Jiggety Jig

Skip and I drove back from Texas this week by way of our customary route. We had great weather and were able to drive 750km - 850km per day. We stopped in at my sister's on Wednesday night for a quick visit. This only left 4 more hours of driving to get home on Thursday - after stopping in at our favourite 'dim sum' place in Markham. Before crossing back into Canada, we stopped at the Barnes and Noble in Port Huron, MI so I could pick up a copy of Rachael Herron's first romance novel, "How to Knit a Love Song",  which had been released this week.

It took a while to find it but with help it was relocated from the 'Fiction' section to the 'Romance' section. 

I've been reading Rachael's blog, "Yarn-a-go-go", for a couple of years and have been following her writing and editing of the book and what process she has undertaken to get it published. She recently learned that it will be sold at Target starting in April. It's pretty exciting.

I hope I get to meet Rachael sometime so she can autograph my copy.

I since learned that my niece's book store in Sarnia, "The Book Keeper" had it in stock so I could have certainly purchased it there. Bad aunt. She'd love it if you would order it from her.
 
I've been pretty pooped since getting home so haven't done too much except some knitting. For the drive home, I cast on Annemor #17 and decided to make gloves that the pattern called for rather than doubling the pattern and making mittens.

I didn't like the chevron pattern on the fingers so I did diamonds instead. I don't really like having to do all the fingers but I do like how the gloves are looking. I have the first one done and am on the last 3 fingers of the 2nd one.

 

I've also started working on a completely new style of mitten knitting (say that 5 times fast) from Nancy Bush's "Folk Knitting in Estonia" that my niece gave me for Christmas.

The pattern is called "Maimu's Mittens" named after the author of the first Estonian knitting book Nancy Bush studied.

I'm making them for a very dear friend who just recently found out she is of Estonian extraction. The dark brown and pink will match her winter coat.

I have learned three different knitting techniques already. The first one is the double-start cast-on which is similar to a long-tail cast-on but more decorative. The second technique I learned was the yarnover braid. It is less bulky than the Latvian braid I've been using and often in pairs one atop the other. The third technique was the 'nupp' on the white part of the cuff. This nupp (rhymes with 'hoop') is different than the one I've been using on the Estonian scarves and shawls that I've knit. On that one, the nupp is created by knitting several stitches into one stitch and purling them all together in the next row. However, when knitting in the round, there is no purl row so it is done by a wrapping technique. I'm a visual learner and get easily frustrated following intricate step-by-step instructions but I was determined to learn these techniques and thus persevered. I only have one more new technique to master and that is the half-wick method of decreasing which I will use to form the top of the mitten.

I am interested in knitting the Dale of Norway Whistler pattern which the Yarn Harlot did for her 2010 Knitting Olympics project. Unfortunately the pattern is out of print and no longer available by regular means. I did see it for sale on eBay for $70 and have now decided to pick a different pattern. Skip has been asking for a Dale of Norway sweater for quite some time so I'd like to grant his wish.

I have several other projects on the go or waiting to get started - a couple of shawls and some sample knitting. Bit by bit they'll all get done.