I still have a moose.

I've never been good at remembering anniversaries. *shrug* But all the same, happy belated "gotcha" day* to Wilcoxon.

I promised a few pattern repeats ago to post pictures of Breezy Cables.. yeah.. here it is as of yesterday morning.



The detail picture is a little more color accurate on my monitor; the first one glows a bit too much! Progress is going pretty well on it. I haven't had as much knitting time as I'd have hoped lately, but I'm hoping things will calm down some again in another little bit. I'm another repeat or so along and about to start decreasing for the armholes on the back now.

I'm pretty concerned about this one stretching out a lot when it's washed though. It's superwash wool, so I think it will be okay, but it just feels.. loose to me. And the last time I knit something that felt this loose, it ended up about 4 sizes too big after washing. That one was made with an acrylic yarn, though, so I'm sort of hoping the superwash wool will hold up better and that even though it's superwash, washing it in warm water will tighten it up if it starts to stretch. (And yes, I know I could wash a swatch, but I've found with sweaters they don't really stretch out until they're all done and the full weight is there. But, I have to wash a swatch of the Cotton Fleece soon anyway so I know how it the item I knit from it will behave in the wash, so maybe I'll do it anyway..)

And I decided to order the Tied-Up tee pattern from White Lies Designs to see if I'll like it well enough in person with the ribbon yarn. If not, I imagine I can find another yarn to use with it as it's something I'll make anyway.

I'm trying to figure out if I need to start setting deadlines for the holiday knitting. I need to finish Breezy Cables, the Tied-Up tee, and another full top, in addition to a couple pair of socks. I'm on track to finish Breezy Cables by mid-month, hopefully. The socks are good little projects and I'm not worried about them. I'm guessing I can finish the Tied-Up tee by Thanksgiving and then have almost a month for the last one, so assuming that all stays on approximate schedule, I shouldn't have to worry too much.

Oh, and I'm contemplating participating in a Breed Swap that someone on the Spindler's list is organizing. I have enough of the Clun Forest lambs wool to do it, and I think that even though it'd be nice to have all that fleece to myself, it would also totally rock to have the reference book that participants will get. The reference book will have a page or two of information on each breed, a sample of a washed lock, an ounce of spinnable fiber, and a yard of preferrably two-ply yarn, for up to 32 breeds. Given that I don't know much about sheep breeds, I'm thinking that for a relatively small investment, I'd get quite an excellent resource in return. But it means I'd have to do some research on Clun Forest for the reference book before the end of October and given our schedule.. yeah.. that might be tight. I need to email the organizer back and find out how much is expected for the research part - and whether I can quote from applicable web sites and books extensively (properly attributed, of course) - or if they want more of a "hands on" type of description of how the wool works up. And I need to ship the fleece off to Blackberry Ridge to have them clean and process it into something spinnable sooner rather than later (the stuff I washed will be what I'll use for the locks part of the book).

Coming up next.. my SP9 questionnaire!

* A "gotcha" day is a day one of my friends celebrates with her adopted daughter. They celebrate her birthday, but also the day that she came to live with her mom. I think it's an awesome term for this - much less heavy and informal and fun than "Adoption Day" or something like that. And while it's not really quite the same with Wilcoxon, who is, after all, a stuffed moose, it still works.