Another Brick in the Wall

The missing floss (WDW cinnabar--2 skeins) arrived in the mail last week, so I was able to return to stitching bricks (in brick stitch!) on Kindred House by Chessie and Me. It's addictive, and I've been neglecting my other projects. It's a bit hard to count, though, and a frog came to visit a few times already; the brick stitch involves running 2 threads (over two) horizontally through the top holes as well as the bottom holes of each square, so I tend to lose count.

But I did spend a bit of time searching for the fibers for this Victoria Sampler design that I'm adapting to Nicole's RR. The original calls for silk, but I think it might look odd if it's a silk square along with cotton ones, so I'm doing the conversion on the fly. My picture is a bit blurry but you can see Nicole's square; Leslie's is outside the picture. They're both beautiful and detailed, and I searched long and hard to find something compatible in flavor. At the moment it looks like the periscope on a submarine.

Although it hasn't exactly become fall yet, I've got the itch to knit fall things, and I ran across this nifty cabled sweater in the Interweave Knits magazine. Yum. I have 20 balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran that I have been saving for a special project. Maybe this one? I haven't bought Vogue Knitting's Silver Anniversary edition yet but plan to. I find an awful lot of knitting magazines, I suppose to appeal to more people, or to develop patterns that don't all look the same, or which take advantage of some of the new, more outrageous fibers, are offering "cutting-edge" designs. I'm a bit old and out of shape for a "belly" sweater. And I wince thinking about how I'd look in some of the other fashion yarn extravaganzas (itchy knitted corset and panties, anyone?). And frankly, I've missed the whole sock thing: I wear only soft white cotton socks with my sneakers. I can't see messing with stranding colors and worrying about size to knit socks no one sees (or worse, that they do see) when one can knit a nice, cozy, classic sweater. It's partly my lifestyle: I'm going to wear Birkenstocks and loud striped socks at stuffy Big Law? I remember a short time after I learned to knit, pointing out to my mom (the world's most amazing knitter) a sweater with clever scotty dogs incorporated into the pattern. Mom shook her head and said I'd regret it because I would put tons of work into it, but it was so memorable and unique that I wouldn't want to wear it very often.