Knitting and Sun: Two Great Tastes...

Yay for sunshine! Your mood-improving powers are awesome. It wasn't 100% sunny today, but it was So Nice anyway. Being outside in the fresh air without being chilly and damp was a pleasant change. Today's weather was back to what we've had most of the summer, with sun and 80-some degrees; it only took four days of 63 degrees and raining for this to feel new and different. And really, after three days of umbrella-wrestling, the task of keeping my skirt from flying too high didn't seem as bad.

During the rainy chill earlier this week, I wasn't going outside at lunchtime, and being able to do so today was wonderful. I practically skipped! I found a bench in the sun, ate while reading, then pulled out my knitting. Sock!

When I took it out this morning on the T, I realized that I was getting really close to the heel. I don't carry my whole knitting tool kit every day, so I didn't have a stitch holder or spare yarn to hold the stitches that aren't part of the heel (to keep them out of the way). I tried to find the other end of the skein, in the middle of my yarn cake, to cut a piece off, and stopped when I was successful only at messing up the yarn. Instead, I improvised:


Paper clips. Look at them, holding the stitches and all. I felt so clever.

I'm also thrilled with how quickly this sock is coming along. I only started it on Sunday! The pattern has just been flowing through my fingers. Unlike some people, I can't knock out a sock in a day; my last pair took months (though it wasn't the only thing I knit during that time, plus there was the tendinitis; but still). Half a sock in less than a week! I'm in love. It's just making me so happy.


Even the pooling is entertaining me. Isn't it funny?


Like attracts like, and green sticks to green, apparently.


Which do you think the average non-knitter finds weirder: me knitting in public, or me taking pictures of my knitting in public?

I had a nice talk with a fellow knitter on the T tonight. She hasn't tried socks yet, and I told her I wasn't much good at getting them to fit, but I mostly enjoy trying. I mentioned that I'd taken a sock-knitting class the first time, but only thought after she got off that I should have told her about our stitch and bitch! Well, maybe the gods will cross our paths again.

Here's the heel, starting.


And will you look at this? It seems to fit.


Quick! Knock wood!

I've been taking an earlier bus this week (gah), as my schedule at work has changed. When I started this job in May, the boss told me that we work a 35-hour week, but will sometimes work 40 if needed. Last week she said that we were now allowed but not required to work the extra at this point, which I think is a nice way of handling it (I'm not a big fan of mandatory*, really; I like choice, or the illusion of it). Of course, I'm perfectly willing to earn a little more money, to bank for the lean season ahead, so I'm adjusting my hours.

*Re-reading that post made me sad that Basically British closed, happy to see those socks again (they've now gone to live with my mother and her smaller-than-mine feet), and amused that I posted about something almost two years ago that I read about again this week. Small world. Plus, of course, Harold. Sigh. My cuddlebuggy.

At first, I thought that I would work later, not earlier, being a total non-morning-person who would prefer to get out of bed at 9 or so. However, on Monday I did get the earlier bus, in order to make it to stitch and bitch at a reasonable time. And you know what? The bus that runs thirty minutes earlier has been markedly less crowded. It's still not fun, but it's not as much of a sardine can as the one I was previously taking. And I think that is worth a little less sleep.

Though it is annoying that on this schedule, the newspaper is often not delivered in time for me to read it with breakfast (it's supposed to be there by 6, but it often isn't quite; this morning it was 6:30, when I was getting ready for the shower). However, for 5 more weeks I expect I can handle that.

I had pasta for dinner last night, and as I put on the sauce and some parm, I thought suddenly, "You know what would be great on this? Fresh basil! Let me slip on my shoes and go downstairs to pick some!" It was a happy moment. I'm going to do it again tonight.

I had to take a picture of this one the other day. Something tells me that someone wasn't watching what they were doing.


In closing, I like cats. And I like having my camera to hand when they are being cute.


As they so often are.