Now I'm cooking with gas

Hooray! I can finally put pix up. DH (Mike) took some photos of me with my 'personal assistant' today so I could put them up on the blog. Miss Alvin is my personal assistant, as evidenced by the picture at left. She has input on everything I do; in fact, parts of her are included in all my knitting as well. ;o)

So, here I sit, typing madly, with my faithful personal assistant lying on my left arm. I have a laptop, which I use mostly in the living room. When I'm knitting, Alvin sits on my lap to keep me warm and the laptop is on a tv tray so I can refresh it once in a while and check on my lists. When I'm typing, the laptop is on my lap and Alvin sits on the arm of the couch with some part of her usually on my left arm, making sure I don't go anywhere. If I knit, she occasionally puts a paw up to touch the yarn, effectively letting me know that it's really hers; she's just letting me use it for now. If you look at the picture below left titled 'Alvin & Cherry Bomb(ed)' you'll see her guarding "her" yarn.

That sweater will be the one thing that makes me nuts. It's the first sweater I ever did and so far, the only one. The pattern is from "Big Girl Knits" and it's called 'Cherry Bomb', hence the name 'Cherry Bomb(ed)'. It is supposed to be a sleeveless tank - not likely with my arms. Anyway, I checked out a list I belong to where the posters work exclusively with the patterns from that book; they informed me that the designer of the sweater had included sleeves that could be knit up to fit on her website (http://www.whiteliesdesigns.com/patterns/lpullovers/fbd.html) so I decided to try it and add sleeves. You'll notice that the sleeves in the pattern are short. I wanted it to have at least 3/4-length sleeves but ended up with full length sleeves. Once I got them started, I found out that in order to fit my arms I had to CO 90+ sts, so to make it all work out, I ended up doing the whole sleeve. Once I got it all fit together and sewn up, I decided to try it on. Let's just say I should have done that a long time ago. I discovered that the amount of cleavage on display was not something I was comfortable with. Turns out the neckline ended up being below my boobs. Now they are ok to look at, but I didn't plan on showing everyone....I'm glad I didn't weave in the ends yet.

So, it's now classified as a "needy" project and I'll be trying to figure out what to do to fix it because I don't want to frog the whole thing. The body came out well and the sleeves fit perfectly. That said, if I can't fix it, I'll felt it and make mittens or something. It's made from nice wool so it will felt if I want it to. I suppose that's a plus in the long run.

Tonight I'm working on the second of a pair of wristwarmers using a super soft merino wool from Italy that shows the cables beautifully. I had planned to make something else with the wool, but when I saw the stitch definition, I had to do these. I've put up a picture of the completed wristwarmer. I think I can finish the second one tonight; there are two hockey games on, so I'll be parked on the couch for the rest of the night.

"Wear natural fibers; hug your cat."