Labor Day

I spent my Labor Day the way I've spent much of the past few days -- asleep or knitting. I came down with a summer cold last week and have been unsucessfully fighting it off ever since. I had to miss a cookout because of this darn cold, and I hate missing the opportunity to eat a charred meat product.

But at least there was knitting! Since the Summer of Socks knitalong ended today, I rushed along and finished my Oriel Lace socks.



They're from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks, and I made them in Dream in Color Smooshy (color: Lunar Zazzle), which is my new yarn crush.

And there's been baby knitting, too! Inspired by Wife, Mom, Knitter, I am working on Wendy Bernard's Tender Blankie for a friend who is expecting. I'm using up various colors of Caron Simply Soft in an attempt to knit from the stash. I didn't have enough yarn to do the blanket in one color -- so voila! Stripes!



I'm part way into square 3 right now. This is a really easy and fun knit and I will definitely keep it in mind for future baby knitting needs.

Also, like every other knitter on the planet, I am making a baby surprise jacket from the pattern (well, it's really more of a guideline) by Elizabeth Zimmermann. I've been wanting to make one for a while, and the recent spate of babies has provided me with a good excuse. Thursday I went to my LYS after work to buy the pattern and look at yarn. In what I can only assume was some karmically earned serendipity, they were having a BSJ knitalong that very night. So I also bought some needles and sat down and got started. I'm glad I did, because while the knitting isn't hard, the pattern is very brief, and assumes that you know to do certain things that other patterns would normally spell out for you. I'm glad I had someone to walk me through the beginning and to point out a few quirks in the pattern language. I don't have a picture yet, mainly because it doesn't look like much right now, but I promise to show you it soon. I am using a worsted weight yarn, and I'm afraid the jacket is going to be pretty big, but the nice thing about babies is that they grow, so it will fit eventually I guess.

In other news, school starts tomorrow. I don't have any classes to take this semester and will be mainly working on my exams this year. I am a little nervous about how this will work, since I don't do well without deadlines. Even though there's no class for me tomorrow, I still will be showing up bright and early since I'm going to be working in the library. I even get to man the reference desk for a while. Exciting!

And finally, before I sign off to go get my stuff together for the morning, here's a cat photo.



Minnie says, "I have a Ph.D. in napping."