reading at the same time is just a matter of practice. Of course you must love knitting and you must enjoy reading; if you don't love them equally, one at a time is sufficient.
--Elizabeth Zimmermann, The Knitter's Almanac, April (found at location 835 of my Kindle edition... I can probably reference a page at a later time).
So, reading and knitting. This week the final ETA: sorry, penultimate book of the Heroes of Olympus: House of Hades by Rick Riordan was released. Having required 3 years to mostly exise the unpleasant narration of the first book from my head (splutter splutter don't pronounce "Hera" like SheRa! splutter splutter), I simply refuse to listen to these, so reading it is! On my iPad, I can access my Kindle app, and it stands up on its little standy thing, and a page turn is just a matter of a quick swipe, and I can make the text large enough that I can sit back in my chair and knit and read and knit and read. I mostly knit for a bit, then finish the page, turn it, and knit more... I'm not so much doing them at the same time as alternating them. Still, I'm getting through this book... Annabeth and Percy are in dire straits, and of course Hazel and Jason are too... I'm going to guess it all gets resolved somehow by the end of the book since this is the last one, but Riordan can be tricky, so we'll see.
Okay, bed now. Have a lovely night!
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