It’s a bit cloudy and a bit chilly this Saturday morning! I am happy for both. We desperately need the rain here in Maine as most of our state is under drought conditions. We have a well so it’s a serious issue that needs our awareness. We have stopped watering the gardens and have put our water conservation efforts in the house on high! We’ll be fine. Hopefully.

This week I got several lovely, thoughtful comments on several posts from a “man” named John Smith. I almost always check profiles before accepting comments on my blog and I am grateful that I stopped to look … it’s an AI platform and, I suspect, an AI response which, upon my review was more a summary of what I posted than a thoughtful human response. I won’t approve them and I may choose to mark them as spam. Progress is a double-edged sword.

I’ve had a busy and quite wonderful week! I started out the week with meetings, meetings, meetings and then finished the week with my teaching gig. In between was a lot of house cleaning, knitting, some stitching and even some baking. I was able to chat with almost all of our kids and am looking forward to seeing some of them soon.

I have a FO! One of my wonderful students pointed out Summer Lee’s new sock pattern to me and I loved it so much I immediately went to my stash to find some yarn to cast on. I have loved knitting these socks (despite the mistake I made on the first round of the first sock.) I am wearing them today because without the sun it’s a bit chilly and my feet are very happy. I knit these in some stashed Socks Yeah! yarn in a pale pink colorway. The lace repeat was easy enough to memorize and I am tickled with the result. I really like the shorter leg length even if that leaves me with more bits and bobs of fingering weight yarn.

Once I finished my Reverie Socks, I immediately went back to my stash to find some more yarn. I forgot that I bought this self-striping yarn that is packaged in two half-skeins so that the socks are identical. My husband had already gone to bed when I started caking up the first hank and (despite the fact that he can’t ever hear me) he complained that the swift was too noisy. I’ll wind the second bit today. LOL. I love a good self-striping sock. I think I have decided that I’d like to find a contrasting color to make my heels and toes … I’ll search for that today. Heaven knows I have quite a collection of bits and bobs. I’m using the Yankee Knitter and Summer Lee and maybe other patterns that I’ve used before. I did about an inch of 1×1 rib and then I’m just going to knit the leg. I’ll do a heel flap and gusset in a solid colored yarn and then knit the foot down to the toe and change the toe color, too. I could use more than one color, too … thoughts? I’ll show you what I choose!

I had to frog back my Jaunty this morning … only about an inch but I found a spot where I switched my knit belows and purls and the pattern looked off. It was almost something I could ignore but I decided it was only a few rows back and I decided to fix it instead. I’ve now got the stitches back on the needles and I’m ready to move on down the last part of the project.

I’ve really enjoyed knitting Jaunty! I am loving the yarn and the stitch pattern. I chose to knit with Ewetopia Helix DK in two different colorways because I thought I loved the purple one best and we only had two hanks in the store. BUT the blue colorway had enough purple that I thought it would also work and give me enough yarn to make the large sized Jaunty. I was right and I am very happy with the whole project. Well, not so much with the silly mistake I made but it’s fixed now and I can move on toward the end of the project. Maybe I’ll have another FO by the end of this coming week (or sooner). (And please note the cute sock on my foot!)

So, I know have my Make Mine a Double to figure out and I have had several helpful comments on that. Thank you. I think I’m going to rewind the hank and wind off the chocolate (dark) brown color and use the blue/brown/taupe medium colors on the first and then the second sleeve, breaking the yarn in between. It’s not my first preference, I’d love the yarn to be all one thread BUT I do think that the sleeves need to have some consistent color and I think that’s the right thing to do. I’ll finish them both with the lighter beige into the creamy color so they’ll “match” the body of the sweater (sort of). I am almost to the ribbing … there’s two inches of it … but I have to try it on again to see if it’s long enough to wear with my jeans. No midriff revelations at my age! Ha! Ha!

Early next week I’ll be seeing my daughter and she can try on her Levitate Wrap cardigan to make sure it’s going to be a good fit. I didn’t have her in my house to measure so we have guessed, albeit an educated guess, at her sizing. The sweater is supposed to be a boxy fit and I am on gauge so I am hopeful that it’ll be a go. I hope to make some good progress on that next week after the fitting. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I’ve read two good books about relationships that I thought I’d suggest here. The first one is Ann Patchett’s Whistler. I read this for my summer book club. We all loved it and I think I may have to re-read it because after our discussion I may be able to notice more details. Ann Patchett is an incredible writer and it’s a wonderful read. The second book was initially the book club book but was changed (to Whistler) and I missed the memo because I missed the first book club meeting. Anyway, the second book is Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. Both books are pictured below. Crossing to Safety is an older book but I still enjoyed it .. even with a brief break to read the correct book club book, I wanted to go back and finish it. And now I’m going back to the first book club book which was Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I took a break from Braiding Sweetgrass to read Crossing to Safety … well, you get the idea. I have to finish Braiding Sweetgrass, too. Worthy of a read. I loved learning more about the cultural beliefs of the native Americans, in particular.

Ok, it’s Saturday and I have a lot of ideas on what I want to do today beginning with lunch with my favorite hubby. We’re heading into town to try a new Chinese restaurant that’s not far from work (and there’s another few restaurants we need to try, too.) Neither of us loves to leave “campus” when we’re home on the weekends so this is a stretch but we also realize we don’t get out much. We’re trying.

Gone knitting.