Finished Object Dance

Some one of these days I'll get the hang of teaching - especially the bit of keeping your samples and not just frogging them. I wound up having to recreate a couple of swatches for the class on Reading your Knitting. Combined with that thing called job running longer than usual, I didn't have time to work on anything else.

However, in the last day I've picked up the front of Himself's Wonderous Woven Cables sweater and made progress from row 15 up to row 70. At some point I'll have to start paying attention for the neck, but that's probably another repeat of the vertical multiple away.

Mumsy and Dadsy made a surprise (well, arranged the night before) visit to Cambridge on Saturday, since the bureaucracy has her in danger of running out of supplies for her insulin pump some time this week if the shipment doesn't get approved. I don't use the same infusion sets, but I could at least give her some spare reservoirs to keep her going. Then what do you do once you've handed them over and it's somewhat close to lunchtime. I took them to Mind's Eye so they could see the place (they've met Lucy off and on over the years) and showed them the hand-dyed sock yarn. I'd already been thinking about making her a shawlette and asked Lucy next time round to dye a skein with the greens I think she likes. I had made a shop sample, we put it on her and she liked the fit, though on her it fit like a regular size shawl.

As a bit of background my mother is just under 5 foot tall, probably under 110 pounds and losing bone mass by the minute. She wears size 14 girls bathrobes, because anything in juniors or misses is too big in the shoulders. When we find anything she seems to like and it fits her, you have to get it. My father was palming his credit card trying to buy the shop sample as I'm trying to whisper to him (without Mumsy seeing) that I'm already making her one for Christmas, get her to really show what she wants for color! It was one of those moments.

Now I need to figure out what everyone else is getting. I know I need to work on hats in the next week for the Mind's Eye Mitten Tree, because it really helps to have things to put on the tree from day one. That, and it makes it easier for December shoppers who 'think they want to make a hat' if they can see one already made up in the yarn they're looking at.

And, as a public service note to all the novice knitters out there, I don't care if it's soft, you don't make hats, mittens or scarves for New England wet winters out of cotton. Wool warms, cotton kills is a true saying. Cotton gets cold when it gets wet, and stays cold and wet, sucking body heat out of whatever it's covering. Wool will retain warmth, even when wet. Your hat, mittens/gloves and scarf will get wet in the winter (freezing rain is worse than snow for walking in), do yourself a favor and wear wool.

Now to figure out why Bloglines has just about every other feed show items as new posts even when I've already read them, but yet not tell me all weekend that Himself posted on Thursday and Friday. Sheesh.