Forward Progress

I'm back and feeling better, so rest assured this post will be much more cheerful than the last!

As you may have heard, we're in the midst of a deep freeze here in the northeast. When I left for work this morning it was -2 degrees outside without wind chill. Brrr. It was only slightly warmer over the weekend, so we spent much of it inside, venturing out on Saturday just to breakfast and then to Pittsburgh Mills to Sears Grand to get a new dishwasher (one that won't spit out water on my feet when it runs!) A great upside to staying inside was that I got plenty of knitting done. I finished the back of J's Cambridge Jacket and started one of the fronts:

It's looking great (and the right size!) so far, and J finally seems to be getting excited about it. When I talked to him earlier this evening, he specifically asked if I was going to working on it this evening.

I've also been flying on his Valentine's socks, which should be done in plenty of time. I finished up the first one and cast on for the second during the Super Bowl last night:

I had a slight hiccup on these in the toe decreases; I discovered that watching the game in a room full of people is not conducive to paying attention to my decreasing, and I wound up with two more stitches on the instep than on the sole. I did an extra round to decrease those last two, keeping the sole stitches even, before grafting the toe stitches together. I don't think you can tell, and J certainly won't know any difference. He did try it on as soon as the ends were woven in and praised it as perfect.

I also did a wee bit of swatching this weekend for Forecast, which I am determined to finally get to once J's sweater is done. All this cold weather has had me wearing the same sweaters over and over again, so I could use another one to work into my wardrobe. I've had the hardest time getting gauge, however. I'm using the yarn called for in the pattern (Cascade 220), but using the needles called for (US 7s) I wound up with too many stitches. So it looks like I'll be using a US 8, which just mystifies me, because I always seem to need to go down a needle size to get gauge. But whatever it takes is fine, as I've got the needles in the right sizes.

You may have noticed that I've been doing some housecleaning with the blog -- new year, new look and so forth. I'm doing it a little at a time, since I'm certainly no expert in Web design and my technology guru (J, that is) is only home on the weekends and usually spends much of that time working. Let me know if you have any thoughts! And I will be trying to get some new thumbnails up of my FOs, but J has to make those in Photoshop, so I'll have to wait until he has time.

On tap tonight is some hard-core knitting on the baby blanket, which has been put to the side since last week. It's getting to be very near completion, and the baby is due this Wednesday, so I'm anxious to finish it up for her -- she will certainly need it in this weather!