I'm back! Oh, you didn't notice that I was gone? Ah. Well, I was. Just a little bit though. We drove down to Cambridge for a few days for Dan's residency interview there. It all went decently well with the exception of trying to squish too many family members into a suspiciously small "queen" size hotel bed. That, actually, was a mess. When I looked at my clock yesterday morning and saw that it was nearly seven, I sat upright and said outloud "Everyone. It is now seven. Can we get up now so that this night can be over?!?" They unanimously voted "yes."
All this is to say that I finished the mittens that I was knitting for myself, and, finding myself with a bit of extra yarn, decided to cast on a pair for Mariam as well. It would seem that I really like knitting mittens. It is a remarkably satisfying endeavor, even when one discovers that two right mittens have inadvertently been knitted up and there is frogging to be done. In her book, Knitting Without Tears, Elizabeth Zimmermann has this to say about the making of mittens:
Aha! Many people's sole activity in the realm of knitting. To them I say, skip this section. You are making the very best mittens, keep right on.
--- Eliabeth Zimmermann
Something about this makes me laugh a little every time that I see it. But after doing some mitten knitting, I completely understand what EZ means. So much.
But moving on from mittens, I am hatching plans for the next knit, and thought that I might invite you all to knit along. I mentioned on Twitter the other day that I am planning to do a Tea Leaves sweater, and a bunch of folks chimed in to say that they were thinking of doing the same. My friend Sarah and I are going to be knitting it together and both have gotten the pattern and ordered yarn. I ordered mine from WEBS, but it hasn't arrived yet. So, if you think that you might like to knit a Tea Leaves cardi (or a Tiny Tea Leaves) just leave a comment here. I'll set something up for next week where we can all see each other's blog posts about progress (or just chat here in the comments about how it is going). Yes?
Yarning along with Ginny today...
