First of all, thank you for all your nice comments on Rogue! I am very happy with it myself.

You'd think that after finishing Rogue, my very first sweater for myself, a beautiful and flattering sweater that I love so much, I might be at loose ends for what to knit. Now, I do, of course, have about fifteen other things on the needles. Since it's been a while since I posted about anything other than Rogue, a baby sweater, and sock pal socks, let's have a bit of a refresher, shall we?

In the "slow but steady" category, there is the Mountain Peaks shawl, which I am knitting with the gorgeous hand dyed silk my sister bought me for Christmas. (Beth, you should know that any time I've mentioned that my non-knitting sister bought me hand dyed silk for Christmas to another knitter, they have been VERY impressed. And that's before I mention all the other yarn! Even my stitch and bitch friends, who think it's weird that I knit for you so much, agree that it's a good deal when I get such things in return.)

Uh, anyway. Shawl. Last time we saw Mountain Peaks, there wasn't much of it, but it was going well. It looks approximately the same these days, but with another repeat of the same chart. So bigger, but with nothing new yet. I'll take a photo when something new is happening, because let's face it - in progress lace photos are basically a case of "and here is a slightly larger blob." The knitting of this shawl has been greatly improved by the arrival of my Magnetic Chart Keeper from KnitPicks the other day. I would like it a little bigger, but it's still extremely convenient. I actually forced myself to stop working on this the other day because I want to have plenty of it to knit while I'm on the plane. Since I'm flying by myself, I think lace will be perfect. Not too heavy, but interesting. (Not that flying with Jamie would really interfere with that. He has this weird capacity for doing nothing and will sit on a plane for three hours and do nothing except look out the window and maybe look through the in flight magazine. Weirdo. Flying with Jana involves much more giggling, but we're all on different flights for this trip.)

In the traveling sock category is poor Rachel's Christmas socks. The first sock is actually pretty much finished (I should finish it and cast on the second one, because I keep not working on it so I don't run out of sock in an inconvenient place.), and yet I still haven't posted a photo. That's because they're always in my purse. Sorry, Rachel! They will be done eventually.

In the pretending May is still REALLY far away category is one of the ongoing baby projects. It is making good progress. Given that I just heard about ANOTHER baby yesterday (one of Jamie's relatives), I should really get on this. Photos on this one will not be around until post-gifting, as giftees are reading.

Now, you'd think that would be plenty to keep me busy. Knit on the sock when I'm out, work on the baby project when I'm home, knit an occasional row on the shawl but mostly save it for the plane. No problem!

But there's that pesky knitalong nagging at the back of my mind. I have a lead! It's not the end of March yet and I'm already done three sweaters! There's still hope!

So I had no choice. I had to cast on for another sweater.



This is the Central Park Hoodie. I cast it on Friday night while I was (impatiently) waiting for Rogue to dry, which took FOREVER. If the outside was dry, the inside was damp. If I turned it inside out, the outside got damp again. Argh.



(I'm just about to do the second cable.)

Central Park is from the fall 2006 issue of knitscene, making this the first project I have knit from a print knitting magazine. Previous to this it's been online patterns or books. I'm knitting it in a very bright shade of Cascade 220. (I actually forget the colour, and it doesn't have a label because it's a cone. Ack!) It is a very bright and cheery green - I'd probably call it a Kelly Green. It's knitting up very quickly - the advantages of size 8s after a sweater knit on 5s! I'm hoping to finish up the back pretty quickly and then tackle the front sections before I leave, but we'll see how the week shapes up. I am pretty busy this week, so that may be a pipe dream.

Of course, the real question is...how much knitting do I bring to California? The shawl for the plane, and some socks for lines. But do I bring the sweater for back up mindless knitting?

Oh, the dilemmas.

*The title of this post comes from one of my favourite books of all time, The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, by Jill Tomlinson. It's about a baby barn owl named Plop who is afraid of the dark. My entire family can probably recite a good 60% of it, and it's a family classic. I highly recommend the audio book. (There's also a decent but not quite as excellent picture book version, but the chapter book is better.) Plop is always hungry, and eats everything his parents bring him and follows it up with "That was nice. What's next?"

Labels: Central Park Hoodie, Mountain Peaks