cold, cold, please stay!

Wow, it seems like an eternity since I last posted, amazed that October had arrived. Now it's November and I'm sitting here begging the weather gods to let the temps in SoCal stay cool. We've just come off of another freak heatwave--it got up to about 90 yesterday! It's November, for crimoney's sake! And today we're in the mid 70s. I guess the good thing is that our desert designed house retains the cold. At any rate, I'm glad November is here. October proved to be a bear of a month for me. I started sending out job applications and that affected my writing progress AND my knitting progress! Seriously, though I finally finished my mom's Rusted Root (which she's been able to wear thanks to our strange weather),



I've had one sock languishing on my needles. Unreal. By the time I'd be done working, my October days saw me too pooped to even hold up one needle let alone two. Pathetic. Things started improving once I started putting the timer on my job apps. Course, why it took me until the end of the month practically for that light bulb to turn on is mind boggling. I guess my brain was too tired to remember the obvious.

At least I was able to knit up a gauge swatch for the Soap Bubble Wrap I've got planned for my SIL. This was supposed to be her bday present but considering it's the 5th and her birthday is the 22nd, I'm thinking this is going to be her Christmas gift. I'm using Lion Brand's Cotton Bamboo in Chocolate Dahlia:



The knitted swatch reminded me somewhat of nylon stockings which, I suppose, sort of makes sense since they're using rayon from bamboo. But it looked nice and felt soft which satisfies my yarn scrumminess criteria.

So hopefully November will continue to be more settled than last month and I can seriously get back to my writing and my knitting!

Rusted Root

It's done!




Pattern: Rusted Root by Zephyr Style
Yarn: Knit Picks Comfy in Sea Foam
Needles: US7 (4.5mm) and US6 (4.0mm)

I'm pretty pleased with it. When the yarn arrived a few months ago I was annoyed to see that KP had sent me yarn from two different dye lots, but when I inspected them in good light, they looked identical so I thought all would be well. And from these pics, I don't think you can notice any difference. But when I wet blocked it (couldn't find my spritz bottle) HOLY COW! I had wide horizontal stripes! Now, if I'd meant to do that, it would've been perfect, but as I didn't I was really afraid I'd have to toss the whole thing once dry.



You can kinda see them in this pic, though since it was dry, they'd practically faded. But I was really annoyed with myself for not knitting the same dye lot balls in order. Ah well, knit and learn.

Overall, this is a really cute pattern, and I really liked working with Comfy--it's a much softer cotton/acrylic blend and is pleasant to work with, holding up nicely to ripping out, and isn't splitty at all. I'll definitely be using it again (and making sure I let KP know to PLEASE send me balls from the same lots!)

I'm now working on a baby blanket for another of my friends who's adding to her family (a growing trend among my friends, no pun intended!).