lather, rinse, repeat

I'm so happy with my purple squatty sidekick, I've started a bigger one in a varigated pink Malabrigo. I've finished the base and am working my way up the sides now. I love this yarn. Soft, squishy, just incredible. A blanket in this stuff would be heavenly, but not being able to machine wash it would make it an instant hairball magnet!

Back to the sidekick. Knitting Daily calls this an "Easy" project (two yarn balls!). You have to be able to increase, decrease, pick up stitches on the sides, knit in the round and make an i-cord. The note to slip the first stitch knitwise while making the bottom was a very good recommendation. I constantly lose track of where I am when I am knitting stockinette. All I can figure is I go into a trance and forget to click my row counter when I finish the row. So I am constantly counting rows. For the increase I did a kfb because I like that increase better than just looping the yarn over the needle or picking up the bar between stitches. I also added markers at each corner of the base, with a different color to signify the start of the row. Having the markers at each corner also helped with making sure I put the increases and decreases where they needed to be - otherwise the bag won't be even.

I love the little sidekick, but I tend to carry a fair amount of stuff (see pic from the weekend for the pared down version). We shall see how much this one felts down.

In other news, my training ends tomorrow. I didn't have very high expectations for this training, I needed hours for my recertification and the topics looked fairly basic, so I had hoped it would be a good refresher. Which it has been. Having a great instructor has made this much more interesting. Though I feel like I revert to a toddler when I go to training. I can't sit still to save my life. Having a really uncomfortable chair just about did me in. My back is in very bad shape, not sure how I am going to get through the spinning demo tomorrow night.

But I've been very productive in my attempts to keep busy so I could pay attention. I did doodles. My to-do list grew and I have obsessed more about knitting than I thought possible. I even wrote some of this post during training. I really wish I could have knit during the session, but figured it would be a distraction for everyone else.

And I am happy to report that Mother Nature finally decided to help out my brown grass. It is raining!!!!!



Now I'm off to try and figure out what to get my parents for their anniversary (tomorrow). It will likely be cash towards their dinner tomorrow night. The other candidate is one of those digital photo frame things, so they can show off the pictures from their trips.

That's all for now!