Blue knitting needles.

See what my sister emailed me? She drew it herself. One of her hobbies is colored pencil illustration, and she is clearly fantastic at it (mad skillz!)!!! I told her that maybe she might wanna consider, you know, getting paid to do it? Because obviously, she could.







So, about my black sweater... assembling it went fine and all, but now that I am down to the finer aspects of finishing it, it is from hell. I have had to knit the neckband twice, sew the neckband on twice, and now that I have basted on the trim it is funky so I am going to have to do that twice too. Maybe my sweater will be twice as good in the end? Either that or it will just have been twice as big of a pain in my butt.

I did knit something nice, though- a lovely, albeit slightly felted (in a good way, though!) hat that is a gift for my mother in law. It did not start out felted (I know, you are thinking that nothing does, right?)- it is just that the yarn, which was looooooovely (Artfibers "Sherlock") turned everything within 100 paces of it blue. My hands, my knitting needles, and, I was afraid, my mother in law's head. Which would be bad. So I had to wash (and wash and wash) it to get the extra blue out, and yes- it felted a little. The excellent thing about "Sherlock," though, is that it is mostly wonderfully soft merino- but, it has a little bit of silk in it. So when (and if) you felt it, the silk pops out just a little bit causing a shiny silky sheen that makes your husband (or mine, at least) say "wow, that is a really nice hat!" Which was rapidly followed by "can you take that knot thingy off the top?" Whatever.
He is probably just jealous because I have stylish dyed blue knitting needles now.








And just so ya know, kitty approved of the "knot thingy" on the top of the hat. Kitty rocks.