Weekend of knitting

Other than a grocery store run, and a trip out to the quilt shop (I needed a backing and I had one of their loyalty cards filled), I stayed home Saturday and knitted.

(And my blood pressure, when I took it at around 8 pm, was 124/86, lower than it's been since I started this whole mess. I do not think that is coincidental but I hope it continues to stay at least lower-ish.)

I mostly knitted on the Everdeen Beanie (which is to be my gift-exchange gift) but didn't quite finish it:



I'm close, though. I think I'm within a half inch of doing the top decreases. This was a fast pattern and once I got the hang of it, it made sense to me.

I'm going to make myself one, too. While digging around in my yarn and fabric closet, I turned up a leftover skein of "Mexican Wave" (do they even still MAKE Mexican Wave?). This was a soft 100% acrylic, made, despite the name, in South Africa. It does an interesting variegated/striping thing, kind of like the Noro yarns but kind of not. Anyway, I have a ball of it (170 yards) and it's dk weight and that's enough for one of these hats. And I think the colorshifting would look cool in this stitch pattern.

And I love being able to dig out something that was languishing in my stash (this was an extra ball purchased for a shawl - a shawl I made years ago from a pattern in the old KnitNet online magazine) and turn it into something useful.

And I finished the slippers.



This is a version of that famous garter-stitch pattern that was around in the 1960s and 70s. I got this one out of "My Grandmother's Knitting," which is a really nice little book - it features stories from each designer about his or her grandmother (or other relative who taught them to knit; there is at least one knitting grandfather in there) and then a pattern from each designer. There are actually two versions of these  - the classic version I did, and a fancier version using bamboo stitch and a mini cable rib. (The pattern is contributed by Wendy Bernard).

I used Berroco Vintage which is another one of those nice "workhorse" yarns - it's soft , it has some acrylic, it's washable, it knits up well. It's what I call a "well behaved yarn" (like Cascade 220 is) - knits up smoothly, no thick and thin places, no knots in the skein I had.

It took less than a skein for these, including the pompoms (I made the Women's Medium size, which was just about right for me - it's better to make these a wee bit small as they stretch). I even have a little left over, and the entire second skein that I bought for "insurance."  But that's okay; I plan on using the leftovers to knit myself up a cuddly Scootaloo (despite the picture, the yarn is close to Scootaloo color) with it sometime soon.

These do make better "sitting with your feet up and reading" slippers than "actively walking about the house" slippers because I see that they could be slidy, especially on hard surface floors (which are what I have in my house). You could sew nonskid bottoms on if that was an issue, or use that puffy paint stuff to paint treads on them. But I plan to use them as "put my feet up and read" slippers as I have a pair of hardsoled slippers for other purposes.