Finished Object Dance

This is what I started last Sunday, and I finished it yesterday afternoon, ends sewn in and everything. Usually I have a pile of things that are "finished", but not finished, so I consider that I'm doing well to get this ready-to-give finished.

I had thought I would be spending this summer on socks, for orphans and Himself, but not so much after all. I do have one sock going that I started Friday for subway knitting. The sweaters are using up stash, will clothe cold children somewhere in the world, and that's what matters. I may be ready to move on.

I tried moving on to the Kettle Bag last night, the one that will be a shop model for Mind's Eye. It's an easy pattern and since I always knit to a looser gauge than the pattern companies, and it said 2.5 st./inch on size 13s, I started with 11s that I already have and went to town. A couple hours later, having gotten it to its widest point, I realized it seemed smaller than it should, if it were going to felt up and still be handbag sized, since it was just fitting around a 16". Out with the calculator, and it should have been 28" around. Out with the ruler, and I was at about 3 or 3 and small fraction st/inch. Hmmmm, while I'm glad to know there are designers out there who knit as loosely as I do, clearly it was time to frog this thing and find another needle. Her note says that exact gauge doesn't really matter for felting, but I know that if you're going to felt a something, it has to be bigger before felting than you want the finished object to be.

I've started it again this morning on some 15s (since I don't seem to have 13s about) and consequently there is not nearly as much progress to show as there would have been if all had gone well last night. So tomorrow there should be pictures of unfelted bag to show.

Things are doing better since seeing Par on Friday and now that I've been trying the stretching for a couple weeks we have some specific goals to work on after seeing what I can't do. I hadn't realized how tight I was getting, but I'm never going to get into a Motown backup group if I can't do the arm straight-out, palm away from face, fingers standing up straight, traditional traffic-cop stop pose, am I? (singing ability aside) It apparently relates to flexors in the elbow that control the fingers. They haven't hurt, so I wasn't aware that they were not doing their job.
I've been intrigued by All the President's Men on audiobook. For me, Watergate was the summer that cartoons went away, and recognizing that we were Republicans, and Republicans were bad people, and were we bad people? Given that the book was written not long after, I'm coming across many things that are just so different today. Given how they describe things, there was a faith in government and leaders then that we just don't have today. It seems to be a very different attitude toward the world in general, and one's place in it. Hard to describe.