Mending and doodling

This has been a week of small things. And some not so small. For one, I no longer have a digital camera. Filia has been afflicted with Shutterbugitis, and I have bequeathed the camera to her. Most of the photo credits must now go her direction.

One thing a fledgling photographer has to deal with is cantankerous wildlife. Our dog has a homing beacon for anything laid on the floor. So, after the cardigan above was mended (I think a small child with scissors may have experimented a bit. Small child is now wielding the camera. The cardi has been in the mending pile for quite a while), we plopped it down for a good photo. Voila ... dog! If anyone recognizes this pattern, do let me know. It's from 1994 or so (at least, the knitting was) and I have no idea where the pattern came from.

I needed some basic knitting for the ride to church on Sunday. Voila, mittens. Stashbusting mittens, nonetheless! I still have two more balls of this, which will probably become a hat, or perhaps another two pairs of mittens.

The Shetland Shopper bag. Market bags have intrigued me for a while, so I put one on my list of things to knit. It stashbusted 74g of Cotlin.
And here is the fingering weight stash that needs busting. Actually, the non-sock, non-coned, wool yarn that needs stashbusting. This is what I studied and contemplated, along with Latvian Dreams, before diving into the Southwestern Latvians

The Bug Mittens. The Bugged Bug Mittens. Bleagh.

Fair time is rolling around, and today was preregistration day. I am definitely holding up my end of knitting in the county, and the display case will not be scantily populated. Some years, especially when the children were little, my entries were the only ones in the knitting category. The State Fair is another matter entirely, and I learned that they will only accept ONE PAIR of stranded mittens. Or any mittens with a color pattern. That will be a serious thing to consider between now and entry time.

I am delighted so many of my four readers are thinking about joining mom and myself for the Knit from Your Shelf 2009. (Perhaps followed by Knit from Someone Else's Shelf 2010, but that's planning TOO far ahead.) The rules are entirely flexible, but must consist of knitting things you haven't knit before, from bound printed matter in your house you haven't worked from before. For myself, I am excluding magazines. You can include them if you like. You do not need to set a goal of knitting something from EVERY book in your bookstash. The goal can be anywhere from one book to all of them. I think I have 7 or so books that need attention on my shelves. Off the top of my head, they are:

• Knitter's Stash
• Armenian Knitting
• Meg Swansen Knits (or something like that)
• Ann Feitelson's Fair Isle book
• Fair Isle Sweaters Simplified

That brings me to an abrupt halt. The technique taught in the last book is a pet peeve of mine. Thus, let me footnote right here that, although one is to knit from the book, one must not knit ACCORDING to the book. I will use my own Fair Isle technique which I much prefer.

And you know, I think that's it for books I haven't used. Nope ...

• Sally Melville's Color book

Now, THAT's it (after a cursory inspection of the shelf.) It looks like three sweaters, a vest, a hat, and I'm-not-sure-what will be coming off my needles next year.

Reference books need not be used, except as a reference. If you've got a stitch dictionary you've never used before, do something (a washcloth?) with a stitch from it. If you've got Knitter's Handbook and have never used some of the information in it, do so. Expand your horizons!!!

But not for another 5+ months.

Long before then, the fairs will be over. Time to go finish off a pair of mittens that will be getting entered in 7 days or so.