Saturday Sky, June 28th 2008

There was no Saturday Sky post last week for several reasons, not the least of which is that I didn't take any pictures that day.

I was disappointed that I wasn't able to make it back up to Oak Lawn for the Yarn Harlot's rescheduled visit. I sent an email to Nana's Knitting Shop to let them know to give my tickets to someone else who would be able to make the trip.

However, not travelling to Chicago last weekend meant that I was finally able to make it to the St. Louis Knitting Guild's summer potluck. That was a lot of fun, so at least I had a yarny weekend, even though I wasn't travelling.





Here is my Saturday Sky picture for the last Saturday of June, 2008, plus bonus pictures of some goslings. These are the first goslings I've seen this year, which is unusual for this area.

Saturday is for Knitting In Public

Saturday started out foggy, but cleared up nicely by the time I travelled down to the Arch grounds for World Wide Knit In Public Day.
I took Metrolink into the city, so that I could knit on the train. There were quite a few Cardinal fans trying to beat the crowd to the stadium, so Metrolink was a bit more crowded than I was expecting for late Saturday morning.
I couldn't resist checking out the Mississippi river levels while I was so close to it. This is the highest I've ever seen it "live" in person, & it's going to get higher before it starts going back to normal.


I found the knitters in a lovely big spot of shade next to one of the walkways. Tammy picked a great spot for Knitting In Public.
The shade shrank as the day went on, so when it came time to be moving chairs yet again, some of us made our way to WWKIP Part 2.
The folks at Knitty Couture had put up some shade of their own, & there was already quite a crowd of knitters when we arrived. They had a cooler full of water bottles & lemonade for everybody, which was very nice.

Both places were very well located for the "Public" part of WWKIP. We had lots of attention from the folks passing by, & quite a few comments or people who stopped to talk to us. Thank-you so much to Tammy & Thi for organizing everything!

Summer Startitis

The black sweater from my previous post is nearly done. I am mostly happy with it, though it's obvious from this picture why the designer recommends an extra row of crochet on the underside of the armhole to stop it from rolling. I'm mostly pleased with the pattern, but I'm going to tweak it a little when I make this again. The only thing I changed about this one is that I made the body almost an inch longer than the pattern specified, & it's still a bit short in the waist. It took about two & a half skeins of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece for the knitting. However, I still need to do the crochet around the neck & arms, so it will probably take close to three skeins by the time I'm done.



Something about having a project nearly complete often gives me a case of "Startitis." I've also been going through my yarn stash & that never helps with the itch to start too many things at once.

Here's the evidence:



The purple yarn is another Soleil, so I can knit it while I still remember what tweaks I want to make. (Stop the waist-shaping increases a bit earlier so they don't go up into the armpit, & compensate with short-row bust shaping.)

Something about the Heat

My two cats have never been particularly friendly with each other. They've been together since they were kittens, according to the family I adopted them from, but they've never really been "buddies." Even when the weather is cold, & normal cats like to curl up together to stay warmer, my cats don't want to be anywhere near each other.

So imagine my surprise when I looked out on the back porch & saw them laying side by side. Something about the first heat wave of the summer seems to have them, if not friendly, at least tolerating each other.

Saturday Sky & Summer Sweaters Part 2

Here is my Saturday Sky picture for yesterday, the 7th of June.


I'm flattered that someone liked last week's picture enough to want to use it for a wallpaper picture. As far as my scenery pictures are concerned, personal screensaver use is OK with me, but for any commercial or professional use, please contact me via my Flickr website, which is linked in the sidebar.



The other summer sweater I've been working on was actually started before my Cardinal Red one. This pattern is Soleil from Knitty.com. I am really enjoying knitting this, & may make another one in a different color at some point in the future.

This sweater is also using Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, from my stash of yarn purchased when the Elegant Ewe local yarn shop was going out of business. I have 4 skeins of the black, but will probably only need 3 skeins total for the sweater.

The yarn has been lovely to work with. I'd been reluctant to try knitting with cotton after hearing people say that it's hard on the hands, but I have found this cotton/merino blend does not bother my hands in the slightest.

Stitching in Red

The knitting picture from last Saturday's post is a summer cotton sweater that I started for my Stitch N Pitch project this year. The Cardinal's Stitch N Pitch game for this year was held on May 28th.

I had a fabulous time, & got quite a bit of knitting in the round done. (Plus the Cardinals won! Yay!) It was fun to see so many needleworkers, & the T-shirts designed by one of the St. Louis Ravelers were a huge hit!
This year there were quite a few people who hung around at the demo/giftbag area to stitch & gab before the game. The weather turned out to be absolutely perfect for sitting & knitting before the game, & for being in the stands watching the game.

This is how much knitting I got done at the game, including the Metrolink ride on the way home. Unfortunately I decided it was turning out too small, so I frogged most of it, thinking I needed to go up a needle size. Midway through the frogging, though, I realized that the gauge was just fine when not crammed up on a 24 inch needle. Sigh...

So I ended up saving just the cable cast on from the original & restarting the sweater on the same size needles.
One thing I did do when I restarted was to turn the cable cast on around, which seems to be making the rolling a bit less extreme. Rolled hems are fine, but I don't want it rolling all the way up to my armpits!