Sock Summit

I'm off to Sock Summit this morning with Jessica to spend three glorious days reveling in yarny goodness. There are no classes on the agenda but plenty of relaxing, shopping, and eating...I hope. I've made a little list of possible projects for yarn purchasing and have a couple of items I'm charged to buy for other people but other than that there is no schedule. It's just what I need to unwind from my three weeks straight of work, work, work. Stay tuned for post-Sock Summit goodness.

Cuteness for Boys

Knitting patterns for baby girls abound. There's a whole lot of lace and smocking and tiny mary janes out there to knit but what does a person do when confronted with knitting for baby boys? Research. Ravelry has made it pretty easy to advanced search for just about anything but I went to my queue to search and found the perfect thing. There aren't any baby boys coming into my corner of the world but I felt like knitting something decidedly boyish and found that perfect balance between pattern and (stash)yarn.

Pattern: Candy Cardigan from Pickles
Yarn: Dale of Norway Baby Ull in nondescript beige & Sundara Sock Yarn in Bronzed Sienna
Needles: US #5 & US #6 Addi Turbo
Mods: I knit the body on the smaller needle since the slip stitch pattern of the yoke pulls in a bit. I added stripes of the contrast color to the edgings for a bit more color and bound off on a smaller needle to help the garter stitch edges from flaring out.

Designer

Do you remember this? Eons ago I had a passing thought to add it to Ravelry as a free pattern. Guess what? I finally got around to it! GSZ Cowl is now available as a free Ravelry download so you can knit your very own. I knit mine in a few hours and just under one skein of yarn. If you haven't knit with Malabrigo Rasta I highly recommend it. Using a US 15 needle makes a lovely, squishy fabric and really lets the loftiness of the yarn come through. Enjoy!

Progress

I've got tons of things on and off the needles but have to wait for a perfect storm of free time and daylight to snap photos of them all. Maybe this weekend? I finished a baby sweater, started another, and have to update pics of all my other WIPs and FOs. Full-time work really puts a damper on the knitting time and I'm on the bus for such a short amount of time after dropping Little A off in the a.m. that it hardly seems worth it to pull out the knitting. On a happy note, there is at least one knitter at my new job who is incredibly excited that I knit at the lunch break on my first day.

On the school front, I submitted my UW application this evening. That pesky personal statement totally drove me batty! But now the whole thing is done and turned in several days before the deadline and I just have to wait to hear about my acceptance. Think good thoughts for me!

Ch-Ch-Changes

This week has flown by! I've had so much to do it doesn't feel like it can possibly be Friday but here we are. I start a temporary full-time job on Monday that will run for the next six months to year so I've had to coordinate childcare, really work on my UW application, and do all the things I've been meaning to do for the past few months in the space of a couple of weeks. I've managed to cram in some knitting in the evenings while I make mental t0-do lists and rest up for the craziness that is to come. I'm looking forward to the extra income but dreading the 6am wake-up call. Ouch. Just thinking about the alarm going off makes me crave coffee, vast buzz-inducing cups of coffee. I'm anticipating a difficult transition time leading to a stable, if hectic, regularity of schedule. Quite a change from stay-at-home, part-time school, part-time work mode.