COTTAGE COUNTRY

Skip and I were invited to our friends’ cottage this week. In Ontario, we call it a cottage, just about everywhere else it would be called a ‘camp’. We took tons of food and I took lots of knitting projects.

I spent considerable time sitting out on the deck looking at the spectacular view.
One of the projects I have been puttering away at is my sock yarn blanket.
Each square is about 3" so it is about 18" x 18" so far. A few of my knitting friends want to knit their own sock yarn blankets so I wrote up the pattern for them. Basically it’s a 41 stitch mitered square with a double decrease (slip 2 together knitwise, knit the next st, pass the two slipped stitches over the slipped stitch) on the centre 3 sts. Anyone who has knit socks will have lots of leftover yarn for the project. We may also do some yarn swapping to add more variety.

One very nice thing about doing mitered squares it that you knit the next square onto a previously knitted one so there is no sewing up at the end. And if you weave an end as you pick up the stitches along the edge, you will have fewer ends to weave in when you’re done.

Another project I started on Sunday was the Chrysanthemum mitten. I picked a charcoal MC and a variegated yarn (Sandnes Mini Palett Superwash) for the CC.
I knew the picot edge would flare out a bit but I’ve never done it on a mitten before so I thought (for a change) that I’d strictly adhere to the pattern instructions. I like the way the cuff with the alternating colours hugs the wrist.With blocking, things should even out nicely.

Here's a closeup of the 'chrysanthemum'.
I got tired of the dark purple so I cut the yarn and wound it off until the pink colour was starting. Other than that, I just let the colours unfold as they came off the ball.
I’m getting ready to start packing for my UK knitting tour and am spending considerable time trying to decide what projects to take to amuse myself. I need at least one ‘mindless’ project - perhaps a vanilla sock of some kind - for social knitting. Then there should be at least one that might be a little more detailed to keep me interested.

I also picked up a project I’d abandoned a couple of years ago - Annie Modesitt’s “Backyard Leaves”, found my place on the chart and knit a couple more rows. This Sandnes Alpakka yarn is very soft and squishy which will be nice against the skin on one’s neck. It doesn’t make a very wide scarf with the DK weight yarn so it would be very appropriate to use worsted or even chunky weight yarn for this project. We’ll see if (when I ever finish it) it blocks out to be a decent size.

... a little later...

I used the term 'cottage' in this post. I grew up in southwestern Ontario and now live in central Ontario. North of us is known as 'Cottage Country'. I have always used the term 'cottage' for a place people go for a holiday usually on a lake or river. There is a building. It can be rustic or it can be fancy. The first time I heard the term 'camp' being used for what I call a 'cottage' was while visiting my cousins in New Brunswick. There is a family camp on Douglas Lake. I visited the camp in the early 80s and discovered it is what I would call a 'cottage. There are great debates about which term should be used.

What's YOUR definition?