Wee Knitting

I think I mentioned last week that we were going on a day trip this past weekend and I was going to have about five hours of car knitting time. I decided that it was the perfect opportunity to start some baby knitting, so I cast on for a sweater for one of my coworkers, who's due on Halloween. She's having a girl, so I thought it was the perfect time to knit the Maile Sweater, a pattern I'd long had in my favorites. I cast on shortly after we left using that skein of Dream in Color Smooshy I'd picked up at my LYS a couple of weeks ago. I worked on it during the whole trip to our destination and a bit during the day. By the time I put it down on the trip home, I'd finished the body.

I have not touched it since because I need to do some thinking about how to proceed. The way the yoke is constructed in the pattern is not ideal, in my opinion. There are no stitches set aside on scrap yarn or bound off at the underarms; instead, the designer has you put all the body stitches and all the sleeve stitches on the needle at the same time. She even acknowledges in the pattern that this is really awkward and hard on the hands. However, I found a really useful project page on Ravelry with a number of mods to deal with this, so I will probably follow those (as well as knitting the sleeves in the round -- why do any seaming if I don't have to?). It looks like I will have plenty of yarn leftover when I finish, so I will probably make a hat to match and perhaps some booties, too.

Meanwhile, I'm slogging through the garter stitch section of my Water Music; I discovered that I was able to work on it in the car in the dark, so I got in a round or two Saturday evening. I worked on it exclusively last night and got in four or five rounds. There's still a ways to go, but at least this is knitting I can do relatively quickly without having to follow a pattern. My goal is to get it done by the end of the month so I can start a sweater for me and start to make a dent in all the baby knitting I have to do.

Finally, I thought I'd mention something cool that happened yesterday. A while back, I got to be friends with a reader of this blog, and we'd been e-mailing back and forth for quite a while. Yesterday, I finally got a chance to meet her in person when she was in town to visit some friends. It's so nice when people you connect with online are just as awesome in person. So hi, Megan! Thanks for letting me crash your lunch date!