Greetings Gentle Unravelers on this most somber of Wednesday’s
I am sure, like me, you all remember exactly where you were at 8:14AM EDT in 2001. Today, especially, I think of the 2,977 souls that were lost. A good day to sit in quiet meditation and catch up my stitching… I am a couple days behind this month.
In an effort to not stitch olives… I am hoping these will look more flower-like as the month moves along!
There has been the tiniest bit of knitting this week… some rows added to my Color Marled shawl and I have joined a new color to the mix!
Leaving the land of deep magenta for a fun orange!
I also have knit some rounds on what I think might be a hat for a gnome… Yowza… it appears it’s going to be a mighty big hat! This is some slow knitting… there is a row guide leading me on and, as you can see, I have LOTS of boxes to tick off yet!
A long way to go yet…
And that is the sum total of all my knitting this week.
Most of the time I fiddled with Gnatty! On his most recent walk, a grey-winged blue gnatty catcher stopped to say hello! And he discovered an oak tree that produces knitted acorns but he is keeping the location a secret! No pattern for the bird, just a few tiny scraps and some stuffing to fill him out… and those finishing touches of some wings, a tail, and a stitched beak!
A wee gnatty catcher!
This week has found me immersed in the world of Adam Bede. Oof… it has had its hard moments, but Eliot’s writing is just magnificent. Really… does anyone do conversations better than her? I think not. I finished it yesterday but I have not given it any rating yet. Everything is still swirling about my head… but I know this, I loved it…perhaps not quite as much as The Mill on the Floss, but close!
Up next, Rosamunde Pilcher’s September… and I am excited to settle in with it!
Ant that is all I have for today. I hope you are feeling more productive than I have felt recently!
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
Over the weekend I planned for the future… planning as in ordering bulbs to plant. This is the kind of future planning I think I like best, a colorful promise of delight after a long, brown winter!
And that got me thinking about what else is a promise of delight.
A big one on my list used to be sweater knitting… cast on, invest some a good bit of time knitting, and before you know it a new sweater appears! (or apparently not, in my case…)
Perhaps you all can see where this is going… if you think back to my last sweater project… and add in the new sweater project. And you end up in a place that I found myself in over the weekend… how much more time will I invest in this sweater that I am not sure will work in the end?
One sweater is still waiting to be taken apart and “unraveled”… do I really want to add another sweater to that pile?
Sigh… so the new sweater is going to take a bit of a time out. Time out for me to contemplate a bit longer… before I will probably just unravel it all.
Sometimes the promise of delight is in knowing when to quit!
Success does not lie in sticking to things. It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quitting the rest. — Annie Duke
I hope your Monday is full of actual delightful things…like a fall tinged morning, the sound of the school bus rambling through the neighborhood, and a steaming warm cup of coffee!
It has been a good week… I got my “fall jabs” at Rite Aid on Wednesday and yesterday I was feeling it. I reminded myself that my feeling “icky” meant that my body was working hard on building new fighter t-cells and this morning I was feeling back to normal (outside my “jabbed” arm but that too shall pass soon!)
This week I have just a couple things to share (sorry, I really haven’t been paying much attention to the internet much these days.)
Steve was all excited about sharing something on Netflix with me yesterday. This is a real rarity… he does not like to watch television much at all. But as I watched the trailer yesterday with him, I felt a bit of hope flickering inside me. Perhaps Will Farrell and Harper Steele are just the people we need…
And, while I have mentioned Makers for Kamala before, I want to share it again. I follow many of the makers involved on social media and I know they are hoping to hit the 10k mark… I don’t know how far they are from it. But if ever there was a moment to get involved in an election… this is it. You will find the link here to sign up… you have nothing to lose and we have everything to gain! (And where you find a gathering of makers… you know we are not going back!!)
That is it from me this week! See you all back here on Monday!
Greetings dear Unravelers and welcome to September!
https://askatknits.com/wp-admin/edit.phpKnitting season is upon us… and I want to knit all the things! Or at least all the things I should not be knitting! (Like Gnome sweaters and September socks!)
Gnatty has had some improvements. A sweater to cover his delightful bulk was knit over the weekend and I want to make a wee bird to sit on his raised arm! And I need to find an acorn cap… some incentive to go for a walk! Stay tuned!
I also began the September socks! Some Dream In Color Smooshy from my deep stash paired with a pattern I have never knit: Monkey Socks. I know… about damned time, right? It is a satisfyingly easy pattern to memorize and I motoring down the leg…
And a new Mystery Gnome clue dropped yesterday!! See how I have an abundance of things to distract me?
This issue was not an issue in the round, but it absolutely is knitting the sleeves flat… I need more stitches for the pattern to work.
Things I have not picked up recently… that sleeve and my color study wrap. Let’s begin with the sleeve… I am thinking lots about how to make this pattern work knitting the sleeve flat. As you can see… it needs to have more than a few stitches added so that the pattern does not do what it is currently doing. My problem is that I have to set this sleeve into an armhole of (X) number of stitches. All this thinking (and the reality that I will be ripping back to the increase point) has stymied this project. But I have ripped back to the increase point and will begin the pattern again… and I think I have a work around for how to decrease those additional stitches before I bind off the sleeve.
The light has been the issue with the color study wrap… or should I say the poor post-dinner evening light… which is directly tied to my fight against turning on lights after dinner! These all too soon shortening days and my own stubbornness are the reasons I have not picked this up this week!
The “end of summer” reading was perfection. Most especially, closing out summer reading with Charlotte’s Web! I listened to Meryl Streep read this beloved story to me and hearing someone read it who loves the book as much as I do is a treat! But… summer reading is easing into fall with the bit of crisp weather we are having here in the Pittsburgh area! And I am here for it! I was between holds at the library… so I went to my list of things I want to read and George Eliot’s Adam Bede was available. I am settling in nicely and loving how Eliot crafts a story. Up next on my fall reading will be Rosamunde Pilcher’s September!
There you have my week… what is distracting you this week?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
Hello Sweet September! You are one of my favorite months and have been for as long as I can remember! I love every thing you bring from the return “normal” schedules to the changes that happen with the weather!
So what do I mean by normal? Well, the kids are back at school and I do love watching the neighborhood kids head to the bus stop in the mornings and head home in the late afternoons. There is delight in sitting on my porch in the morning and I confess to eavesdropping on conversations as they wait for the bus. “Kid Banter” about sports… hockey and soccer are big in my neighborhood but sometimes there is a bit of “Dad Advice” to the waiting charges. Dad Advice can be really quite eye-opening… the “make sure you pay attention and listen” talk from last week will be most memorable because I think the squirrel and birds were the only ones listening!
I have noted the shortening of days as August raced through, a shortening that becomes more pronounced in September. I gave in last night and turned on lights in the living room after dinner… sigh. I have softened the blow of the waning light by turning on the fairy lights on the mantel and in the Gnome Hutch but yesterday’s clouds required a bit more light. I am not complaining though because those clouds brought some much needed rain!
September mornings have the most glorious light… it just glows and I am going to savor every morning I can on my porch! Yes, I am not giving up my “outside office” yet… after all, I have an abundance of sweaters to pull on to ward off the morning chill.
I have only one thing on my “list” this month… to make every effort to get that blasted sweater done! (Stay tuned for an update on my woes on Wednesday.) Sometimes sweater knitting is not for the faint of heart… sigh.
Welcome September! I hope you are bringing all the sweater knitting juju my way!
What about you? What are your plans for September?
