Green Sweater



As you can see, I decided to knit the sleeves separately and sew them on. This decision was largely due to that I wasn't sure I wanted to try to work the cable pattern upside down - the cables would have been fine, but the bobbles would have been upside down, and that might look funny. The other thing was that I just didn't know how much to knit before starting the shaping. I could have come up with an estimate based on the stitch gauge, but sometimes it's easier and makes more sense to just go ahead and follow the directions instead of looking for a short-cut. I did work the sleeves circularly, although the instructions had them worked flat. The seam I dread sewing the most is the one up the sleeve. I now understand why the sleeves were worked flat in the instructions. It's a pain to try to cable across different needles, and that's what happens with a moving cable pattern like this. I started out on 2 circs, switched to dpns (See the ladders? I haven't ever gotten ladders before - is there anything that can be done about them after the fact? Will blocking help that???), and then I went back to 2 circs once I was far enough along to put all of the front stitches, with the pattern, on one circular needle and the back stitches, which are plain, on the other. The whole project is crying out to be blocked, but I'll wait until I have the second sleeve knitted so that I don't get tempted to skip blocking it, wanting to attach it right away and have a completed project. When I get this close to finishing a sweater I want to see it done and being worn, especially since summer is so close now. I did make a mistake on the sleeve (the ladders from the dpns don't count) and decided to ignore it since I was almost finished with the sleeve before I noticed it, and every project needs a flaw anyway for character, right? Is it obvious??? I'm not going to point it out any further than I already have - maybe I should offer a prize to the first one who finds it.

Ike



Ike is an English Angora rabbit. He is supposed to be white. He has been escaping from his cage and we always find him under the car - that is clear on the other side of the house from where the rabbit cages are. Today he is wearing motor oil on his face. Yuck! What am I going to do with my little trouble maker? He just might be getting a bath with mineral oil and dish soap. He's covered with dry grass and gunk too, so his hair is a mess. English Angoras are really cute with the tufts of hair on their ears, but I find that mine matt more easily than the other breeds and stuff sticks to them more readily. I really prefer the other breeds of angoras. They each have their purposes though. Satins are my favorite for wool quality and beauty, and they don't seem to matt easily, but they also seem to have a more high-strung personality, and are less likely to be pets. Just my opinion. I took my Satin buck, Bluebell, to an all-day demonstration for the public school kids on Tuesday, and had him on my lap spinning directly from the rabbit all morning, and he was an absolute sweetheart. Then he decided he was done, and let me know by peeing in my lap. But up to that point he was amazingly good. Bluebell is my rabbit who is most likely to growl and possibly even bite, but we had none of that on Tuesday. No, I didn't get a picture - there just wasn't time. We had 10 minutes for each group of 15-20 kids and in that time we demonstrated spinning on spinning wheels, gave them a speech about the many uses of sheep, and taught them to spin using a wire hook. Then the next group arrived and we went through the whole thing all over again.

I could write a lot more, but I'll save some for later. I would like to be posting more often. Most of the time now I am busy with the Viking Society class - there is a huge amount of reading to do (they did say it was a full-time class for 10 weeks), and it isn't so easy to keep up. Going back to that to-do list (remember, I didn't specify any deadlines), I have gotten hay (hopefully it is arranged for the year - I just have to go pick it up throughout the summer). I still need to get back into processing all my wool, get the shearing done, and pluck a couple more rabbits. I think I'll start a sourdough culture. I keep not getting bread baked, but if I have sourdough going then I will get it done because I have to keep using that culture to maintain it.