Starting Over

The Cable Down sweater is no more. I only had about 10 rounds done, and I couldn't resist the lure of the yoke. So, I frogged and set out looking for a pattern. Basically, a simple yoke sweater with stranded colorwork at the yoke and bottoms of the sleeves with contrasting trim. Simple, right? Well, my search for patterns turned up a couple that are usable. EZ's percentage system is pretty failproof and is a great basic pattern. Also, the yoke sweater from the Handy Book of Sweater Patterns is another nice template to work off of. I'm probably going to combine them for my own little formula.

As far as a colorwork pattern, I don't really need to worry about that until I get to the yoke, and I have a whole body to knit, so I'm still looking. I'm not sure if I want to do something simple with one standout color, a la Adrian, or something with more colors, like many of the ones shown here. I did find a few colors that I liked together. A bit retro maybe, but definitely my "fall color" taste.

The brown is a rich, chocolate brown and the orange is Trekking (I'd use it doubled). Originally I had just thought of using the Trekking by itself as a simple pattern at the yoke. Then, my sister liked the multicolored yokes so much I did some stash diving. I have the most of the brown, so I may do cuffs/trim in that. We'll see what kind of yoke pattern I can come up with. For now, I'm happily knitting away around and around....

This weekend was also my mom's birthday. We had a great time doing our new favorite pastime - Wii bowling!

The whole family played and we had a blast. Bowling is my favorite Wii activity so far - I really stink at Tennis and some of the other games, but hubby is nice enough to play along with me and get plenty of experience points by kicking my butt. Practice will help, I know. After playing a bunch on the Wii, all the boys crashed.

My sister, the cake maker in the family, made my mom a special "top only" cake. She, like me, loves the top part of an unfrosted cake - the part that unfortunately usually sticks to the foil or other covering. At least this time the cake didn't stick.

Just most of the writing! By all accounts it tasted just as good though. Happy Birthday Mom!

Even though it was her birthday, mom brought me a little giftie.

One can never have too many of these box bags, can we? It is a perfect size for socks or a starting sweater. It will be going with me to Boston this weekend for sure!

I did work a bit more on the New England socks - the heel flap is in progress! I can't wait to wear these. Especially now that it is really handknit sock season! We got a few inches of snow last night along with a bunch of freezing rain on top of it. A mess. But, now it's at least pretty out!