Evidence of Knitting

A Sweater For My Dad

I'm most of the way done with this Grandpa Sweater for my dad. I'm machine knitting it on my LK-150. Jo Sharp DK Classic in color Muscat, which is a very dark purple-ish. I picked up stitches around the armscye to work down to the cuff with short row shaping. Unfortunately, I think I did too many short rows and it creates a bit of a puff sleeve, which isn't a good look for a 74 year old man. Hmm. His birthday is today. I kind of wanted to have this done to send along with Owen when he flies out there tomorrow, but if I redo it, I'll need at least three more days. Well, crap.

A Sock

I frogged the sock I started from this yarn and am doing this one instead. I had been doing another pair of my Making Waves socks and it was turning out pretty well. But I screwed up a bit at knitting group and when I tried to undo a few rows, the twisted stitches refused to cooperate. That was at the February Last Saturday Knitting. This new sock is just a simple twisted stitch rib. I'm pleased so far.

In Other News
The SABLE clan is preparing to move to a bigger house in Madison. There's a lot to do and will be a fair amount of waiting and stressing before it all comes together. If posts get even thinner on the ground than they have been, that's why!

All the News

I guess my blog posts are kind of thin on the ground these days, eh?

I have been knitting. I'll try to get some pictures in a bit. I'm making a machine knit sweater for my dad, some socks, some handwarmers, a men's sweater for a future Knitcircus... I think that's all the current projects.

But the big news is, we have made and had accepted an offer on a house and plan to move in June. When I look around at all the stuff we own and all the chaos, I can't quite imagine how we're going to pull this off. But we will. The house is very convenient to all kinds of stuff: all the schools, Mister SABLE's work, many shopping options, and most of Owen's friends. It's generously-sized and will give us a bit of breathing room. We'll have a real family room!

Spring has come to Madison this last week or so. Of course, we'll have a brief return to winter this weekend, but still, I'm encouraged that the snow pack we had since December pretty much vanished in last week's warm rain/fog misery. And we've had abundant sunshine and warm days so far this week, so the mud is drying out.

In early December, right before the first big blizzard that kicked off the winter, the little guy had lost an iPod in the yard. We looked for it that night, but in the dark without a real clue as to where it might be, it was hopeless. We weren't even positive it was lost in our yard, but retracing our steps of that night did no good. Then the snow came and we assumed that even if we found it, it would be toast. When the snow pack was mostly melted, he went out looking for it in the yard. He was about to give it up as hopeless, but glanced over toward our neighbor's fence line and saw something orange. BINGO. We dried it out overnight in a baggie of dry rice. Plugged it in to charge the next day and it works just fine.

Now I must start the phone calls and other details. Phone the mortgage guy. Phone the storage place. Phone a house inspector. And begin the purge. I might even do some yarn give-aways: we'll see.

Finished Bag!

Today's mail brought a little padded mailer in record time. It contained the hardware I needed to finish this bag.

The elusive hardware:

It to doesn't look like much, but it was easier and faster to order these things online than to find them locally. I highly recommend Strapworks for all your webbing and hardware needs like this. Awesome fast service, reasonable rates, reasonable shipping rates! They are going to be my go-to-first place from here on out.

What I needed and couldn't find locally: rectangular loops. Yeah. Something that basic. Also, while I was at it, I bought some metal slides because I thought they would look better and last longer than the plastic ones I found at Hancock Fabrics.


Interior view before finishing

The bag is a bit smaller than I first envisioned it. I didn't figure on the weaving drawing in quite as much as it did. I did learn a thing or two about how not to handle the lining, but that's ok. It worked out. There are some sloppy sections inside, but the public side is fine. All in all, I'm quite pleased with this project and it was nice to weave something other than a scarf.