Post-cruise Eris!
Oh, what a wonderful and relaxing time for knitting and drinking, knitting and drinking. I’m glad I was at the pretty boring part of this sweater for most of the cruise. It certainly made it easier to knit while watching crazy dancers call bingo.
Anyway … here’s Eris with a good eight inches or so added to the body. I’m not quite believing it, but I’m almost at the point of needing to start the hem. If you click here, you’ll see a detail of the increases for the sleeves and the cabling for the waist shaping. I decided to do the cabling instead of the simple methods because if I’m going to spend this much time on something, I want to go all out.
I was also glad to have this cruise-inappropriate knitting with me for the flight home: the flight was freezing, and they didn’t have any blankets. Eris made a nice bundle of warmth on my lap.
Oh, and Clive is completely astonished by my progress. Yay, me!
Unlikely cruise knitting
I know I should probably take something smaller, cooler, etc., for my knitting on the cruise … but this is just too nice to quit knitting! I have to make my French challenge, too, and I don’t want to lose prime knitting time. I’m trying to resist the temptation to tuck a ball of sock yarn and some spare needles into my bag, too, but I probably will anyway.
Anyway, this is Eris as far as I got last night. Pardon the grainy photo … the real camera is packed and I’m making do with the cameraphone. I’ve just reached the point of knitting the body after putting the sleeves on holders. I’m liking how fast this thing goes, and I hope that I run out of yarn on the cruise because it knits up even faster!
Hasta, y’all!
I think he’s tired of modeling the knitting.
I’m doing better on my French Challenge than I did on the Knitting Olympics. I have just as much coaching assistance, but much less distraction. I was so exhausted tonight when I got home from work that I decided it was a knitting-only night.
So first I (and Clive) finished up the collar. I then puzzled through the proces of picking up the stitches from the collar — like the other picking up of stitches, new and complicated to me but definitely worth the finished appearance! Then I puzzled through the cabled raglan increases (I think I’ve got them down), and I started zipping through the yoke knitting. I still love this sweater, and I just love how the pattern is written so that things turn out so nice and neat with minimal finishing. Yay!!
Oh, but I forgot to mention the bit where I’d knit my stitch markers into the fabric of the collar and had to cut them apart with the kitchen scissors. Never mind that part, okay? Thank goodness they were the cheap plastic rings and not my pretty ones. Lord. I promise that some days I really am smart.
Eris is back!
Things have settled down enough for me that I can pick up the needles again. After the trip for Oma’s funeral I got sick, and let me just tell you how bad I felt: I didn’t want to bother picking up knitting while I lay on the couch all day. Yep. That’s some sickness, my friends. Nothing could tempt me, no matter how pretty or needed or easy it was.
But I’m back now! I watched Amazing Race last night — I boycotted that stupid “family” version they did last — and picked up Eris again. I want Eris finished in time to take it with me to France in April.
It’s a little hard to get back in the groove of reading the charts and dealing with the more complicated cables, but I’m getting there. I think I’m heading into the home stretch of the collar, and then it will be the fun of … whatever comes next. Adelle asked me about the next part of the pattern, and I realized I hadn’t reaad ahead at all. I guess I really should, but … I never do!
I’m also forgetting that I’m using straight needles. I kept putting down one needle, holding onto the knitting with my left hand, and doing something on the computer … and then losing the other needle. I almost always use circs, and I’m used to my darn needles staying put!!
