Well, I've been working on Cromarty. The going's slow but rewarding. Last night, I spent 4 hours working on it and finished 7 rows. Cable patterns keep me interested. Anyway, I managed to bend my metal circular needles. Now, this is something new. I've broken bamboo needles and once a plastic one. I am worried that something is funky with my gauge and choice of yarn. I seem to have trouble achieving Alice Starmore's gauge in her patterns. This is the 3rd one I've done and I have had to go down 3 needles sizes for most of them. I always thought I was a pretty tight knitter too and I know it's not abnormal to have to change needle changes from the recommended, but these are so far off it just makes me wonder. But I LOVE how it's looking so how wrong can it be? If working with this yarn is wrong, then I don't wanna be right. Ha, yeah...So I bent my needles and my right arm is achy. But I think I will blame that on the snow shovelling I did yesterday so Dave could drive to his work today. Me? My work lives with me.

I'd thought I'd take a post to introduce you to Noel and Becky, also known in our house as HEY STOP THAT! and Girlfriend, what you doin? I've got my eye on them....perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself, but I've got the beginner plastic needles and dream about the day when one of them comes to me, eyes shining, and says, "Mommy, you knitting! I want knit too!" I hope at least one loves knitting as much or more than I do. I hope as fervently for this as I do grandchildren. Someday. Anyway, back to knitting, right now, they are 36 and 17 months, respectively, so perhaps it will be a while. Though, I'm excited to say, Noel likes to sit next to me while I knit during Rebecca's naps. He asks, "Where my needles, Ma-MEE?!" and then scurries off to my jar of needles to get the ones I got from Peace Fleece (cool colorful knobs). We pick out some yarn and he jabs it with the needles and announces, "I knit-ting!!!" and when he tires of that he puts it in his dump truck and pushes it around. A good start, I think. Now Rebecca, I know she finds yarn intriguing ever since I walked into the room I keep my yarn stash and found all my yarn balls strung all over the room and her sitting in the middle of it all saying, "Waow! Waow!" "Girlfriend! what you doing?!" Noel's wearing his Lavoisier sweater I made him for Christmas with a kit from virtual yarns. After all the knitting I did for it, he didn't want to wear it until I sold it to him with this" "It's a special train sweater!" I know it makes no sense, but he's to trains as I'm to knitting, so of course it worked.

I've been working on a sweater for my friend's baby. Here is a picture of the finished sweater. It took me about 11 hours to complete (fastest sweater ever!).

The pattern is from Erika Knights' Simple Knits for Cherished Babies. I added the face because the grey yarn seemed pretty severe for a little baby (don't know if it will be a girl or boy, but my money's on boy). Here's the back of the sweater. I decided to lace it up like a shoe because I didn't want to sew any straps to the back. Lazy today... Here's the sweater before sewing up. The yarn recommended was Jaeger Cashmere, but I had some Jo Sharp in my stash which exactly matched the gauge needed. How lucky was that? It was even exactly the same on the printed label and I didn't have to fudge it much with weird smaller needles...like my Cromarty. Two problems, I haven't figured out this comment thing--I thought all I had to do was cut and paste the code into each entry but it keeps bringing up comments from previous stuff. Is this normal? ... and I can't get my knitting bloggers thing to work--boo hoo...

Here is what I was doing 18 months ago. I only bring it up because the snow reminds me of when I was working on it for my newborn baby while she slept in her basket on the dining room table. She slept a long time! It's a sweater from Poetry in Stitches by Solveig Hisdal. I ordered the kit from and received it the day I went into labor. I remember looking at the yarns between contractions. Isn't it weird what you remember? Her birth will always be associated with this sweater and its yarns. Ironically, I never finished the sweater in time for her to really fit it. I love it though.

It's snowing today so I figured I'd try to tackle this whole blogging thing. My two kids are awake and so it makes it hard to knit (right now I'm doing Alice Starmore's Cromarty and the least little thing distracts me). I don't know why, maybe when I get used to the pattern I will be able to knit it around a 3 year old and an 18 month old intent on climbing the steps all the livelong day.