Front Row, Perfect Weather, and Baby Yarn

A girl I used to work with has the question “Why do two weekend days go by quicker than one Monday?” as her Facebook status this morning. I can’t help but wonder that, too, as I honestly have no idea how it got to be Monday again so soon. But it is, so here are three beautiful things from the past week:

1. It almost goes without saying that my front-row vantage point for last Tuesday’s Springsteen concert was a beautiful thing. I’m still smiling over it.

2. After a week that was rainy, rainy, rainy, the weather for the weekend could not have been nicer. Sunday, in particular, was springtime perfection — warm and sunny, with low humidity and a nice breeze.

3. I had chance to head to the ‘burbs with sprite yesterday afternoon to visit A Tangeled Skein, a lovely yarn shop (with a huge selection) out in Hyattsville. I picked up some nice, soft yarn so I can finally start in on welcome presents for friends’ twins, who are due later in the month.

Watching, Progressing, and Relaxing

Ah, it’s Monday again, and a rainy, chilly one at that. It’s almost enough have kept me under the covers, but I decided to be a big girl and get up and start the week. I may, however, need a pair of cheerful wellies in order to keep facing these sorts of mornings, though.

But, enough about my gray morning (and rainboot fixation)… here are three beautiful things from the past week.

1. On Monday, I took a half-day off and went to the Nationals home opener. Though we didn’t win, I did have a great time playing hooky from work and having a beer and hotdog while watching the game on a lovely afternoon.

2. I made a lot of progress on my long-dormant skirt project this week — it’s about a foot long now.

3. I spent most of Saturday sitting on Bethany Beach, watching the waves, knitting, and chatting. There are few better ways to spend a day.

Still Knitting, Just not Second Socks

It’s been a long time since I’ve written much about what I’ve been knitting — more than three months, if the category list is correct. I’ve been stalling for a couple of reasons — partly because it’s no good to write about knitting without including pictures, but it’s taken me forever to get mine off the camera and cleaned up for posting, and partly because a couple of projects I wrote about fairly extensively over the summer haven’t gone exactly (or even slightly) as planned.

Before I get to the lovely, fun stuff that I’ve finished over the past couple of months, I’ll confess to the borderline failures. First is my “single sock spring/summer” plan. As the photo above shows, this has netted me a large bowl of mate-less footwear. It’s pretty to look at, but is lacking a little in the practicality area. I do intend to knit all the second socks — in fact, I have one on the needles now — but as far as my goal to have a drawerful of beautiful handknit socks by the time it got cold is concerned — total failure.

The other project that’s gone off the rails is the skirt I was making as my summer Olympics knit-a-long project. It is, essentially, on a time out, as I need to rip it back to the first row of increases. I noticed fairly early on that I didn’t like the way they looked (big and holey) but I spent a lot of time rationalizing that they weren’t all that bad. What I should have done immediately — and did, eventually do — was stop knitting and ask sprite what I was doing wrong and how to make it better. Once I did this, and saw how easy it was, I knew what had to happen. My perfectionist streak was not going to allow the inferior increases to remain. This doesn’t sound too bad until I say that fixing this problem will require ripping out about 10 inches — taking the skirt back nearly to the waistband. Not surprisingly, I’m still working up the strength to undo all that work. It might make me cry.

Happily, my entire fall’s knitting was not marred by laziness and disaster. I made my first set of baby socks for Joanne’s son in September, and have to say that, in doing so, I stumbled upon the best way ever to bond with flight attendants. I worked on the socks on the plane to Colorado, and every flight attendant was fascinated — I probably could have gotten a bunch of free drinks or something, had I been thinking. They were absolutely entranced. It really was the tiny socks that did it though — once I moved on to the hat, the magic was gone. It came out a bit too big for his newborn head, but he’s growing into it nicely, whereas the socks no longer fit him at all.