They only talk to each other

This message is for anyone who knits with others. Where sometimes there are new knitters who come to knit with your group. Not necessarily those who are new to knitting but new knitters means here “knitters who are new to the group”.

Some background: A few months ago my knit night friend and I went to a yarn store we occasionally shop at. I don’t go there often as it is not close to where I live but is within 20 miles which is “worth it” driving distance when there is some special yarn you need, and they are open, and you’ve already called and made sure they have several possibilities in the color and weight you are looking for. Seems at the time of this particular expedition they have “knitting”, so we brought our projects and after browsing the store and making our buys, we joined the knitters at the table and commenced knitting. I sat by a woman I had seen somewhere before but after a short discussion, we couldn’t decide exactly when or where.

So there is knitting and there is chatting. And they (except for my knit night friend and I and the woman I know from somewhere) seem to know each other and have some “history”. There were many threads of conversation going on and occasionally I try to join in, responding to this or that. After the fourth or fifth comment I toss in, the woman I know from somewhere leans over and says to me softly, “They only talk to each other”. I hadn’t really noticed until that point. Undeterred, I toss in a few more comments or questions and watch them land on the table and roll around. Unacknowledged. With no response from anyone.

We stayed only a short time longer. The ”worth it” driving distance seems less “worth it”.

At knit night, we sometimes have new knitters who come to knit with us. We try to make them feel welcome. And we always talk to them.

more later,
j

more brown socks

One brown sock is nearing the toe. There's maybe an inch or two left before the toe. But here I sit at the computer playing email so there's little knitting this evening... And I don't dare try to get a brown sock picture tonight with flash as I don't think you'd see much.

I found the sheet I worked from for the sock texture pattern on the leg. It's from Drops pattern 59-02. Here is a link.

I got a ball of KP suri yarn from Angeluna's recent order at knit night last night so I'm having an urge to cast-on and swatch.

so... more later,
j

brown socks

These socks have been on the needles for about a year probably. I can’t be certain when I started them, but it was pre-blog. I must have gotten distracted by some new yarn or new pattern or who knows why they've been hibernating.

They’re being knitted for dh and have been on the ufo list since the first of ’07 when I started tracking projects. I have resolved to knit them monogamously and finish them. Completion is projected for sometime this week but that depends on how much evening knitting time I get this week. Both are past the heel turn (flap and gusset) and I am projecting the foot will knit round and round quickly. Of course, his feet are a bit longer than mine so knitting may take some longer.

The yarn is wool gatto, a wool yarn a bit thicker than sock yarn from back when I was searching for thicker sock yarn for socks for dh because he likes thick socks. The problem is, I think the thicker socks I’ve been making for him are a touch too thick as he is limited with what shoes he can wear his hand knit socks in.


Here is a close-up of his favorite part:

I'm not sure if you can see the texture clearly but he really likes the peaky parts. The pattern is adapted from a free sweater pattern. I'll try to look it up and post a link later this week.

more later, It's knit night tonight and I'm off to see my Sisters of the Wool.

j

p.s. The socks are posing on a japanese maple named Chiba. Looks like a bush to me. But what do I know?

eliminated

Sock madness sock number 2 has consumed my knitting time since Thursday evening and for me is done. What I mean is that my socks are done, and sock madness is done as I have been eliminated. I started my socks on Thursday evening, knitted Thursday late into the night, and knitted all day Friday, and at that point had one sock just past the heel and the other sock well into the leg. I checked the sock madness flickr pics, and my opponent was finished with her pair of socks. So I was done. And a lot relieved. I have learned that I really do not like competitive speed knitting.

Here is my sock:
day1


day2, draped artily on an azalea:


day3, pictured on a Japanese maple that reminds me of a shrub (murasaki kiyohime) I was on farm duty selling maples and directing traffic. It's a good thing probably that I was already eliminated.:


and done on day4:


As I was already eliminated, I knit my new favorite toe decreases, in place of the standard toe decreases in the pattern. Actually, I usually use this system more for afterthought heels. A close-up of the toe:


And I do like the socks. I am wearing them now and will enjoy wearing them with jeans. And to work with navy slacks.

I did the pattern pretty much as written. The cast-on was 56 which I knew, knowing my narrow feet as I do, would fit me with fingering weight yarn. I had planned to use some Mountain Colors bearfoot but the pattern had a textured stitch. An earlier pair of Mountain Colors bearfoot socks, from last year, has fuzzed up during the wearing and washing to the point that the carefully knit texture almost doesn't show. So I chose a thicker fingering weight yarn. It is an ebay purchase pictured a couple weeks ago in the harbor color. This probably cost me some knitting time for competition purposes as it takes more rows of fingering weight to make the 6 inch leg and a foot length foot. During the foot knitting I had been eliminated so I dropped my needle size down to a size 1us (2.25 mm). The socks were started on KP circs called size 1 but I call them 1.5 (2.5mm).

more later,
j

p.s. Sometime while I was knitting socks, we blew by 7000 hits. Thanks again for reading my blog. There will be more blog posts this week. Competitive speed knitting is not good for promoting time to blog.

Shrug FO

I had to search back through old blog posts to find where I had planned this shrug project last July and started knitting in August (here is a link)

I'm not exactly sure what happened but my knitting attention was distracted by other projects and yarn and this project got pushed aside. Partly the problem was that it became too big to drag around easily (which is a plus for socks or baby hats). Then there was the binding off of the ribbing that turned out to be too tight to let the shrug "hang right". Unbinding off ribbing all the way around with yarn that is lumpy bumpy and doesn't tink easily was not a task I looked forward to so it was delayed. For a long time.

Then a few weeks ago, I pulled her out to think about finishing. She looked like this:


but if you look closer, look at the colored blip on the seaming yarn:

This is a fatal flaw. Those color blips are not color fast (I learned this on dd's sweater last fall with some holding yarns, in the shoulder area, as I recall) and all of the seaming had to be redone. Back to time-out for the shrug.

But she is back to active knitting recently, and now is done. Witness:

(The japanese maple is Orange Dream.)

and the back:


Not sure what to finish next. I'll have to check my list. While I wait for the next Sock Madness pattern which is sure to come sometime in the next week.

more later,
j

Socks in an azalea

Usually I just plunk my ufo's down and shoot their pic. No smiling, no artsy shots. Maybe I need a cute little stuffed animal to wear sock toes on their heads? But today, we try for something a little different. Here we have Sock Madness Mad Cow socks in an azalea:



And on the patio, with the lifelines in place showing where I stopped originally. I unbinded and knitted up another 12 rows of rib (22 total):


and after pulling out the lifeline:


And these are Angeluna's Sock Madness Mad Cow socks:


She knit one and one-half socks. The second sock was just past the heel on Tuesday at knit night. Our team results were decided and she had been eliminated so she knitted the socks onto my needles and passed them on. They don't fit her, and they fit me, so she gave them to me to finish. About needle size and gauge... She started out on a kp circ, size 1.5us doing magic loop (for her first time, with myself and two other knitters from our knit night group, all doing ML) and was getting a very tight gauge. And the sock cuff/start was very small. So she sized up to a 2 or 2.5 (please comment with your needle size, Angeluna) and got what felt like a good sock gauge. I finished her second sock on size 1us dpns and matched her gauge very closely. Go figure.
And thanks Angeluna.

more later,
j

More baby hats

I have finished up another baby hat:



and a top view:




I saw a pic in a blog (sorry I do not remember the blog) of a hat with 4 decrease points so I tried it. Decreasing around 4 points, it worked fine but I used the purl stitch behind a k2 as the focal point and if I did it again, I would use the second knit.

For the record, this was leftover sock yarn from dh's second pair of socks from some months ago. It is a faux fair isle in blues. Regia 6 ply as I recall, with a strand of kp dye-yur-own dyed gray with rit. Cast on was 64, knit on a 16" size 7us circ in k2p2 rib for almost 5 inches, until I thought I had just enough yarn left for the decreases. I ended with about 2 yards left, which means I mis-judged by 2 rows. The hat will stretch to fit a baby with a 16" head (2-5 months?) comfortably and will probably go 17". The ribs will probably allow the hat to fit a newborn with the edge folded back.

And I started another baby hat. Baby hats are my favorite mindless knitting and I need to have one on the needles at all times. And they use up leftover sock yarn. One finished a couple weeks ago is on it's way to one of dh's Dept of Ag friends in DC for his new son. And as soon as I find out whether our Saab guy and his wife had a boy or a girl, one will go to him. The latest:



more soon,
j

sock madness 1

The first sock madness sock is done as of 12:30 p.m. today.

The pattern was emailed early early Saturday morning. I made my final yarn selections (cth fall foliage variegated and cth somewhat solid purple) and cast-on. I intended to go to the farm at about 9 but somehow found it to be 9:30 and called dh. He said we had 10 cars and I made him repeat it and asked why he hadn't called me. I think he knew I was knitting and was giving me my time. So I rushed out there and sold trees with dh and Roy intending to leave at 2. There were a couple of lulls when I was able to knit a couple of rows but for the most part we were very busy. Sometimes I sell and sometimes I entertain customers until one of the guys is available. I only do the easy trees. The front area of nice big labeled Japanese maples, and Shantung maples, including the new Fire Dragon, also labeled. Sometimes I do traffic control. It's a one-car wide driveway with 3 official parking spaces, 4 if the cars are small (which we hope they are not as most trees do not fit well in small cars) and if the drivers part carefully. Otherwise, I send them to the back and hope there's a place left back there. This Saturday set a new sales record for March, tying a previous all-time record. So my time was well spent. I do like it when I ask dh, do you have any money? Wanting some pocket money, you know, and he says yes, pulling out his wallet, and I empty my pockets of several big bills into his hand. Actually, I wanted a couple twenties as I do not like to carry around the bigger bills.

Anyway, on with the knitting. Angeluna, one of my knitting friends, and also participating in sock madness had invited several of us over to knit our mad socks, so home for a quick clean up and change of clothes and a quick drive and there were four of us madly knitting socks. From time to time, Angeluna would sneak off to the computer and call us back for a look and who had knitted what and to catch up on the pattern questions.

I knit these first sock madness socks toe up (we had a choice). And with a short row heel with wraps. I had done this heel format before but not for a while. It went fine except for some reason that I do not recall, at some point after just finishing the heel I tinked back some. For some good reason, I'm sure, but I think I tinked some wrapped heel stitches and the wraps evaporated, so when I reknit, I ended up with some loose places. I'm thinking I may over-stitch this area to fill it in some and strengthen it. On the second sock the heel is better, but has one odd hole where the gap was between the front stitches that rested and the heel stitches. I've leaves how to cinch that up from Lucy Neatby's sock 2 dvd.

The only other snag was today. At lunch, I took a short drive to a close-by park and started knitting. After a couple of needles full, I noticed a two inch long length of yarn. I had started knitting on a dpn which was not next in line . So about 40 painful tinked stitches later, I was ribbing and on my way to finishing.

I had taken my camera with me to work. In case I was able to finish. But I don't normally use a cord to download the pics. My home computer has slots for camera discies so we just pull out the disc from the camera and plug it into the computer and the computer figures out it's there and downloads. Anyway, I asked dh for a cable and he gave me the one from his new camera. Which fit my work computer's usb port fine but unfortunately did not fit my camera's cable plugging place. So I found a co-worker who almost always has a camera with me and he took my sock picture and emailed it to me. Thanks k-bob. So here you have my first sock madness socks:



Just for the record: the yarn is CTH fall foliage (birthday gift last fall from dd) with CTH semi-solid purple ( thanks again Grace ). The needles were Knitpicks 32" circ size 1us (2.5mm) primarily, with some dpn action on the heel. With the ribbing knit on size 1us (2.25 mm) dpns. Cast-on was 52 (for any sock madness participants who know this is a lesser number than the pattern, I knit two extra repeats on the leg to compensate for the fewer number of stitches per row. This was ok'd by the organizers). With a small rib at the top, per the pattern. Now if you look closely you will see a bit of lifeline. And my calf is not bulge-ey like the picture might make you think. That's about 10 yards of purple tucked into the back of the sock. My intention is to uncast-off and pick up those life-lined stitches and knit the ribbing up a bit more. But today I needed to cast-off after the prescribed ribbing and throw my picture up on flickr and do the "I'm done" email and advance to round 2 of sock madness.

sock madness starts tomorrow

so we're finishing up a few small projects.

The baby hat is done:

Just for the record: cast-on was 68. Stitch pattern is k2p2 to just past 5 inches then decreased the purls out then standard 7-point ssk decreases. Knit on size 7us 16" clover circ. The yarn was some leftover acrylic from the very first socks I ever knit. The one and only pair of acrylic socks I ever (and will ever) knit.

And the mitts are done:
from a pattern in the snb calendar. Theoretically a woman's size; in actuality should fit a child about age 9-10.

The sock yarn players are all ball-winded.

And we have socky inspiration:

A nice book that I recommend highly.

Laundry usually happens over the weekend here at chez maple. I did some last night and will do another load or two tonight. Then I plan to change the sheets. And mostly tomorrow and Sunday I will knit and see how far along I get. I will miss a few hours of knitting tomorrow as it is tree selling season, but you can bet I'll have my knitting with me. I hope we're not too busy so I can get in a few rows. Then tomorrow afternoon we have a special knit together planned with several of my Sisters Of the Wool who are also participating in the Madness.

Blogging may not be very interesting over the next few days as we'll see only one knitting project. Hopefully, it will not take too long to finish sock 1 but I really don't have any idea as I don't think I have ever knit socks as a monogamous project. Watch my progress here.

more later,
j

Which yarn?

We now know that for the inaugural sock madness sock that we need some solid and some variegated. We have some sock yarn players, with the starter(s) to be determined. There's koigu leftovers, CTH (full skein and leftovers), a CTH purple end-lot (thanks again Grace), a couple cakes of Lotus Blossom, even some regia and wildfoote (both have a buddy skein in the sock yarn box but I'm willing to break up a couple if need be).

In the knitting while we wait department, we have the mitts which are ready for the decreases on mitt #2. Very much like a standard toe decrease, so this might be considered SM (Sock Madness) warm-up work:

And in the completed, learn something new possibly related to SM, we have our first two-color knitting, now a baby hat for some baby-to-be-named-later.

There is some sad news to report... remember those Koigu socks I finished a couple weeks ago? I'll go find the post and link to it here. Remember when I had the problem at about heel time and I was so irritated that I couldn't even describe it? Well, the problem was that when I was clipping out the scrap yarn to put in the afterthought heel, I accidentally clipped the sock yarn. Near the corner. Well, I wove the little ends in best-as-I-could. And proceeded to knit the heels and the rest of the socks. And they seemed fine. And I wore them and washed them a time or two. And then:

It's loose and there's some kind of problem. It's acting kind like a running stitch but I can't see that a stitch is running. And gentle pulls don't seem to make it run more. So that's good. I'll be fixing it soon because I really do like these socks.

more later,

j

Picking up stitches for Jo

Jo (Celtic Memory Yarns) is having a picking up stitches panic exacerbated by Sock Madness nerves. I will see what I can do to help. Here's what I think about picking up stitches.

First off, any pattern that tells you to pick up a few hundred stitches evenly around is copping out on instructions. Particularly if there is any knitting instruction in the pattern that tells you to knit so many inches. And especially if row gauge is not of key importance. And if you may have made any adjustments for said garment to fit you instead of some size ideal. Such as knitting an extra inch of body length (or one less inch of body).

So how will you know how many stitches to pick up. To heck with some magical number, I say. What you need to pick up is the right number of stitches for your particular knitted item.

Let's say you have knit a vest and the object is to pick up stitches around the bottom, up the fronts, and around the neck. Let's say also that the front neck has some v-neck shaping going on. And one more thing, let's assume that this vest is knit normally with the rows going side to side. (These ideas could be applied to a vest knit side to side but you'd have to re-orient some of what I'm about to say).

Now the stitches to be picked up around the bottom are the easiest. Working from the front side, and if the pattern doesn't tell you where to start, I'd start at one of the underarm seams, or where the underarm seam would be, if the vest had one. For each stitch you find, pick up and knit one stitch. Now easier still would have been to have started from a provisional cast on, and when unzipped, all those live stitches would be there waiting, but that ship has sailed some time ago. When you get to the front corner, if your vest has front corners, pick up an extra stitch so you have something to work with to get the corner to lay flat.

Now coming up the front, what you need to know is your row gauge and stitch gauge. I don't care if you did a gauge swatch and I don't care if you know where it is or if it got frogged so the yarn could be used to knit the vest. What matters now is the actual gauge you actually knitted on your vest. So get out your ruler and do some counting. Count a nice big square. Lets say your knit at 7.5 stitches per inch and 10 rows per inch. Divide your stitch gauge by your row gauge (7.5/10) giving .75 This means that you'll pick up 7.5 stitches in every 10 rows.

Now, let's digress. I'm wearing a vest today knit of recycled cotton. I knew from my swatches behaviour that I was going to get somewhat significant shrinkage lengthwise but very little shrinkage widthwise, so I took my vest for a swim in warm water, and blocked it gently before the band picking up game. If your garment can be expected to change sizes when washed, do that now.

Back to the picking up, picking up 7.5 stitches in 10 rows means basically, *pick up 3 stitches, skip one stitch, pick up 3 stitches, skip one stitch, pick up 2 stitches, skip one stitch, and repeat from *. So that's what you do coming up the straight front. Get a good light, get a good look at the stitches and pick up. All you have to do is count to 2 or 3. (Jo, if these calculations aren't clear to you, count your gauge, send me an email, and I'll send you your pick up pattern.)

Now on that v-neck. It has edge stitches at an angle. And if we did some math, the angle and sines, and cosines, and hypotenuses and all that business would mean that you'll need more pick-ups than you needed on the straight away. So the short story that worked for me is to pick up one stitch in every stitch. Until you get to the end of the angley V part. If there is some straight away knitting at the top of the V, go back to the 3-3-2- pick-up pattern.

Now coming around the round part of the back neck, is just like picking up you may have done for lots of sweater necks. Basically, one for one at that part of the back neck that is straight up stitches, one for one along the angley parts that are like the V, and the 3-3-2- pickup pattern where any neckline stitches present themselves like the front edge.

I think I have a post from a few months ago from my pick up experience with this vest. I'm going to look for it and add in a link here.

More later,
j

strfotm finito

Fire On The Mountain is finished:

For the record:
The yarn is Fire on the Mountain lightweight sock yarn from Socks That Rock. I bought it from a destasher on Knitters Review. They were knit toe up using Judy's magic caston on Knitty with 10 stitches on each needle. I increased to 48 for the major part of the foot. Then a few more increases in the late arch area to 56. The heel is an afterthought heel over 28 stitches. If you check the picture of these socks while they were in progress, you'll see a white chimney for kitchenering the heel... I "learned" this from Lucy Neatby's knitting dvd (2) but evidently I didn't learn it very well as because after I kitchenered heel number 1 with this technique and frogged the chimney, I was left with many loose live stitches. I grabbed some dpns and "saved" the stitches, blew off the chimney and did a 3 needle bindoff on the inside of the heel. I've done this before and find it easier than traditional kitchener. And I don't feel the bumped area on the inside during wear. There is about 21 grams of yarn left.

Then I decided to learn some colorwork, in preparation for sock madness. I have never done fairisle or intarsia though I do read about it, from books and online, some. And they say one of the socks will have some colorwork so I figured I better get some idea of how-to. I selected some stash yarn:


And did a provisional (via crochet around a knitting needle) with some handy scrap yarn. The scrap ran out at about 68 stitches so that's how big this piece is. My idea is that the result may be a baby hat ( and it working out in a possibly newborn size). The needles are size 4 Clover dpns. Well, one of them may be a 3 but I don't think it matters too much for this exercise. Have you ever read where ez said she could knit a sock with suitable and even gauge with 4 different size dpns? Well, I think her point is that the yarn will settle in at whatever gauge it really wants to be. And I agree. Here is where we are:


I knit a few rows with the brown, then knit 2 with each color, in turn, for two rows, then two more rows of brown, then repeated the knit 2 with each color, but in the opposite positions. It did occur to me that I could have done the opposite positions without the two plain rows but I was already well into the plain rows and not in a mood for tinking. And I was glad for the break from the color changes. Then three rows of brown and one row of red and some other pattern is coming up soon, but it hasn't spilled out into my fingers yet.

The reason for the provisional is that I think I'll want an inch or so of rib but knitting rib, now, does not advance my goal of learning two color knitting. And if I don't end up with something that can become a hat (or something, nominations are open), knitting ribbing would have just slowed me down and used my knitting time unnecessarily.

One of my problems with learning two color knitting is that I am a continental knitter through and through. I don't throw. I've seen some of my Sisters Of the Wool throw, but I don't know how to throw. I remember txknitter showing me how to do some knitting thing and she said, just for this row, throw. And I said, I don't know how to throw, let me figure out to knit it continental. And I did. But the most commonly recommended, at least in my research, is to knit two colors with one color in each hand, one continental, and one english, so that's what I am trying to do. Now some suggest holding some certain yarn in each hand whether the color is to be the foreground or background. I'm not sure which of my yarns is the foreground. I just know that I'm holding the brown in my left hand. Another problem, probably related to wrong throwing is that I found my red stitches twisted. So when I found them twisted, and I'm not sure I found them all, I knit into the back of the loop. And I commenced wrapping the thrown yarn the other way. Seems to have done the trick. I'll worry about fine points later.

dh says he likes the splotches (referring to little squares of red). I think that was a compliment.

more later,
j

Petey's debut

I'm getting psyched up for Sock madness and clearing off some sock projects that are close. My STR Fire on the Mountain socks are so close:

These will may be done tomorrow.

And I'm almost done on a baby hat:


It's done except for the weaving in. Well, and it needs to be washed because Petey tried it on (with apologies to Jay Leno (and to Petey)):


The hat is knit with k2p2 ribbing with a cast-on of 68, knit up straight until I started to worry about running out of yarn (which is leftover sock yarn 1 strand of knitpicks discontinued yarn held together with 1 strand of dye-yur-own sock yarn, dyed light gray). It is knit on size 7us inox 16" circs until the decreases made the number of stitches unmanageable on the circ. Then I switched to size 4 dpns. Because they were the first non-sock dpns I ran into. With the ribbing, it looks small and will probably fit a newborn size but will stretch to 19 inches around. It is about 6 inches tall, so for a bitty head, the mom could turn up the bottom inch or two. For those who might be wondering, there is no designated baby.

more later,
j

sock yarn up close

Some closeup pics of my new sock yarn. This is Harbor, described as hand-painted in ocean blue, navy, purple, green, gold, and more. (Way too much blue for you Angeluna.)


and this is Midnight with shades of teal, plum, black, grey, brown.


Both are from ebay seller lotusblossom, from whom several of my Sisters of the Wool have bought yarn that they like a lot. Both these are from her Twinkletoes line, 500 yards of fingering, handwashable but we'll be doing some testing to see if they can handle the extra delicate cycle on the machine. A swatch will be the guinea pig. All my others socks handle it well, or at least tolerate it.

And they were a heck of a deal. Nobody bid against me on Midnight so it was 7.50 and I had to outbid someone for Harbor so it was 11.95. Plus reasonable shipping charges.

I'm on Stephanie's traveling sock team for Sock Madness. One of my Sister's Of the Wool is on my team and a couple of others are participating on other teams so that will be fun. We may have a knitting kick-off on March 10.

And have you noticed that hits have soared past 6000? Yea, blog hits!

more later,
j

March 1 status

Two months of '07 have come and gone. Here's where I am on my knitting:

2007 FO February count 5
brown mis-matched socks
koigu socks
green clogs (well, the bottom is green)
multi-colored acrylic baby hat
baby albert sweater


plus 2 frogged off of the in-process list:
Cat Bordhi smile socks
lace shawl icarus


Socks: total started or planned 10 complete 4
rpm socks done January
aqua kp cottony socks done January
brown mis-matched socks done February
Cat Bordhi smile socks frogged February
koigu socks done February
STR Fire on the Mountain socks in knitting
Cat Bordhi lace socks
brown socks for dh ...wool gatto
birthday cth socks planned only at this point, will enter Sock Madness if any of the patterns call out to/for this yarn
Mountain Colors barefoot socks another possible entry for Sock Madness
blue Regia socks two skein striped


2007 Knitting status 3/1/07 Started: count 12
Cat Bordhi lace socks
brown socks for Keith
blue Regia socks two skein striped
cotton shrug
knitty Grace
pink cotton sweater
mittens
recycled silk bag
multidirectional scarf
multi acrylic baby hat 2
baby hat gray/fake isle
STR Fire on the Mountain socks


For February, I planned to finish the Koigu socks and did. Also the brown fleece artist socks that don't match so well, are done. I also planned to finish the shrug and didn't. It is close but the seaming needs re-doing. Baby Albert was a may-work-on and is done. I guessed another pair of socks would enter the in knitting arena, and str fire-on-the-mountain is well under way. I said hats tend to come and go quickly and one is done, two started. (and one, knitted in '06 was given away to a new grandmother at church, well, given to her just born first granddaughter. Still thinking about a sweater for dh with lots of cables.

Sock Madness starts March 10 so that will occupy most of my knitting time for March. Until the 10th, I plan to knit on the shrug sleeve. And reseam the shrug. And I plan to knit on the str fire-on-the-mountain socks. Mindless carry around knitting will be the baby hats.

More later,
j