Is it Sunday already?

I needed this weekend. I also, perhaps oddly, needed the conference I was at last week. While it was no where near as educational as my first AIR Forum, there were a couple of good sessions that helped me get over hurdles in my own projects. But that's not the reason it was needed. I needed to not be on our campus, to be around other people who knew the larger, broader context of our campus, but who weren't engrossed in it. I needed, in short, a Reality Check(tm). To have that followed immediately by a quiet weekend at home was absolutely ideal.

Yesterday I really couldn't tell you much of what I did other than that I made the Winter Warmer kit that I had. I also made half a spaghetti squash to go with some broiled steaks for dinner. And we watched Snow Falling on Cedars which, aside from some cinematic decisions (e.g., the overlapping voice thing), we well done and timely given recent political events.

Today, we made a sort of miniature Thanksgiving dinner. This isn't really a practice run, though we will be making a full Thanksgiving dinner for our families in a couple weeks. It's more that we had a smallish turkey in the freezer and Jack really, really loves turkey and we had the time to make a more or less real meal so we did. We roasted the turkey, made mashed potatoes, rolls, and gravy. No veggies - there's not really room. *smile* We have left-overs, as expected, and a carcass for stock to add to the small chicken carcass already in the freezer. We have 16 large frozen rolls left to make for Thanksgiving and half a bag of potatoes and a box of stuffing, so we'll just need to pick up the big turkey, some corn & buttercup squash, and the makings for cinnamon rolls (refrigerator biscuits dredged in butter & rolled in cinnamon-sugar and baked in a pie plate until done), and we'll have everything we need for dinner.

I am working away on holiday projects, but having two projects on needles, both with deadlines, is managing to mess me up. I'm a real, honest-to-goodness project knitter. I have a hard time leaving something unfinished if I'm not stuck on it. And while I need to have two projects on needles right now because the Rowan River Tape has *no* give and hurts my hands if I work with it too much, it still messes with me.

All the same, as previously mentioned, I finished the first of the Son Socks last week; I'm now almost to the heel flap on the second.



The ruler is for scale. I've never done little kid socks before, so these seem to be going extraordinarily fast, even on US 1 needles.

The Tied Up Tee is also coming along, but I'm a little concerned that even though I'm getting gauge spot on, it's too small. The first picture below is the front so far more or less "as is", without stretching it too much (it's also more color correct on my monitor). It's coming in at about 16 inches across the bottom, where it should be closer to 19. The second pictures is it stretched a bit, but even there it's only coming in around 17.5 inches. I could stretch it more, but I don't want it to have to be skin tight to fit the intended recipient.



So I'm trying to decide on whether to trust the pattern despite pretty solid reasons to believe it's going to be too small, or to rip out what I have and start over with either a looser gauge or the next larger size (or two). It's worse that I'm not making this for me, but for someone who is several sizes smaller than me - I'm knitting what is supposed to be the size 38, which is what I'm assuming would be roughly equivalent to a women's small/medium shirt, whereas I'd pr'bly make this for me as at least a 48 - so it looks too small to begin with.

I also did most of the research for the Breedswap this weekend. It was due last Monday, so I'm already late, but I think it's going to have to wait another day to get written up and finalized. I don't think it will hurt anything. At the moment, I'm more concerned about not having heard anything from the folks at Blackberry Ridge regarding the fleeces I sent them. I'll have to try to remember to call them tomorrow to follow up.