Two weeks on leave and what do I have to show

Not much, we upgraded the computer through several operating systems, and got a new mouse - equivilent (Magic Trackpad) which I am still coming to terms with. Bear is an amateur historian in his non-working life, and like everything Bear does ... his research is at a level that I would consider appropriate for some one who is an academic. He has taken to using Google Maps to track confirm or eliminate the existance of early 20th Century Basil Hooper Houses in Auckland. Quite handy really as we live about 1400km from Auckland, but apparently an upgrade was needed to let him take advantage of the new-ist and best-ist features. So what you say, well this week seemed to disappear in cyclic sessions of installing new system software, waiting for the TimeCapsule back up to complete, then for the newest updates to load, then back up, before moving up to the next version. All in all a lot of time spent wandering into the room with the computer and seeing it still had to restart, or that it estimated that the next step would take 2 hours and 14 minutes, knowing all the time it was just one stage of many that needed to be done. All in all I'm pleased but a little nervous, usually software and system upgrades cause some sort of dilema or difficulty so I am still kind of waiting for the fall out on this one. the complete irony of this is that we upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard, then to Lion, just in time for Mountain Lion to be released this month so its not over yet. (Small note - just hit my first snag - the flickr uploader I use needs to be upgraded to work with the new OS .... please excuse me whilst I do that now, it shouldn't be long). 

Second Sanquhar mitt starts

I have been knitting, and frogging, and despite the frogging things are growing. I've cast on for the second of the Sanquhar mitts, and managed a few rounds. Luckily I keep rather good scribbled records so I knew what yarn I had used for the cast on and what cast on I had used. Given that I started mitt one way back on the 25th of February, I'm rather glad I keep a workbook of my knitting.

Knit One Below hat, squared decreases

I've also made good progress on the Knit-One-Below-Hat, and happily report to being half way through the crown decreases. I'm not really following a pattern, so the decreases were a little bit unplanned. I determined my stitch count was easily dividable by four, so decided to decrease at four points. The first trial was decreasing three stitches into one, at each of four points. If you have ever worked knit-one-below, the flaw in that plan may be obvious, but it wasn't to me. I just couldn't work out a neat method of maintaining the appearance of the knit-one-below fabric where the decreases were. So after a good 12 rounds, I'm not always quick at noticing when things are not going well, I frogged and started again with a new plan. The new plan seems to be working, based loosely on Jarad Floods Turn a Square Hat, I'm working eight decreases, two paired around four points.  So far so good, I'm keeping the knit-one-below pattern intact as far as I can by working the knit-one-below as part of the decrease when needed.

Matched Pairs of decreases in Knit-one-below fabric, 

Side body of my great grey cardigan

My plain grey cardigan seems nearly ready to do something else, I've worked over 6 inches of the body and am thinking that any row now I should switch to ribbing. I'm thinking 1x1 twisted ribbing, because I like the look of that and the drape, I'm not sure if I will go down a needle size or not. Probably not as I don't like cardigans and jerseys that pull in at the hem, much preferring  a nice swing to the hem.

Decisions, decisions, I do understand why most knitters follow patterns, they can select what something will look like, and then select similar yarn, follow instructions. I sometimes think that hand knitting is one of the slow-food styles of designing, in that the process is slow compared to may other crafts, and so decisions can have repercussions that involve more work, and more risk of frogging. Its easy to take a risk with a technique that might result in a frog 12 rounds of a smallish hat, not so easy to plunge into the same risk for a much larger body of knitting like a cardigan knit in sock yarn.

Feel free to leave advice on what I should do with the Grey cardigan hem, remembering I will be adding the crotchet lace from the Clair Cardigan to the neck, and there will be sleeve cuffs to match the body hem eventually.

na Stella