Knitting In The Rockies: Endings and Beginnings!

Well - despite the fact that my neighbors kept me awake last night due to firecrackers (I was glad I didn't have to go to work this AM) - I accomplished a lot today - knitwise!

Finished my second pair of socks. One seems smaller than the other - which doesn't make sense since the colors are in synch.. maybe its my imagination:

But they are done and I love using Step - except that it splits easily which is a problem when you drop stitches!

And then I did the koolaid thing with my melon shawl. Well - its still variegated - but a brighter color. I like it.. Here she is blocking on my sewing room floor - the only place it would fit!

So with all that behind me - I decided to dive into the Kauni Cardigan. The yarn comes in these HUGE skeins - but I thought - lucky me I have an electic yarn winder. So I started doing the first skein - and should have known better not to put too much onto the holder. Heh, heh... it wouldn't come off. So - that ball will just have to stay on the holder, I will need to knit that one from the outside in - so that pretty much determined the order of colors for all the balls. In the photo below its the one on the lower right.

And from then on - my electric winder just didn't hack it. It created this messy lump - so I found my manual winder and started to wind the yarn on that. Of course - some of the yarn that was already off the swift got tangled - so I had to untangle them (my poor dog thought I was being Blue Meany Mom). So now I have about 8 balls all different sizes - and I need to figure out which one starts where another ends. I really thought I had been organized and put them in order - but after some consideration I realized that for some balls ( to maintain the correct order of colors) - I will need to pull the yarn from the inside out and for others I will need to pull yarn from the outside in. I'll figure it out! Pretty colors!

So I did a gauge and had to go down one size.. Using my 32 inch Addi circulars (3.0 mm for the ribbing and 3.25 mm for the body) Then I started casting on. Long tail which I have grown to love. BUT - not three times. TWICE I ran out of tail. The third time I only had 12 more stitches when I ran out.. and I was so glad I had seen Lily Chin 2 weeks ago - give a tip to cast on purlwise if you run out of tail - since I had no intention of redoing another 200+ stitches. But I've started and this IS going to be one pretty sweater! Here is the start. I added 7 steek stitches. Doing corrugated ribbing right now - not my fav - but it is short so I can handle anything for 1 3/8 inches.. right?