Birthday Knitting

Today, right around now, I turn 44. I took a picture of myself to commemorate the occasion.



I'm so grateful for good genes. I still look damn good for 44, don't I?

Actual Knitting
I've made great headway on the Chock-a-Block Cardigan. I finished both front sections and 3-needle bound them to the back section. I even finished the ribbing for the first sleeve. Like my blogpal Wendy, I also HATE ribbing. I'm considering doing a complete sweater in some interesting looking rib, just to test my endurance. But I digress. Here's what it looks like all nicely sewn up, and blocked.



Unfortunately, it wasn't sunny enough to get cross-hatch lighting to show the various textured pattern stitches. But the colors look more realistic than usual...at least on my laptop monitor.

Weird Knitting II
This isn't anywhere near as odd as the Elvis impersonator (I agree with the Knitting Curmudgeon, I consider Elvis impersonators very scary), but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. It comes from the pages of Avital, a knitter in Israel who is well known on a lot of the knitting lists.

Weird Knitting - Enjoy

I can't imagine doing an intarsia sweater with the periodic table as the design...especially in Woolease. But who am I to judge, I did the cover sweater from Jo Sharp's book West Cape Howe Collection. There are some rows in that sweater (called Paradox) that require over 70 different color butterflies hanging at once...ugh!

I met Jo Sharp once at Stitches and I asked her if she was out of her mind. Not only did she do an incredibly complex intarsia band at the bottom of the Paradox sweater, but she knit it again to make a matching hat. Jo gave me the inside scoop. She said that after making the bottom band of the sweater, one of the knitters that knit sweaters for her books, decided she couldn't bring herself to finish the sweater. Jo couldn't imagine wasting all the woman's good efforts, so she turned it into a hat design instead. I no longer think she is out of her mind.