First thing Saturday morning, Claire and I headed to Acorn Street to check out the sidewalk sale and to exchange some yarn I had purchased recently for something that I liked a little more. Guess who we ran into while we were there? Several Purlygirls, including Jessica! After browsing through the shop, we all headed up to the Queen Mary Tea Room for a wonderful meal, which we ended by sharing the largest piece of light and fluffy coconut cake you ever saw. mmmm… I know where my next birthday cake is coming from. :birthday:

We talked about many things during lunch, including what we thought would be the next “hot” thing in fiber arts. Jessica thinks a trend towards basic garments made out of traditional fibers will develop in the near future (as opposed to novelty yarn scarves and other funky, impractical items). I think that would be a nice thing to see, although I’m not sure that it will happen. Rowan, for instance, has recently released R2, a knitting product that feels like the paper blankets offered aboard airplanes (Jessica’s own description of the product).

Susan wondered if the current popularity of knitting might be a harbinger of the rising popularity of other fiber arts, sort of like what happened in the ‘70’s. I have my doubts that macramé will ever be as popular as it once was. The plant hangars were nice and all (heavy dose of sarcasm here), but I can’t get myself excited about working with twine. As for tatting, it’s just too “fiddly” for most people. I don’t think lacey collars or doilies will ever excite the hip young crowd. Cross-stitch/needlework could become cool again. It’s easy enough to execute and the results can be quite pleasing. Unfortunately, most patterns currently available are quite dated in appearance. (How many cross stitch samplers would you actually want to make???)

I wish I could have spent more time with this group, but unfortunately, Claire had had enough of being ladylike and wanted to go home, so I obliged her. She slept a lot for the rest of the afternoon, so I was able to get some knitting done.

I know I said I was going to give up on Smooch, but I was inspired to pick it up again and give it another try. The selvedge edges around the armholes had been giving me fits. I tried working the double chain selvedge several different ways (through the back, through the front, twisting & not twisting); no matter what I did, I always ended up with a huge hole where I lifted the strand between the edge stitches. I decided to forget trying to work the pattern as written and do my own thing. How daring! I ended up working a slip stitch chain selvedge around the armholes. It’s simple enough to execute: all you do is slip the first stitch of every row. It makes a nice smooth chain on the edge of your knitting. If I decide later on that it doesn’t look finished enough for me, I may work a simple crochet border around the sleeve and neck openings.

Another little deviation I took from the instructions was to use shortrows to shape the slope of the shoulders.. Since it’s my first time doing this, I’m not completely certain that I converted the pattern correctly. We shall see. *crosses fingers*

Anyway, I finished the back and got started on the front. If I keep knitting at this pace, I should have it done by next weekend!

I saw this list (click on “more” below) on Kerstin’s blog and thought it would be a fun way to review what I’ve read. At one time in my life, I was an avid reader. I haven’t done much lately because I’m just too busy with kids and work. As Kerstin points out, knitting is easier to fit into a busy mom’s life because you can knit while doing a multitude of other things.

I’ve read many of the books here because I majored in both English and the Classics when in college. It’s fairly obvious from the books I have yet to read that I didn’t major in more contemporary/American literature. Give me the early British writers like Chaucer and Shakespeare or the great Victorians any day!
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I slogged through all of the moss stitch on the back of my “Air” cardigan this weekened. It looks pretty darn good, if I don’t say so myself :glasses: I am surprised by how long the moss stitch section is, though, and wish there were a picture of the back of the cardigan in the pattern book so I know whether what I’ve come up with is on target or not.

I’m ready to begin shaping the shoulders. I want to practice the elegant “wrapless” short-row shaping technique I learned in the finishing class I took recently, but vaguely recall Susanna saying that it doesn’t work with moss stitch. Hmm. I may have to e-mail her and find out what her experience is with that. You can find some fairly cryptic instructions for this technique in Montse Stanley’s Knitters Handbook. I’ll look up the term she used for it this evening when I return home, so you can refer to it yourself and be amazed at how cool it is! [She calls it the "Catch" method of short rows.] If the especially wonderful shortrow technique doesn’t work, I’m going to try the more mundane version. Ultimately, I’d like to use a three-needle bind off to join the shoulder seams. It produces a really nice and sturdy seam.

Meanwhile, I’m zooming along on the first of my felted bags. It’s a great pleasure to work on something simple after struggling with Smooch and Air. It’s an even greater pleasure to use WOOL yarn rather than cotton. Now that I’m back into my comfort zone, I have come to believe that the source of my knitting malaise this summer is entirely due to the cotton blends I have tried using. With the exception of Calmer and Cotton Fleece, I have come to regard cotton as evil. :devil: