YARN ALONG

Wednesdays over at the Small Things blog is Yarn Along day, where knitters and crocheters share what bit of needle goodness they're working on and what they're reading. Time for this week's installment.

Last week I had just started on my first (person) sweater, the well known February Baby Sweater by Elizabeth Zimmermann.  I was doing fine until I got to the sleeves and then her pithy directions stopped me cold.  I had feared I wasn't quite up to making a sweater from a pattern that took up less than a page of text.  Turns out I'm not the only one who got confused at this point in the pattern and a Google search turned up life-saving tips at Ruthless Knitting.   Her "if I had it to do over again, this is what I'd do" tips made it very easy and once I understood how the whole wooly puzzle went together, it all made sense.  I was actually feeling quite proud of my little pink sweater...until I ran out of yarn.  Turns out three ounces of what Zimmermann called baby yarn is not the same as my three ounces of baby yarn.  I quickly cast on with some basic Caron yarn I had in my basket and the result was a cute little off-white sweater.  I wish I  had a real baby somewhere to try it on to see how it actually fits...

This week I continue with my super secret Easter project (shhhhhh!).  In addition, I'm continuing to work on an afghan I started for Project Linus about nine months ago.  At the time I was a new knitter and this basic afghan from the Project Linus website was just my style.  (It's a row of knit, a row of purl, and a row of pattern.  You can find the free pattern here.)  Unfortunately my knitting skills improved before I finished the afghan and now I find it utterly boring.  I pull it out now and then when I want a little mindless knitting.  I hope to finish it before the one year anniversary...

For reading I have The Private Life of the Cat Who...:  Tales of Koko and Yum Yum by Lilian Jackson Braun.  I'm a big fan of all The Cat Who... mysteries and this little volume is written as if it's from the journals of James Qwilleran, the main character and pseudo-detective in her series.  I've read all of the mysteries and, in fact, now always have one of her audio books from the library on my iPod for dog-walking and long solitary car rides.  As with Agatha Christie reading, I've found that once you get a dozen or so under your belt the stories start to run together and often you can reread without exactly remembering whodunit.

Anyone else reading something good this week?


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