Shades of Gray

Today I am home with Rainbow, who is off today and tomorrow from school for "spring" break (I use the quotations marks because it was snowing again this morning and it certainly doesn't feel like spring). We did a little outing this morning to run some errands and get some new library books, but we're spending most of the day just hanging out. She's gotten pretty good at entertaining herself, so that means I can get some time with my sticks and string. After taking three evenings to work up a swatch (Passover seders plus a toddler who didn't want to go to bed meant two very short evenings to myself), I finally cast on for my Vitamin D this afternoon.

My gauge was a little off in the swatch, but I'm also fairly certain that I stretched it out a bit when I laid it out to dry, which could account for the difference. I'm close enough, though, and given the style of the sweater, it should be fine.

The pattern took a little getting used to (it's written using some tables with specific stitch counts for each size), but it's rather ingenious. The sweater is a top-down raglan, but the raglan increases are restricted to the sleeves and, on some rows, the fronts. The increases on the back and certain rows of the fronts are achieved through yarnovers that are increasingly more spaced apart. I'm using a new-to-me yarn, Imperial Yarn Tracie Too, which is a lofty, woolen spun (I think) two-ply sport weight. The skeins are positively enormous -- 395 yards in 4 oz. I have four skeins but, assuming the yardage estimate in the pattern is correct, I'll have most of the fourth skein left when the sweater is done.

Also, did I mention that I started some socks? I picked up Hunter Hammersen's The Knitter's Curiosity Cabinet a while back at my LYS and have been waiting for the right moment to start something from it. That chance finally arrived this week, so I pulled some Rowan 4 Ply Soft out of the stash that I picked up in a clearance sale years ago and cast on.

Are you sensing a color theme?

These are the Rubus suberectus Socks (a name that I can never remember, having never studied Latin), and they're moving along pretty quickly now that I've pretty much memorized the pattern. The yarn is sadly discontinued; it's a cabled yarn, so it has great stitch definition. I'm sad that I only had the two balls of it in my stash.

I am sick of winter and have been craving color, so I find it pretty funny that the two projects currently on the needles are both gray -- completely unintended!