Unravelled Wednesday

First the knitting: If you look closely, you can see that I've begun to knit the right front of the Einstein Coat. I'm enjoying all this garter stitch. VERY relaxing!

BTW, a skein of Cascade Ecological is very large:

I'm finally starting on a pair of mittens for Rachel. It's going to take me all year to knit the beautiful Songbird Mittens. The pattern isn't that difficult, but there are lots of long floats, and I'm very slow at catching those. 

I've been on an English mystery journey for the last four months. I fell in love with the BBC Shetland mystery series Shetland a year ago. The series is based on books by British writer Ann Cleeves. So I read her other series, the Vera Stanhope novels. Then I read all the Shetland books, and I just finished the last one:

So, I can tell you that the books are better than the TV shows. All the books are worth reading, though I am partial to the Shetland series.

 That said, the Shetland series is worth watching. Each book is an entire season, so you get an in-depth story. I personally do not like the Vera TV series. Each book gets 3 episodes, so the stories are stripped down. Also, there are a million seasons and only 6 books, so it's an entirely different animal.

Joining up with Kat for Unravelled Wednesday.

 

There Is Still Knitting

 After all, this is a knitting blog. And I do knit every day.

(BTW, excuse my long absence... the High Holy Days always throw me off.)

I am trying to focus on a few projects instead of being so scattered. I have a friend who is a monogamous knitter and she finishes so many things.  Inspired by her, I've made decent progress on the linen-stitch scarf.

It is very pretty and it will be a cozy scarf. However, I am still quite sure this will be my last linen stitch project.  Too tedious. And it's very easy to make mistakes.

After four unsuccessful attempts, I put the Porto Sweater into time out. Instead I'm working on Design 10. Yes that's it's name. It's an easy cardigan so I should be able to finish this one. Normally I would not make a sweater with only three projects on Ravelry, but I saw a sample at the yarn store in Evanston and fell in love with it.

All the colors are off ... I waited too long in the day to take good photos.

Now for some exciting news: The Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Show actually took place in person.  I went with my friend Suzi, who I haven't seen in a while. She's a retired teacher, too, and it was so much fun to catch up. And, I wasn't too extravagant in my purchases!

A yarn store about 30 minutes from my house is about to start a mitten knit-along, so I purchased two skeins from their booth to make the
Songbird Mittens for Rachel.

I also picked up two luscious indie skeins of DK destined to be fingerless mitts:

And this bag just insisted that I take it home with me:

It was wonderful to attend High Holy Days services in person. Worship really is a community experience. My congregation is a combination of hippie and traditional Judaism that hits the right notes for me. I feel very lucky to have this unusual schul (Yiddish for synagogue) in my life. As always, I was very busy repenting!