Vacation, at last

Well, after a spur of the moment decision on Monday and frantic preparations for the rest of the week, the whole family is off on vacation. We'll be camping in Northern Wisconsin for five days.

I'd hoped to show everyone a picture of the Cable Down Sweater with the main body done and the sleeves underway . . . Alas, I just ran out of time. However, I do only have about 6 rounds left. CDS is staying home, only because it is getting too large to squeeze into an already grossly over-stuffed van. But the obsession continues and I'm sure I'll be finishing it up as quickly as possible when I get back.

What is camping without knitting, though. I am bringing along a scarf project for Dancing Diva. Oh, and yes, we registered for dance in the fall, although her ankle issues are far from resolved yet. She just can't live without some dance in her life. She'll be in far fewer classes in the fall (only 4) but she'll be dancing. So she can return to her former moniker without fear of confusion or consternation. Anyway . . . the scarf is a simple lace pattern in a bright Toefutsie sock yarn.

I'm also bringing a pair of socks I started months ago. I kind of burned out on socks for awhile but I'm hoping this little pair of Peppermint Pink Socks will bring back the sock knitting mojo.

Both projects are still in their beginning stages, so the projects fit compactly in my little backpack and won't take up too much room.

Well, off to finish packing the cooler and waking the clan to head off to the wilds of Wisconsin. Have a great week, ya'll.

Finally . . .

After struggling with uploading photos for a week, I finally checked in with hubby. Alas, he updated some security features and it was preventing the uploads.

All better, now!

Anyway, I'm a little further along than the photo reveals and still having a great time. In fact, I'm enjoying the cables so much, I picked up some new yarn to revisit the Dickinson Pullover.

More later . . .

Slow but sure

It's been somewhat of a grueling week for me. Since my boss took her first true vacation in over a year, I've been working lots of LONG hours at the ice cream shop. Fortunately, she hired an additional worker that can do what I do, so I haven't had to cover the entire week by myself. But it's been long enough for my poor feet and right hand. After a winter off of scooping ice cream, I've had to rebuild the muscles in my scooping arm in a hurry. And standing on my feet for 9 or more hours at a time . . . Uggh!

However, in the little dribs and drabs of spare time, I've been plugging away at the Cable Down Raglan. While I can't say I LOVE knitting this sweater as much as the long lost and loudly lamented Dickinson Pullover, it has been a fun knit. I'm finally on the waist cables and looking forward to working on the sleeves.

I'd love to show you a picture of my progress. I had every intention of showing you a picture of my progress. Alas, the server is giving Blogger conniption fits and interrupting the connection incessantly at the moment. So you'll just have to look at the magazine picture in the previous posts and just superimpose the beautiful green yarn in place of the aqua and use your imagination.

In the meantime, I need to get ready for the last day of Boss Lady's vacation.

Feet, don't fail me now!

There and Back Again

The girls and I took a weekend off to go to visit family in Iowa. (Hubby stayed home to supervise Hockeyman, who had to work all weekend. No wild teen parties in HM's future.) It was the one year anniversary of The Flood in Cedar Rapids and my Mom and Sister were having open houses to thank all the workers and volunteers that helped them rebuild their homes.

It was wonderful to see their "new" homes in all there fresh and shining glory.

However, while Mom's away, the cats will play. This little snapshot was sent to my phone while I was in Iowa.

I fought the yarn and the yarn won.

Free at last!

The Garage Sale of Doom is now officially over. We ended a few hours early today because it has been very wet & cold since we opened this morning. While rain may be bad for garage sales (only a few customers today), it is definitely a good thing for the dry, thirsty lawn and garden.

The good news is we did sell a lot of large items that were cluttering up our garage and home. We have a few things left to donate to some worthy cause but it feels good to have cleared out so many things.

The other good news is that we made a healthy profit over the course of the weekend. We will have a nice vacation later this summer - IF certain orthopedically-challenged members of the family make significant recoveries from recent injuries.

The best news is that the Cable Down Sweater is now out of time-out and progressing along nicely. I think the timing of starting this particular sweater was fortuitous because I had finished a couple of top-down sweaters before this one. If I hadn't gotten experience in the top-down genre, I might have missed the problems with the pattern and been very unhappy with the final product.

All in all, it's been a good day.

Now I just need to thaw out in a good, hot bath to be perfectly content. Brrrrr!

Garage Sale of Doom

Well, day one of the Garage Sale of Doom is now over.

For those of you who don't know this about me, I HATE GARAGE SALES.

I know, it's nearly blasphemy in this neck of the woods. Garage Sale-ing is THE national past time in this area.

However, I HATE them.

I've spent the past month blocking out the fact that the entire family has conspired against me to put this sale together. For months, they've been culling the excess possessions from their closets and cubbie holes and talking about how much money they were going to make. They avidly sacrificed any and all little treasures with the great ambition of getting enough money to take a really fun vacations this summer (or get a trampoline, which is Peeps dearest ambition in life at the moment). Piles of used goods filled the porch as teenagers argued over how much to mark things for and who had the better handwriting.

I turned a blind eye, pretended to be deaf and stubbornly refused to discuss anything remotely resembling a garage sale.

With uncanny accuracy, I predicted the final outcome of all this excitement and planning. I knew that all this enthusiasm was just a temporary condition. When the real sale started, kids would evaporate in every direction, hubby would head to work and I'd be stuck doing the one thing in the world that I hate the most - manning a garage sale.

I have to admit, Bubba toughed out the whole day with me. Peeps lost her ambition after lunch, The Girl Formerly Known as Dancing Diva pooped out at 11:30 (her ankle hurts - boo hoo) and Hockeyman decided shopping at garage sales was far more fun than selling stuff and abandoned me for several hours while he cruised the area looking for a drum set.

Ergo, I am sunburned, exhausted, have a headache and know why I have such a supernatural hatred of garage sales.

Cuz' Mom gets stuck with all the work.

Blech!

One of those patterns . . .

I am having some real issues with Cable Down Raglan. First, when I started it the first time, the raglan increases called for in the pattern were not symmetrical. With all the increase options available, I found it unacceptable that the raglan seams looked so lopsided.

So I frogged it and started over, using my own increases at the raglans, which make me much happier.

However, as I progressed, I had some niggling doubts about the way the neckline was looking. Specifically the transition from the rolled reverse stockinette collar to the cable pattern. Following the original magazine's directions, there is no definition between the rolled color and the reverse stockinette background of the cables.

When you look at the picture in the magazine, there is a definite demarcation between the collar and the body of the sweater.

So I decided to check the Errata section of the Interweave Knits website. Lo and behold, the raglan increases were incorrect in the original pattern and that is why mine were not symmetrical. Had I had the foresight to check for corrections before I even began the sweater, I wouldn't have needed to frog it the first time.

However, there was no correction for the collar transition.

Utterly frustrated, I decided to read the rest of the pattern.

I found that they added two rounds of knitting stitches between the body pattern and the lower trim edging. This instruction is not included on the neckline instructions but obviously were used in the sample they photographed.

Had I followed two of the cardinal rules of knitting (read the entire pattern and check for Errata before beginning), I would have saved myself a lot of time and frustration.

Uggh!

While I have decided to leave the neckline alone for now, and finish the rest of the body, I will cut the neckline off and re-knit it back on the way I think it should be - eventually.

However, since my knitting mojo has decided to take a (hopefully) short vacation, I plan to spend some time working on this project for now.

Cable Down Raglan project is going to sit in the corner and think about its failure to play nice and be pleasant.

Bad Sweater!