I am sitting at my desk this morning, eating my baked oatmeal and a huge pear (before it is overripe) and thinking about how fortunate I am (we are) to live here. I wrote in my last post that I brought home germs from New York City and have been feeling less than well and I’ve been home in my pajamas for the last three days. My hubby has been doing all of the cooking and making soups for dinner because that’s all I really want. I’ve been drinking tea by what feels like the gallon, and after Thursday night I’ve been knitting. Thursday night I felt too yucky to knit. Today would have been the same but I have an in-person meeting in Augusta this afternoon that I can’t miss but you can be sure I’ll be returning straight after to my PJs and my atelier. This morning, I’m up getting my calendar for the week updated and I’ll do the bind off on my daughter’s sweater that I have essentially finished.

I’ve made a lot of sweaters in my days as a knitter and this one has been fun and frustrating. I didn’t take good measurements for my daughter before I started this cardigan and I have learned that this is a must for knitting for others. I am unsure about the sleeve length but the cuffs are finished and, if need be, I can unstitch them and lengthen them or shorten them. I hope they’ll be just right – I frogged back from where I was when she tried the cardigan on in the city and they were going to be too long. I frogged back about an inch and a half and then knit the cuff. I knit the second sleeve exactly as the first one.

Knitting Tip: I use lightbulb stitch markers to mark every single decrease down the sleeve so that I. can make the second sleeve the same. In this case, I had made three 13-round decreases and several 7-round decreases to the beginning of the cuff. They should be the same. I hope her arms are the same, too. Ha! Ha!

The bottom border I chose to change up a bit. The directions suggest that I should have used an Italian Cast On (I’m a pro at this now!) and then knit across the bottom of the sweater while double knitting the bottom border band and attaching it to the sweater bottom stitches. At the end I should continue with the double knitting on the border stitches only to make a tie. Then I should go back and again use an Italian Cast On to knit a second tie and graft it to the start of the bottom border band.

I don’t like grafting in ribbing. AND having knit the border band all the way around the front of the cardigan, I thought to myself … Self, why can’t I start the tie and then continue to add it to the bottom of the cardigan thus eliminating the grafting part? I figured the worst that could happen is that I have the thirteen plus inches of the tie knitted first and I’ll graft it (begrudgingly) at the end. BUT IT WORKED!!! I have a beautiful tie on the first side of the cardigan and I don’t have to go back to graft it afterward. Yay, me! (Note: for those of you who are knitters, I just want to reiterate here that a pattern is a guideline not a law. If a sweater has stripes, you can knit it in one color and, vice versa, if a sweater is one color you can color block it or stripe it. YOU are the boss of your knitting!)

Last night I finished the bottom border and the second tie and all I need to do today is to bind off with the Italian Sewn Bind-Off. I’m knitting with charcoal gray yarn and I’d rather do this work in the daylight!) Once that’s done, I’ll be blocking the sweater and weaving in all the ends. There are a lot of them. I’ll sew in my label and thnk about shipping it to her in the city – the city is famous for losing packages and the mail system is so dysfunctional right now that I worry about mailing anything of value and this sweater is a beauty that has taken lots of my time. Photos of the sweater, when it’s finished will be upcoming!

I took the opportunity to block the three hats that I have finished for my customer yesterday afternoon. AND I have started the last hat of her order. With any luck, I can get the hat finished and blocked tonight or tomorrow and the order can go with me to work on Thursday. It’s nearly done.

The mornings lately have been so stunning that I had to share a few more pictures.

Gone knitting!