The Heathen Housewife

Wow, people! It’s October already! How did that happen? Well, it’s the alternate Wednesday morning in which I have about an hour and fifteen minutes to myself at home between dropping Sophie off at pre-school, walking home, and walking back to pick her up again. Believe me that I’ve been thinking blog thoughts, but that I have been getting very little free time lately – Sophie’s sleep cycle is still all messed up from the passing of the regular nap, and we are working on teaching her to go to sleep by herself at the appointed time. Except that I’m a total wimp who loves to hold her child as she falls asleep, and I kept back-sliding on that. Only now I’m serious, so maybe you’ll see me around the blog more often. Don’t give up on me!

I have a slog of pictures to share with you, including two finished projects and one very nearly finished and blocking, plus some other good stuff.

The big one first. The ugly blue diamond sweater is done except for the closure. It’s blocking now. I took a couple pictures while I was working on the shoulder straps ’cause it was the first time I’d done them, and I found the structure fascinating. I wasn’t totally thrilled with where the diamond pattern ended, but I guess when you do so little advanced planning you have to take what you get.

From the top:

From the front:

and from the back:

And then the knitting was finished, and I tried it on before blocking. I’m not at all happy with the following picture for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I have to say that I was in my no-makeup evening mode and that Joe is not known for taking flattering pictures of me. Quite the opposite for some reason. But the photo-shoot did serve to remind me exactly why I joined Weight Watchers all those months ago and that I still have an account which I need to start actively using immediately. Because the sweater is on the – uh – snug side.

Now, that was pre-blocked, and I do fully expect the knitting to relax a bit from the wash and spread out. Still, it’s a little small for my current body shape. I’m reconsidering my closure options – I’d been planning to use a clasp or two something like the ones pictured towards the bottom of Schoolhouse Press’ button page. I haven’t bought any yet, and now I’m kind of thinking that if the sweater does stretch out a bit to become closer to wearable, I might choose a zipper instead. It would hold the front of the sweater together and eliminate the unsightly gaps of an over-stretched sweater with buttons. And gods, I must lose some of this weight!

The sweater is drying now. I’ve got a fan on it so maybe by tonight I can try it on again.

Oh! and I didn’t manage to finish writing this post this morning, so now it is evening and I have tried on the sweater and I know how it fits post-blocking and I’m glad I’ve waited to show you a modeled picture because now I am going to save the pre-blocking picture to show you with the final-project picture. The difference is amazing.

Let’s distract ourselves for a moment with a cute-kid picture…

I’m embarrased to admit that I unearthed a turkey from the deep freeze last week. One that I’d bought on sale after Thanksgiving almost a year ago. It was still in fine shape, so I defrosted and baked it last night. It was a small turkey, so not that complicated to deal with – no more than roasting a chicken, just with a longer cook time. By 5:00 last night the girls were starving, and begging for scraps as I carved the meat before Joe came home from work. So I sat them down and let them go at the drumsticks. Joe came in the door and asked what was up with the little barbarians. It made for a yummy dinner even without the marshmallow-sweet potato casserole, and now I have a pile of leftover turkey to figure out what to do with.

On to the other finished objects. Oops – I just realized that I’ve already shown you these socks. But here they are on my feet.

And the yummy Socks That Rock socks are done now too – a super-quick knit, and I’m in love with them.

That’s the Lucy colorway, but it reminds me of chocolate and coffee and perfect-day blue skies. I love having new socks! The only trouble is that now I am dangerously low on my supply of mindless on-the-go knitting. I’ve even resorted to knitting on the ugly blue and brown emergency-knitting socks, which are now almost done.

Top priority for my at-home knitting time is to set up some new mindless knitting. I’ve got one tiny toe started for a Sophie-sock with some of my leftover rainbow handspun…

which is fine, but will hardly get me through even one meeting before I have to turn the heel. I am so conflicted about knitting for my girls. I really want to knit stuff for them, but they are incredibly fickle about their clothes. They tend to pick favorite outfits and refuse to wear anything else. Too often, after begging me for a knit, Julie goes on to not pick it as a favorite. On the other hand, this knitting-only-for-myself business has been kind of fun. I like getting to wear the results of my labor. Still, I’m going to try to get a couple of pairs of socks done for them. I kind of feel that the mindless on-the-go knitting doesn’t count so much against the manifesto, and I’d really like to put that handspun yarn to good use.

Still, by next time I post, you can expect to see a new sock started with this.

Actually, I started it this afternoon. It’s looking great. I saw this project over on Ravelry and knew that I needed to make these socks – especially since I had the exact same yarn in stash and because I can do them as on-the-go knitting. I love the effect!

I’ve also got another ball of yarn selected for super-boring sock knitting, which I’ve split in half all ready to get the stripes started at the same point in the colorway. I’ll dig into that tonight while I watch Iron Man with the hubby if there’s still time after I finish here. Why do blog posts take me so darn long to write?

Oh, look! Here’s a little project that I haven’t fully disclosed yet. That’s the first handspun yarn I did on the spindle.

I’ll give you a hint – it’s not a hat, and it’s going to be silly-cute. This project is completely and totally not my normal kind of knitting. For one, I never knit with yarn this thick or needles this big. It kind of freaks me out and feels like cheating since it eats up the yarn so quickly. Also, I’m knitting from a pattern and – well, you’ll have to wait and see the finished results before I say any more. It’s a small project, it shouldn’t take long.

Poor Rosie is feeling a bit neglected. I haven’t done much spinning in the last week as I focused on finishing up the diamond sweater. I love you, Rosie! We’ll have an evening together soon, I promise!

This project is on my mind as well – I need another at-home thinking project now that the sweater is done. This mess is going to be a new fair-isle hat and a pair of glittens for me to wear this winter. I really should get back to work on that this week too.

There’s also another sweater for me in the wings….

till next time!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 3:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.