End of vacation knitting progress

My most recent sock in progress. This is the cable sock that I have made several times before. For some reason they are taking me longer than the past ones have, but I am back to working on them as my small project. I have jury duty next week, so the second sock will come in handy. It has enough texture to hold my attention but somewhat too much to do while trying to to something else... like watching my daughter play soccer. Here is a closeup of the front cable:




I also started working on the frogged remains of the Jo Sharp wool formally seen as Inishmore... I have started St. Brigid. It is a beautiful cable sweater and I love the texture of this wool, it is so incredibly soft. The only thing is that I cannot work without the charts in front of me at all... well except for the reverse side. So although I made a bit of progress over the weekend on it, it will probably be a while before this sweater is done. I need to do a bit of stash busting though and this wool is begging to be knit up. I'm going to try very hard to work on it an hour every evening. It is also a lovely grey color which I know is not so exciting, but since I wear jeans almost exclusively outside of work, it goes with all I have. Also, hopefully it won't show the inevidable tea stains I get on everything.

Weekend in New York

It's been a while, but really there was knitting (and frogging) going on. We are back from NYC. It was a lot of fun and even more so because things just fell into place at the last minute and we were able to do most everything we wanted to do.

We started out on Saturday night meeting up with friends for dinner at this restaurant called "La Vela" on the upper west side and we found a parking space right in front of the restaurant. How often does that happen? Dinner was wonderful. I guess they are known for their gnocchi with 4 cheeses, but I don't care for gnocchi so it was mushroom ravioli for me... delicious. Next we went to Times' Square (and found parking on the street) for the play "Prelude to a Kiss" at the Roundabout Theatre. The play was really well done and everyone got a taste of what it is like having Nancy and Peter (Robyn Bartlett and James Rebhorn) as their parents.... since the lead actress's parents are almost EXACTLY my parents. They even looked like my parents. I wonder if the playwright knows them. It was uncanny.

Sunday we went to the Museum of Natural History... just fabulous dinosaurs and also a great butterfly exhibit. We then walked via Central Park to Dylans Candy Bar (to balance out the museum experience) and had dinner at Heartland Brewery where they make their own sodas... and the root beer is out of this world. The beer is pretty good too. We met up with our neighbors also who were in the city for the weekend as well.

We had planned on doing this great museum The Museum of the Moving Image on Monday but there was a water main break there and they were closed. It was extremely cold on Monday which meant we couldn't walk around, so that put a major damper on what we could do. So we decided to drive to Battery Park (again found free parking on the street) to see the Statue of Liberty since our friend Kate had never seen it. We opted not to take the boat over (although amazingly enough, people did and were out on the upper deck even in that -10 wind chill.) We took pictures and hopped back in the car. Drove by the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge and ate lunch at a little place called Pete's Tavern. Pete's has an interesting history in that it is the longest open restaurant and bar in NYC and lots of writers hung out there. O. Henry wrote "Gift of the Magi" there. The beer was good there also. Apparently they stayed open even during prohibition disguised as a flower shop. We found free parking again on the street (it was a holiday after all) and it would have been great to walk around because that Gramercy Park area is so nice, but the cold forced us back in the car.

So the weekend netted only $10 in parking fees, a reasonable and yet tasty dinner before a good play, a great museum, a fabulous candy store, great root beer, the Statue of Liberty and a historic place for lunch all with people we like to spend time with.

Oh and the knitting. You know I had 4 hours in the car on the way down, so I made some progress on the neglected cable socks. Got the heal turned, and am working on the foot. The yarn is a hand dyed and spun grey wool that I picked up at a fair. It is luxuriously soft. I hope it holds up well for socks. It sure has a nice feel to it when knitting. I have been doing alot of thinking about the next major project. The Cromarty can't happen with the yarn I had for the Inishmore because the yarn I have is a dk weight. So I think I may make the St. Brigid. I like that one except for the tassels. I also really like Inishmore except for the bottom ribbing. (I don't like any ribbing at all.) Maybe there will be some adapting going on. My other option is an Elizabeth Zimmermann yoke sweater. Which would be fairly quick. Guess which way I'm leaning....

Happy Valentine's Day!

I made a card for my husband... It is our 25th Valentine's Day together. I can't believe that is true since I feel like a 19 year old in my head.... the body is a whole other story. The bones creak and the muscles groan and that is just getting out of chair to a standing position if I have been sitting for any length of time longer than about 3 mintues. Youth is soooo wasted on the young! I decided to make some Valentine cookies with candy coated mini hershey kisses (which I have never seen before), but while the second batch was cooking we lost power due to the storm. Now this would not have been a problem in the old kitchen, because the oven and stove were gas. But with the new kitchen I bought myself a dual-fuel range which means it has gas burners and an electric oven. And I love it that way.... I love the convection option, 3 trays of cookies can cook evenly all at once. But hmmm, when the power goes out because of an ice storm, the oven doesn't work. So the first set of cookies came out fine, but the second set were only 4 minutes in the oven before the power went out. I decided to finish cooking them on the burners like pancakes. I think they came out alright. Some were burnt and I tossed them out, but the rest seem OK. I'll let you know if we all have food poisoning tomorrow.

We went to see the play "Doubt" this past weekend. It was one of the best plays I have ever seen, well written, well acted. I can see why it won both a Tony for best play and best actress. Cherry Jones was just amazing. It is hard to believe she didn't grow up Catholic.

On to knitting news:

My slippers are done.... however they are still too big. And by "big" I mean they are too wide, so they slip off my feet when I am walking. Dare I throw them in the washer again? Will they shrink too much in length and not enough in width. I don't know what to do. They are quite comfy though, and I will definitely be making another pair since DS would like a pair as well.

I also totally frogged the Inishmoore that I had started and found a mistake on that I could not easily fix. Since Wendy is doing Cromarty and I have always loved that pattern, I decided to use this yarn to make that one instead. I am not sure why I didn't do this to begin with instead of starting Inishmoore. I think I was intrigued with the Irish sweater look of Inishmoore. But it is done and I will be starting Cromarty shortly.

Knitting!

OK, so it has been awhile... I don't know why, just usual business. Well, I take that back, I did have a birthday and went to 2 plays and skiing all in the past 8 days!

The knitting has been totally occupied with my new obsession: Felted Clogs. I made a pair for myself that might just take the place of my most favorite slippers. This will be quite a bold statement if it happens, because those slippers have been my most favorite kind for the past 15 years. Here is a picture of the pre-felted:




and post-felted....




well they are still too big, so back in the wash they went and now they seem just perfect. They are drying out in my dining room.

Meantime, I have not made much progress on the Wine and Roses Mitts for Julia. The blue ones were a little big for her, so I though I'd just use smaller needles for hers.... except that I had a size 0 and bought another size 0 to do the 2 circular thing, but seem to have lost my original size 0. And even cleaning the house did not turn it up. So I will have to rob some sock in progress from its size 0 dpns and resume before the winter is over.