It's snowing!

Today is going to be a difficult school day. The school table is right in front of a window, and we're having our second snow of the year. And our first snow with big, fluffy flakes. Sticking. At least for a few hours. My son wished he were more like me ... loads of free time to watch the snow. He's missing something ... but that's okay.

This free time of mine ... I do not think the word means what he thinks it means.

Among other things, it means wrestling with a computer that doesn't want to upload pictures, editing files that don't particularly want to be edited, teaching children that would rather be playing in the snow,making meals for people with conflicting dietary requirements and wierd taste buds. Try being gluten free and avoiding rice at the same time ... it can be tricky.

But enough on my free time. After I finished the blue blob (at right) I cast on for another project. It's a SRP (Stash Reduction Project) and was intended for me, but things didn't work out that way.

You'd think, wouldn't you, that if you worked with a certain yarn, in a certain technique, on size 1 needles, and ended up with a guage of 18 stitches (per 2"), that if you wanted a gauge of 20 stitches, you'd use size 0. Right? Of course right. So I merrily cast on - having knitted not a gauge swatch, but an entire Sampler Gauge Project, and worked away. Pretty, ain't it? But the gauge is not 20 stitches. Nor is it 19, or 21, or 22. No, it's pretty indistinguishable from 24 stitches per 2". The 'Medium Women's' item has the appropriate circumference for a Small Child.

But it was so pretty, and so very different from my other knitting, and I didn't want to cast on an extra 27 stitches and rewrite the pattern to have it be the right size ... so I decided to make it be a Sample. It's getting close to being done, and after it is, I will cast on something with bigger yarn and bigger needles.

But I wonder ... how WILL I manage to get the right gauge? Use sport weight yarn instead of fingering? (Hah -- imagine Telemark at 10 stitches per inch?) DK weight? Use something that doesn't come from Knitpicks? (Horrors!!!)

I'm also considering parting with some cones of weaving yarn that I've had forever. I really can't see myself knitting up anything with 2 lbs of 10/2 warp cotton ... can you? Zephyr WoolSilk is so much more delightful to contemplate.

Recess is over ... back to school!