Attended a knitting retreat today. Spirituality of Knitting - at the McCabe Renewal Center in Duluth. Very nice overall. Marred at the beginning by the need to be a mom ("Hi, are you at your thing....", followed by two more phone calls for help in dealing with a flat tire). Why does chaos break out on the only afternoon I have set aside for myself??

But, like a said a nice retreat once I could settle into the space. The McCabe is a wonderful place. Calming atmosphere. Beautiful building, lovely grounds, etc, etc. Nice group of women there - only one who I knew! Surprising in a town of this size.

One quote from the day:

"Knitting is very conducive to thought.
It is nice to knit awhile, put down the needles, write awhile, then take up the sock again."
- Dorothy Day

I got much work done on my Bobble-Cable Hat. Have I mentioned this before? I am working in Jitterbug - Blue Parrot colorway. Everytime I knit this pattern I have to rework the numbers - last time it was decreasing after picking up the stitches on the brim, this time it was increasing. The jitterbug is a lovely, soft yarn. I am currently getting something like 8 sts to the inch on size one (2.5) needles. The yarn label claims a tension of about 7 sts to the inch with size 3 (3.25) needles!

Pictures of hat in progress to follow. I shot a pic of the brim shortly after I picked up stitches. I am now starting decreases for the crown, so may wait to post until the hat is finished.

The question in my house: "How many hats do you need?!"

My question to you all (okay, I guess to Chris - my only reader (that I know about) is:

How many hats is enough?

And does this mean I should do a hat inventory? Whose hats do I count? Mine alone? The ones I share with Jon? Those I have made for the kids? Only hats that are still worn regularly?

Another question: How do I get blogger to post my pictures where I tried to place them - in the middle of text?!?!

Another try to upload the other photos of the socks. Blogger seems to not be cooperating with me right now (or for the past day and a half).

Close-ups of the heel gusset and heel shaping for you sock geeks.

Long time no post. The weather is quite the opposite of this summer - though the ground looks about the same as it did during the heat wave - brown. Temperatures have been mostly below zero - for highs- the last 10 days or so. Schools even shut down one day as the air temp was -22 F and the wind was blowing, leading to wind chills int he -40 to -50 range. Funny, once it warmed up to newar 0 F it felt like a heat wave :->

The bonus to all of this cold weather - SUN. Lots of it. Every day. A rare thing up north in the middle of the winter. Too bad I work indoors all day 9though good for staying warm).

So, the reason i am posting is to upload some photos of one of my latest projects. My eldest asked me to knit her some socks before Christmas. She even took me to the store and chose the colors. Florescent lime green and blue - stripes please, and oh, yeah, heels and toes different colors from each other.

So here they are in all their glory. I named them the "Fishing Lure socks". Teased her about needing sunglasses to work on them. Pattern inspiration came from Nancy Bushs' Folk Socks - St. Peter Port Stripes. Modifications include: stripe pattern based on a 3, 5, 7 sequence. Only one row of braid at the top. Heel is the same - Balbriggan. Toes are the same - Wide Toe version #1. Enjoy!