Little Wooly Gnome

Today is all about the floors. And the laundry. And the utility room. On the bright side, that means no housework tomorrow. On the downside, I'm still doing the annual books (it would help if I did them more than once a year, as I do for the studio, and once every five years as I'm now doing for the house), and the website still isn't done--much less the winter marketing and the contacting of all the galleries that have carried my work. But I bet if I'm diligent in the task part of what I have to do, I can allocate two hours a day _during the day_ to artistic endeavors of some kind. I had to put the caveat of 'during the day' in there as everyone should have their evenings to do family things, which for me includes spinning and knitting as I do those while watching a movie or just hanging out with my peeps.

To help ensure two hours a day I have the drawing class starting Tuesday morning, and I have joined a knitter's project group on Thursday afternoon at Happy Ewe. The knitter's group is so I can learn to modify patterns and size my knitting appropriately. Dave loves his sweater, but I can't get past feeling that it's a mite too large, and both the baby sweaters and the cardigan (the almost-finished cardigan) I knitted this fall are bigger than I planned. I only joined the group yesterday--I missed the first session so I went in, met the teacher, got the pattern, and picked my yarn yesterday--and already I want to modify the pattern. It's a fine sweater, but it's not a gorgeous sweater, and if I put all the effort into it of knitting it, then I'd like to come out of it with a gorgeous sweater. The pattern is a long cardigan, which is great, but I would also like to have the long drapey points in the front like there are on my current favorite cardigan which is industrially made and from a store instead of handknit. My cardie is getting very old (I wore it to BeCon at Bullseye in 2011) and worn out as I wear it almost everyday.

The group, it's a KAL really (knit-along), is free to join and do the project with the guidance of an instructor, but they ask that you buy the yarn for it at the sponsoring shop, Happy Ewe. Very reasonable, but it is moving me outside of my comfort zone as the yarn that works best for the project is a cotton blend DK weight (on the finer side for yarn--smaller diameter than the standard worsted weight everyone's familiar with from growing up with Red Heart yarn). I've never knitted with cotton and wasn't sure I wanted to now, but it does make sense since we'll be finishing the cardies in the spring and it will be too hot here for wool or alpaca.

I got two different yarns to try out, one is a soft heathery purple, and the other is a dark grey. The Purple is cotton and rayon, the grey is cotton, viscose, alpaca, wool and nylon. By my swatches, I am already over on the gauge--I'm supposed to get 10 stitches and 13 rows in a 2X2 inch swatch and I got 8 and 12 for the purple, and 8 and 11 for the grey. This is where the guidance with fitting from the instructor comes in, and I think it's going to mean MATH. That's okay, math doesn't scare me. You think I'm afraid of a little math? Hah, I eat math for breakfast... Okay, I married a mathematician and I solve most of my math by asking, "Honey, how do I get from x to y?"

Enough of a break. Back to work. If I get everything done, I'll call this a really good day.