I'd like to lose control...

How much angst is too much? And why am I this angsty? I really don't have any excuses for this. Here's some knitting:

The cover sweater from the summer Interweave Knits has been altered to stay up on my shoulders. I took out the ribbing from the pattern and re-knit it with a much smaller needle. I also did a few vertical decreases over the shoulders. This tightened it up quite a bit and I could now wear it, if it weren't 90 degrees today.

A couple of weeks ago I took a trip to Susan's Fiber Shop in Columbus, WI. There were no major yarn indiscretions; only the purchase of enough Regia for a pair of socks. The first of the pair has been my reading sock lately. The sock comes to just below my knees, so I think I could wear them with the skirt I'm supposedly sewing. My sewing machine had a few choice words for me the other day and then decided that it's going to chew up anything I try to sew...

I finished the cover sweater from the summer Interweave Knits and it's too big. I made the smallest size and tried to adjust for the fact that my bust isn't near 35 inches. I even added a few extra decreases near the top to try to keep it up on my shoulders. Nonetheless, it has quite a bit of room in the chest and slips off my shoulders. I can deal with the room in the chest, but I'm going to take out the ribbing on the yoke and possibly a repeat or two of the pattern at the top and reknit it with a smaller needle. But now, Sherlock Holmes is on MPTV and the mohair is calling me.

ps. My camera is in Ireland. Pictures will return when it does.

leaving you for me

Knitting is happening over here, regardless of the lack of posting...

First up we have the finished striped socks. They're almost perfectly matched which makes me quite happy.

Second up is my (lack of) progress on Mystery Stole 3. I like the pattern but there are two things holding me back: I can't read while working on it and the cats I'm sitting for don't understand that chewing mohair isn't a good idea.

So, I'm working on the cover sweater from the summer issue of Interweave Knits. I've been able to read through most of the body of the sweater and am just getting to the cabled section, which will require some attention.

Maybe I have time for a Pfarrer Braun rerun before orchestra...

Today, as I searched our house for a copy of a book called Applied Statistics, I realised that we have at least 4 copies in at least 3 different editions (I think we have an instructor and student copy of one of them...) of Mansfied's Microeconomics. I didn't find Applied Statistics itself, though I did find the instructor's manual and the test book; apparently someone here taught it at some point. How nice. Glad it wasn't me. I settled for Basic Statistics instead as there are some tests that I'd like to run with my latest neume counts.

Knitting content will return as soon as my parents (who are actually responsible for the econ/stats books) unpack from their trip to Washington.

Juli

New fibre! I know, I just said I was going to focus on knitting simple things so that I could read whilst knitting. E. came up on Saturday and we went to Mayville. There's an LYS there that I like to visit when time permits. They had a bunch of 225g bags of colourful wool top, one of which said, "Take me home!" to me. (Note that the wool has mastered the use of the imperative.) I relented, took it home, and immediately started to spin it. It's dreamy, drafts beautifully, and doesn't have any plant matter in it.

Specs: Northern Lights wool top, colour way violet.

Socks in Nature

Two new socks have been completed recently. Memorial sock 1, and reading sock 1. An explosion in the self-inflicted reading list has caused a change of knitting plans. Kunegunde is patiently waiting for attention, which she is not receiving. Instead the sock yarn from the indiscretion earlier this month is rapidly becoming simple stockinette socks. Why? Because I can read while I'm knitting them. I can't read books or articles and an intarsia chart at the same time.I was innocently reading an article on early music writing in Europe when suddenly, a mess of new articles I thought I should read started popping out of the footnotes. It snowballed. Each new article generates several more that I should read; it feels like it's out of control. There must, however, be an end because earlier this week I went to the library for some early German neumes and ran into the local med-ren musicology prof. He was sitting in the library leisurely reading an article, as though he hadn't another care in the world. He had evidently caught up. Never mind that he entered musicology at least 30 years before I did and therefore not only was present for many of the important moments on my reading list (like the St. Martial Polyphony arguments), but also had a smaller corpus to read through before he could simply keep up with recent publications.

The sweater of doom

is now finished. Kunegunde can now be begun without guilt.