Our trip to Kansas City for Thanksgiving was an uneventful one. The seven hour trip wore us out. Note to self, in the future don’t drive seven hours the day of Thanksgiving and then attempt to be social for several hours. On the way to Kansas, I was working on sewing up the Hobo sweater all so that I could wear it at Thanksgiving dinner. About two hours into the trip, I’d finished the overarm seams and it was all ready to wear. What a delightful sweater to wear, the cashmere silk blend was so nice against my skin. (Sorry no photo yet, I didn’t take my camera to Kansas. I promise one soon.) I was so relieved to find out that this yarn hasn’t been discontinued because it’s so lovely for scarves. Thanksgiving dinner was small for our family, there were only 11 in attendance. We’ve had over 20 some years. Eleven was just right. Friday, we had the family day-after-Thanksgiving lunch at Winstead’s and then shopped a bit on the Plaza. I bought buttons for the Cider House Rules vest and a cardigan that I finished several years ago but never put buttons on. Friday evening, we had dinner with my dad’s family. Then Saturday we headed back to Illinois. It was a quick trip but nice to get away for a few days.

While we were in Kansas, my mom gave me some cat toys for George and Chloe since her cats wouldn’t touch them. Bryan found them in my suitcase in a plastic bag and asked what they were, as he said that both cats were looking at him as if he’d just brought in the most interesting thing. I said, “Ask the kitties, they know.” The toys were little fuzzy egg-shaped toys with feathers sticking out of one end. He took one of the toys out and Chloe immediately went crazy playing with it. By the end of one day of playing our living room looked like a bird had blown up in it.

In the car, I’d planned to do so much knitting. For some reason after finishing sewing the Hobo sweater and realizing that I hadn’t brought an extra yarn ball with me, I just wasn’t in the mood to knit. Sunday and Monday, I worked a lot on the Cider House Rules vest for Bryan. I love this yarn so much, as I’ve mentioned before, that knitting this vest was a real pleasure. It was such a pleasure that the entire vest is blocking as I write this. Monday evening, I started the edging for one of the armholes and managed to knit about 9 1/2 of the 20 total inches (50.8 cm) required for just one armhole band. Once I get to the neck/button band, I know it’s going to take me a while because I have to knit 60″ (152 cm) and it’s a 13 stitch band on size 3 needles.

The idea of the Cider House Rules vest being finished has me so excited to start another sweater. Yesterday, I finished reknitting Bryan’s Christmas stocking and swatched for the Bianca Jacket from the Fall 2006 Interweave Knits. Since I’m feeling a bit adventurous, I’m also tempted to start the Martha sweater from Rowan Magazine 28 in deep red Felted Tweed. Hopefully, I can exert a little self-control and make myself only work on one sweater at a time.

Now that Thanksgiving is over I need to get into full swing with the library school application once again. This year, I’m finding it hard to work on because it’s my third time through. I think once I get going on it, things will come together pretty quickly. My letters of recommendation this year are very good and I think my library experience will help. If I don’t get in this time, I think I’ll have half the staff of the library at the school demanding an answer.

I just realized I haven’t posted anything about the new yarn that I’m spinning. I started spinning it about two weeks ago and am slowly making headway. I decided to try using my wheel’s double-drive capabilities and just see what I can do with it. The tensioning seems to be a bit more precise with double-drive, that’s just my opinion after using it for a little over a week. The fiber is one of my Maryland Sheep & Wool purchases from Stony Mountain Fibers. It’s so beautiful when it’s actually plied together, it looks like fluffy neopolitan ice cream.

Yesterday and today I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather. No one particular symptom stands out, it’s not a cold and not the flu. It’s like something wants to attack and my body keeps saying, “No way are you winning sickness.” I’m just taking it easy and trying to keep my stress level as low as possible at work to keep whatever is trying to attack at bay.

This weekend was a busy one for us. Friday evening we had a co-worker of mine and her husband over for dinner. We made pizza and garlic bread with our own crush and fresh baked bread and they brought salad and an amazing apple tart, which I want the recipe for. All last week we made an extra effort to get our place in order. So far our apartment is holding up quite nicely. We had so much stuff that just needed to be dealt with and we weren’t taking the time to do anything about it until last week. It’s amazing what you can get done when you give yourself a few tasks a day and devote no more than an hour and a half a day to getting your place in order. We’re trying to stay on top of things from now on. With all of the cleaning, I still managed to get a lot of knitting done and finished plying the candy pink yarn. Saturday, we went over to one of Bryan’s classmate’s houses for a night of board games.

All of my knitting in the last week was on Bryan’s Cider House Rules vest. I love the yarn I’m knitting the vest with and for some unknown reason I’ve decided that I’m determined to finish it by Christmas. I was expecting it to take me a year to finish this vest but I’m more than 3/4 finished in just one month’s time. As soon as I finished the back the other day, I grafted the shoulders together. I figure it will make the neckband fit nicer. The part of this vest that I love the most is the hem, it gives the vest such a lovely finished look. I know what will take me the longest to do is not the knitting of the major three pieces but the knitted and sewn on edging around the buttonband/neck and armholes.

We’re heading to Kansas for Thanksgiving. For those of you in the U.S. have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Those in the rest of the world, have a great week and a lovely weekend.

The website I mentioned in my last post had me worried that all of the yarn that I’ve let sit on the bobbins was going to come out funny. Fortunately fellow spinners online helped me out immensely. Wednesday, Thursday and today, I spent a while plying my candy pink yarn. Thank goodness for samples to compare the plied yarn to because now I have 282 yards of lovely yarn that I hope one day to use for some cute socks for myself. It’s amazing what a little fretting and a lot of perseverance will do. One hank down, now to ply the rest of the bobbins. This yarn is spun from the fiber that’s in my banner.

Yesterday was quite a day. After work, I went over a new knitting friend, SK’s, house to see her really cool sock knitting machine. Wow, it’s so cool. It’s so amazing within about 1/2 hour, she can knit the cuff of the sock and turn the heel. I can definitely see the appeal of having one. Socks in no time for family. It’s something I might have to consider when we have a house and a place to put one. Like my wheel, a sock knitting machine is definitely a piece of furniture.

As SK was showing me the sock knitting machine and showing me how she turns the heel, I had an aha moment. I think I’ll have to practice some short rows before I start my next pair of socks. My theory is that I wasn’t wrapping the stitches the second time around therefore ending up with a big gaping hole and a lot of frustration.

Bryan’s vest is coming along amazingly quickly. In just over a week, I’ve knit up to the armhole of the back. By the end of this week, I’ll probably be starting the second front piece. With 12 hours in the car over Thanksgiving weekend, it could be a very productive weekend as far as the vest goes. I’ve also restarted Bryan’s Christmas stocking. I’m about half way through the foot and will probably finish it within the next day or two.

I apologize ahead of time for the lack of photos. It’s a good day for a number of reasons, the sun is shining and it’s a lovely Indian Summer day out. Can’t beat 65° on a November day. Last night’s election party was a lot of fun because voters gave us a reason to be happy. Bryan and I voted last week because our Tuesdays are a bit too hectic to try to squeeze in voting too. Early voting is great, no lines and it’s done without having to worry about rearranging your schedule on election day.

Yesterday was my day off and I managed to keep quite busy. I volunteered at our local food co-op. The store was going throug a reset and moving things around in the store to make it a better layout with more shelving. I helped change over all of the spices to new containers. Who knew that you could be so up close and personal with Garam Masala and not enjoy it?

It was also a day of dealing with some of my spinning frustrations. A lot of my recent hand-spun yarns don’t have that tight twist when they are plied together that they have when I do a sample as I’m spinning, they seem to look a lot more relaxed. When I was a bit frustrated, I immediately did a little searching on the web for some answers and came across this, which immediately made me start to question my way of plying. I’m feeling much better about it now after a long post on the Knitter’s Review forums. I know what I need to do to make my yarns look as wonderful as I expect and I’ve learned to do many samples. When I’m spinning I’m constantly checking my singles against a sample that I have hanging on my wheel so that my singles are consistent. Now I know that I’m going to use that sample for my plying too.

The rework of Bryan’s stocking is coming along. I really need to finish it soon so that I can get it to the store for display. The Cider House Rules vest for Bryan is coming along amazingly well. I’m 25 rows from decreasing for the armhole on the back, which means after I finish the back I just need to knit the right front and I’ll have finished knitting the three pieces of the vest. Then it’s on to knitting the edging which will definitely try my patience, I just know it. Considering that I knitted the first front piece in two weeks and I just started the back last Friday, this vest is definitely progressing more quickly than I expected. I can feel my hands itching to start either a new pair of socks or to start a pair of mittens. I’ll be starting a new pair of socks this week for my socks class, but it’s just not the same.
Finally, I saw something about the Latvian knitters who have knit 4500 pairs of mittens to present to participants in the NATO Summit at the end of November on Clara’s blog. How amazing. Here are the photos and article on the NATO site. The images of all of the mittens is absolutely breathtaking to me.

With Socktoberfest over, I’m focusing on some projects that I’ve wanted to work on for a while. I’m still working on seaming the Hobo sweater. One and a half side/underarm seams down, half a side/underarm seam and two overarm seams to go. My goal is to wear it to Thanksgiving dinner in just over two and a half weeks. How it’s November already, I don’t know. Time seems to be in a bit of a time-warp lately since about July.

In the last week, Bryan and I have been seriously addicted to the third season of Six Feet Under this past week. It was a rare week, where we were both home every night of the week before 9pm. Next week, it’s back to the regular schedule with me teaching and working three nights out of the week. With all of that extra evening time, I got quite a bit of knitting completed. Sunday evening, I started Bryan’s Christmas stocking and finished the knitting part of it Wednesday night. When I knitted this stocking for my sister five years ago I forgot to indicate what size needles I’d knit her stocking on. Then when it came time to knit Bryan’s stocking the pattern I’d writtend indicated size _ 5 double-pointed needles, which my mind read as size 5 needles. The blank being a very important part of this confusion. So I knit his stocking on size 6 needles and his is significantly smaller than the original. I think I’m going to reknit the stocking on size 8s to get the right size before I teach my class in December. After finishing the stocking, I worked exclusively on Bryan’s Cider House Rules vest. Thursday afternoon and evening, I knitted over 100 rows of the one of the fronts of the vest. Now I’m working on the back, which is a bit slower. If I keep up at this rate, I could be finished with this by the New Year, which would be a major achievement for me, the last few years my track record in finishing sweaters hasn’t been very good.

Speaking of sweaters, I’ve finally come to terms with the Crazy Green sweater. Last time I measured it, the front half was 23 1/2 inches (59.7 cm) wide, which would make a 47 inch around sweater. It would definitely swim on me when most sweaters I make are only 40 inches around. So I’ve decided I’m going to frog the sweater soon and figure something else out to do with all 8 balls of yarn that I have that are different shades of green. I’m tempted to knit a sweater in the round or perhaps a a cute little cardigan. It was definitely a sweater that lived up to its name, it was destined to drive me crazy.