Typical

OK, so, the camera, I’ve got. The card that goes in the camera, however…well. Therein lies a story. (Naturally.) My husband “borrowed” the high-tech whatnot that plugs into my computer to suck the pictures from the card – the card was in the whatnot at the time.

Where the card ended up is anyone’s guess at this point.

Whiiiiich is why there are no pictures of it yet – but I finished Captain Adventure’s sweater last night. It is not the most interesting sweater I’ve ever made, being just blue and gray stripes with a typical v-neck finish – but it’s cute.

And he won’t wear it, even to try it on.

The child who loves to go through his drawers putting on every piece of clothing he owns (“Oh! ‘Ert [shirt]! ‘Ert ON! ‘Ert OFF!”) will not put it on. Every time I’ve tried to get him to model it, he shrieks in horror and runs away. Or throws himself on the floor and wails.

Just you wait, you little twerp – it’s gonna get cold, soon! You will thank your mother, OH YES YOU WILL, for the nice superwash-wool sweater.

You just wait.

In a related story, at his speech therapy session I parked myself in a corner and took out my Sock In Progress in an effort to keep myself from interrupting constantly (“He can actually say ‘baa-baa’, I swear he can…Captain Adventure, say ‘baa-baa’!”) (I predict it won’t be long before I am physically banished from the room during his sessions).

At the end of the session, his therapist said to me, “So, are you one of those ‘uber-knitters’ who can make sweaters and things?”

Without batting an eye (or pausing to let my brain come out of neutral and drive the conversation), I said, “Oh, yeah. I can knit anything.”

And then the clutch popped into gear and my brain woke up and said, Oh, that was smooth. Why don’t you also claim to have invented blogging AND the stock market…?

Of course, I then had to attempt to downplay the arrogance of my statement. Which, as we all know, does nothing but make the whole thing worse. But do I ever learn? NO. Pretty soon, my face blooming a fabulous shade of red, I ground to an awkward halt and sputtered something like, “It’s all just two stitches, after all: knits and purls. Ha ha ha. Heh. Yeah.”

Smooth.

Fortunately, she is not one of those people who gets all huffy when someone claims mastery of something (erroneously, by the way – see any and all attempts by your faithful correspondent to make lace for examples of not being able to knit “anything”).

Unfortunately, I think she believed me. We are not a big community out here. Having people talk about “that master knitter whose kids are in Ms. X, Y and Z classes, who is here at 8:00, 8:20, 11:40, 2:20 and 2:55 daily” could become somewhat detrimental to my ability to get right back home to get on the housework.

Wait.

On second thoughts, maybe I’ll have cards made up, perhaps a few t-shirts printed. “Got knitting questions? ASK ME!”

ANYWAY.

Being done with that project, and the Sock In Progress perilously close to finished, I had to pick a new project right away. I approached my yarn stash eagerly!

After digging out from the avalanche that hit me when I tugged unwisely at a skein of Atacama which was apparently the only thing holding up forty-seven balls of merino due consideration of options, I’m doing…another boring sweater.

I’ve pulled out a bag of Lane Borgosesia Maratona, a 100% extra fine merino in a gray-brown tweed. This is a cabled yarn rather than a straight ply, which means it looks a lot like cotton – like it was braided rather than spun. It is deliciously soft, has an annoying tendency to split (if my swatch is any indication), but it feels so lovely that I’m willing to forgive it already.

I’m going to be making a simple raglan pullover with a standard round neck on it; about the only “interesting” thing I’m plotting for it is a cabled rib rather than straight knit-purl style.

Do try to contain your excitement.

The end result should be a good, sensible sweater that goes with anything I might wear with it (*cough-jeans-cough*) that is super-warm. It should knit up nice and fast on #8 needles, too, so I might actually have it before the cold weather descends. Which believe it or not, happens up here in Northern California.

And that is the knitting news in (mostly) brief. Tune in tomorrow, for the complaints about splitting, the wondering why I thought raglan was a good idea and how the cabled rib just isn’t as awesome as I thought it would be…