Three Excuses . . .

. . . for not having Autumn Song sewn together yet.

It's Thanksgiving.

I needed something simple to knit so I can jump up to prepare food and/or eat more food.

I took advantage of the season to get a good start on dog trainer Gail's Christmas socks.


Pattern: Basic socks on 64 stitches with k1p1 cuff and k7p1 leg.

Yarn: ON-line Supersocke, 75% wool 25% polyamide, fingering weight.

Color: Afrika, 992

Needles: 2.50mm circulars

Gauge: 8 stitches/10 rows per inch

It's Sale Time.

Amoung the many emails I've received from companies wanting my holiday dollars was an offer of "$0.00 Standard Shipping On $55 Orders - 4 Days Only" from Patternworks.

I am was considering Bretton, one of their house yarns, for the Set-in Sleeve Aran. In order to make the Sunday night deadline on the shipping offer, I had to stop all other knitting to quickly knit a gauge swatch to see if Bretton would work.

The required gauge for the sweater is 5 stitches/7.5 rows over sand stitch filler. My preliminary swatch, filler stitch only, was perfect gauge on #5 needles after being washed. I got very excited and knit the second, larger swatch over half the front pattern. It was an inch and a half too big.

Just goes to prove that gauge swatches only done on the filler stitch aren't worth a hill of beans. 1.5 inches on 1/4th of the sweater is 6 inches on the whole sweater.

I'm thankful I swatched this before ordering the yarn, but not happy I have one more swatch for this sweater that isn't close to the right size. Maybe I should think about knitting something else?

There will be no Patternworks order from me this weekend.


The birds must be fed.

It took me a while to identiy this unfamiliar visitor to the feeder. It's a Vesper Sparrow (Pooecetes gramineus).

They migrate late in the season. This one was probably just passing through.

The camera makes bird watching so much more fun. I can shoot pictures of the unidentified and compare them to the bird books until I'm sure of the name.