I'm sitting with my laptop at the tiny little Cooperstown library using their blessed, wonderful wireless internet access so as to avoid killing the access we have at the house with Kbs and Kbs of upload information. I hope to make this a weekly pilgrimage so that I can upload photos here and then edit posts at home.

Oddly, I have missed the blogging. Knowing that there are people interested in hearing about them helps me focus on the positive and interesting things about life here. And since work at the moment pays the bills but doesn't do much in the way of intellectual stimulation, it's good to have a chance to try to write well about things that matter. And what matters to me is being able to create things.

Yesterday I got my spring issue of Interweave Knits (thanks Mom!). I will tell you all about how I feel about it and the patterns tomorrow, I think, once I've had another night to read the patterns and give it some thought. But the article I want to talk about right now was about starting as many new projects as you can. There has been so much new in my life lately that in my knitting I desperately wanted to actually finish something. And in January, I absolutely did.

I finished my mom's Bristow Sweater. So much measuring and resizing and seaming and a weeks long search for buttons in this frozen land and finally, at last, a sweater I am deeply proud of. Mom says it's snug, and I probably could have given a few more stitches of ease throughout, and added another inch to the sleeves, but hopefully it's flattering and warm.

Before I sewed up all the seams and wove in the ends, it looked like this:





I forgot to take a picture when it was all done with buttons and such, but trust me, it was a thing of beauty. And rather a lot of cat and dog hair I tried to eradicate without much luck.

I used Cascade 220 Superwash yarn and bought more than enough. There's two and a half balls left! It was a beautiful soft yarn that I enjoyed knitting with, though I did find that the red dye would come off on my hands when I worked with it for extended periods of time. Before I figured it out, I thought I was working my hands raw! I soaked the pieces about a half an hour before I blocked them, and then ran the sweater through a cold woolen cycle before I sent it off, so hopefully most of the color is now fast.

I also finished a pattern for socks that I'd been working on since the summer. I bought the yarn on a whim- my only non-gift yarn purchase of the year and wrote up a pattern inspired by Sophia Copola's movie about Marie Antoinette. Full of pretty vivid colors and over the top luxury, I thought the sweet pink of the sock yarn would be just right for a princess soled sock with a little lacy cuff and a picot bind off.

The end result was this:

The pattern is written and I'm looking for test knitters if anyone's interested in a free sock pattern...

I also worked on a pattern for a slouched hat with Linda's yarn, the one I talked about in my stash post.

The hat turned out like this:

This pattern is all written up and ready to be tested too...

Now, having finished and accomplished and whatnot, I am bored. I started another pair of socks and lost a needle with only one sock done. I started a lace project only to discover that my cat decided that she loves to play with yarn as much as I do and I had to clean up a living room strewn with laceweight.