Sometimes Mondays ...

are for staying home!

I think I mentioned last week that Rainbow had an extra-long weekend, with both Friday and Monday off, and I was going to be working from home on Friday. I decided to take today as a vacation day so the two of us could spend some extra quality time together, and it's been a great decision. There really is nothing quite like sleeping in on a Monday morning, especially when you're awakened by your favorite kiddo crawling into bed to snuggle with you. We did some cleaning and organizing in her room to start the day, after having a leisurely breakfast, but this afternoon we're planning on reading library books and crafting. I also figured I'd shift my regular blogging schedule this week because I had the extra time!

My current library book -- Ann Cleeves's White Nights -- is one I'd been waiting for from the library for quite a while and I was getting really impatient, so I was delighted when my hold came up on Valentine's Day. I think that my wholehearted embrace of the ebook over the last year or so is in no small part due to the fact that provided my knitting is something easy that doesn't require me to look at it, I can read while I knit. Thanks to this book and a couple of hours reading it yesterday afternoon, I'm now more than halfway done with the body of my Darkwater, which Rainbow was kind enough to take photos of me modeling (please excuse my disheveled look -- I figured there was no need for me to put on makeup or spend too much time with my hair if I'm not planning on leaving the house).

You can see that I've got a nice amount of positive ease, though if I'm honest, I'm a little worried about there being a little too much fabric in the yoke. I'm hoping that blocking (and adding sleeves) will help with the bunching, but I know it's because of my being so worried about those long floats and overcompensating by relaxing my tension. I'm sure using a thicker yarn than called for had something to do with it, too (the pattern calls for fingering worked at a DK gauge; my yarn is labeled DK but really knits up more like a sport, in my opinion). As long as it doesn't look like a potato sack on me,  I'll be happy, and honestly I wanted a slightly oversized fit anyway. It just boggles my mind a bit because I'm making the smallest size in this pattern, and while I'm smaller than I used to be, I'm not that small.

Meanwhile, when I've been in the mood for a project requiring a little more attention, I've been working on a new cast on, my Brackthaw mittens. I started these on Friday night and have worked on them for a couple of evenings. This collage shows you both the back of hand side (left) and the palm side (right) of the same mitten.

I'm using yarns that were sent to me in my FibreShare package when I participated last year. The green is Quince & Co. Finch in Sage, and the cream is handspun that came with only a small hand-written label indicating it's a blend of "Georgia rustic wool," silk, and nylon. The handspun is a bit thick and thin, which I don't mind at all, but you can see that it does mess with my tension a bit (you can see it most prominently in the corrugated ribbing at the cuff). It's always a treat to knit with handspun, and I rarely knit with handspun that's not my own, so I'm enjoying this. The dense gauge for the colorwork (9 stitches per inch) is a little hard on my hands, so I can't work on these too much, which is not a bad thing considering that the chart is also small and probably not great for my eyes, but I'm moving right along on them. I'm entering these in the Woolly Thistle Mitten KAL this year, my first time participating, and as long as I get them done by late March, I'll be fine -- of course, I'd much prefer to get them done sooner so I can wear them!