Variations on a Theme

I don't know what it was like in your neck of the woods, but I can only hope that this past weekend was as gorgeous and perfect a fall weekend as it was for me! It was Rhinebeck weekend, but obviously I didn't go and didn't have any plans to go. It looks like it was a stunning weekend for those who were there; honestly, I was quite content to enjoy the weekend here! We had cool temps to start both days but the sun was bright and warmed things up by the afternoon, and we had sparkling blue skies. We've even gotten a bit of fall color in the neighborhood!

One of the "good" trees in the neighborhood

Friday ended up being quite busy at work, but I did manage to get my mother-in-law's socks done that evening, and naturally that meant I was free to cast on the new pair -- effectively I swapped one blue project for another!

The yarn I used for my MIL's socks, the discontinued Regia Bamboo Color in the very descriptive colorway 1061, resulted in a nice-feeling fabric but was rather splitty to work with, especially with my sharp size 0 needles. It has a cabled construction, meaning that the strand of yarn is made of what are essentially much finer yarns that have been plied together. I'm thankful that there was no weird flashing or pooling of the colors, and I'm glad to have the yarn (mostly) used up and out of the stash. I have no idea how they will hold up to wear given the high bamboo content (45%, compared to 40% for the wool!), but the label says they can be machine washed and dried, so I'm not too concerned. More importantly, they are done and just have to be washed and blocked to be ready for gifting.

You can see I haven't gotten too far on the new socks, but I did find some time over the weekend to chart out the pattern and wind the yarn so I'd be able to at least get started. I'm clearly going to need to cast on another pair of socks soon, too, because this pair will be patterned and thus require me to look at it, making it unsuitable for knitting while reading. There's plenty of self-striping to choose from and several more people still in need of socks for the holidays, so that will not be a problem!

In addition to ending the week with a finished project, we learned some exciting things on Friday. First, when I took Molly to the orthodontist on Friday, he confirmed that the next appointment will the be one where she gets her braces off! That's scheduled for November 21, which also happens to be my sister-in-law's due date. Molly will get the braces off in the morning, they'll do some molds, and then I'll take her back after school to get her retainers. She's pretty excited that they'll be off before her birthday and the end of the year!

Second, we had dinner with my brother and his family Friday night (my parents are at their Florida place for a couple of weeks), so we got to enjoy the explosion of words from my nephew.

I highly recommend you click to embiggen so you can see his face!

We learned that he calls a sloth a "slowly" (thanks to this book), that he knows the word "ghost" and that a ghost says "boo," and -- and here's the most exciting part -- he knows the word "gnome!" So perhaps there are more gnome-related gifts in my knitting future!