Pink Swatches are Taking Over!

Finishing requires a lot of swatching

This past week has been incredibly busy, and the next couple of weeks look like they'll be more or less the same. I'm not sure why I always forget how one day it's New Year's and I'm sooooo glad that the holidays are over, and the next day it's mid-February and my schedule is jam-packed with both work and non-work stuff. It's the non-work stuff that throws the biggest wrench into the works, because it eliminates the buffer that I usally have to take care of things that I haven't been able to get to during the week (laundry, anyone?) or to get organized for the next week. I'm not really complaining, because I could opt NOT to do some of the things on the schedule--for instance, I added a full day knitting class (Elsebeth Lavold at the Nordic Heritage Museum) to my weekend schedule on Thursday, even though my week had already been really, really, really long. I'll write more about the class (which I LOVED) once my swatches are dry and photographed. Maybe I'm just a little cranky because Frieda woke me up at 4:30am, which is very early for her and even earlier for me.

So! What's up next? Next weekend is the Madrona Fiber Arts retreat, and I'm taking a couple of classes that feel like they're on the opposite sides of the brain. I'm taking Lucy Neatby's "Even Cooler Socks", which I expect to be fun and creative and inspiring, and Jean Wong's "Fine Finishing Techniques", which I expect to improve my skills in my weakest area of knitting. I'm never quite sure which seaming technique to use when, and I no longer have a great reference book for guidance. Remember my "Baby Yours" sweater? I put it into hibernation rather than finish it, and now it won't fit the baby it was intended to fit. I'm hoping that Jean Wong's finishing class will help me finally get this done, before I lose the yarn that I need for the button band. As you can see in the photo, there's a lot of swatching required for this class--eleven swatches in total. I hope that I did them right--as I was working on them, I was acutely aware that there are different ways to interpret instructions, and although I am pretty confident when choosing a direction for a project, it's a lot harder to be sure that I'm doing what's correct when I'm not sure what will be done with the swatches. Here's hoping that I'm not re-knitting them during lunch!