Knitting for once

One thing I did while in SC was get back in a knitting groove. All that waiting room time helped; poor Kara was induced at 10ish Monday night and enjoyed epidurals and labor fun for 24 hours afterward. I'm still catching up on sleep, so she must be a wreck.

Funny thing is it all involved newer projects, not UFOs. My sweater and SSS have fallen to the wayside once again, poor troopers that they are. Instead I worked a simple feather-and-fan scarf in the 100% wool that Mom J found for me at Tuesday Morning awhile back. It's an irritating project for some reason, but I'm determined to get it done.

I also jumped back into the White Buffalo fray. Using the Cape May Knitty pattern as a guide, I started what I hope will be a very nice cape. I have 5 pucks of Seal Heather Brown (like at left), 3 pucks of Turquoise, and 1 puck of Slate. I haven't decided how to integrate the Turquoise; ;this may be my first delving into mixing colors, because the idea of just a large stripe of the Turquoise sounds pretty bland, in addition to not at all slimming. Ideally, I shouldn't be working in bulky yarn for myself if I listen to the Big Girl Knits gals, but I can't resist—this yarn is gorgeous. So I'm thinking of the Turquoise in a wave over the Seal Brown, and then the Slate at top, possibly in a collar of sorts, because I'm not crazy about the ribbon they have in the pattern. I'm thinking of a couple of huge buttons at top instead. Also haven't decided if I'm putting armholes in. Given the weight of the yarn, it's probably not a dumb idea, but it's not in the pattern so I'd be kind of flying solo. Never a good thing craftwise with me, without a lot of planning first, so we'll see. Nice thing about White Buffalo is it knits up fast; I'm almost done with my 2nd puck of the Seal Brown already :)

The third thing I did was ::deep breath:: frogged my entire first attempt at a sock. Poor little guy has been sitting abandoned on the needles for the better part of a year now, because the blasted heel and gusset area just vexed me to no end. I shouldn't say little; I'd knitted a decent 8 inches of shaft on the sucker. But upon inspection, I knew it wouldn't fit me in the least with my big feet and cankles, and if I'm going to go to the trouble of handknitting socks, I'm gonna be wearing them, that's for sure. So I searched Monday for a decent sock recipe and found Thuja, which is busy enough to keep me interested and much more geared to my big honkin' feet. I'm going to try starting it on the metal 6s that Carrie gave me last year in my b'day basket. I'd love to get me some Clover 6s—I've become a real bamboo snob of late, but there's no way I can afford any knitting purchases for the near future. Will probably give this one a try tonight; wish me luck!