Busy week

I've been busy but not busy at the sewing machine, I'm afraid. My birthday was last week and so was our anniversary but they were sort of overshadowed by a big meeting at work. This meeting caused me to stay late on Monday, bring work home on Tuesday (my birthday!), spend Wednesday evening at dinner with the out of town work visitors (at least I got to drink wine), and by Thursday evening (our anniversary) I was completely spent.

I had intentions of getting lots of things done over the weekend but also high on my list was just relaxing. I did manage to do a bit of that. I spent some time just sitting and working on this:



I bought the yarn (Rowan Cashcotton in Apple):



and the book:



in Mendocino. Actually, my husband found the book, liked the sweaters and thought I might too so he encouraged me to buy both the book and the yarn for this project. He's sweet. And apparently not (too) annoyed by the yarn and pattern books I already own and have not used.

I thought the name of the designer and the "viking knits" theme was familiar and when I checked my bookshelf I found Viking Patterns for Knitting, by Elsebeth Lavold. How about that?
The sweater is coming along slowly, despite the fact that I pick it up every time I sit down to watch TV. I watch a lot of TV but still haven't gotten very far on the back. This is perhaps why I have not knit many sweaters. Maybe I will post of photo of my progress, but maybe I will wait until I get to the more interesting cables in the design motif on the front. How exactly I'm going to do those cables, having never knitted cables before and being lefthanded, I don't know. There is a chart and I can follow charts and supposedly if you're a lefthanded knitter you don't run into left vs. right problems, but we'll see. However, I will definitely be sure to make a sample of the charted motif.

I'm still intending to get pictures of our Mendocino trip up on flickr.com. I have them posted on Kodakgallery.com. I don't know if this link will work for anyone to view them on that site but it's worth a try.

Jalie polo shirt #2 is in pieces on my dress form. I finished the front placket and sewed up the collar pieces. Although I love this fabric - a rayon knit - I am not happy that I chose this particular fabric for this pattern. The fabric is quite thin and can't really support the lump created in the front of the shirt where the two placket sides are sewn together. I had no idea this would happen and will have to consider it a learning experience because there's nothing that can be done about it now. But I will not let this shirt become a wadder so I'll continue to work on it. I adjusted the shoulder seam to try to eliminate some of the excess fabric under my arm. I think that will do the trick. Now I just need to adjust the sleeves to compensate for the smaller opening.