A Bluestocking Knits

Long Time, No See

Oh dear, it has been a very long time indeed since I posted anything.  In my defense, my computer -- which was at least ten years old -- has been fading fast this past year, and around Christmas-time the top row of the keyboard just stopped working.  I debated with myself whether to try writing posts without using those letters, and in my younger days I might have enjoyed the challenge, but, well ... no, I just couldn't face it!  (No "e"!  That alone is 12% of the words in English!)  I then got a lovely new laptop that seemed every day to have some different bug -- I still can't print anything double-sided -- and didn't have any photo-editing program.  On the bright side, I was extraordinarily happy in the meantime stitching the "Pomegranate" sampler, despite some at-the-time-horrendous mistakes on my part, and so I was quite content to stitch and make sympathetic noises while David fussed over the new computer.

It wasn't until the third row of the blue alphabet, for instance, that I realized it was supposed to be eyelet stitch, not cross-stitch, so I had to pick it out and do it again.  More poignantly, I had been so very pleased with the overdyed threads, and as it turned out, almost one by one, I thought, "no, that color just isn't working" or "well, there's a bit too much variation in the overdye there," and ended up using only two of the eleven that I had chosen.  I took the above photo just after I decided that the color of the "green" pomegranates was too bright -- and too blue -- and so I picked out one of them and tried a different color --

-- which I liked much better. 

One of the intriguing things about this particular sampler was the satin-stitch border -- quite unusual.  I had a slightly different color of linen than the original, and it seemed to me that the original color was getting a bit lost, and so at the same time that I auditioned some similar shades I also tried O'Steen's tip -- from her book, not unfortunately from the chart for this sampler -- to work it with a single thread run through twice, instead of a double thread, because the two-at-a-time threads have a tendency to twist and overlap each other as you work.  You can see this in the section at the bottom (which is worked in the original color) --

Each of these four satin-stitch areas has two threads per hole, but the bottom one is worked with both of the threads in the needle at the same time, while the other three are worked with a single thread, working essentially two stitches in each hole.  This takes twice as long to do, obviously, but the result was clearly so much tidier that there was no question about which to do!

It surprises me that I haven't taken pictures of the finished sampler yet, but I will do that soon and make a separate post.  In the meantime ...

I said to Julia one afternoon not long ago, "Let me teach you some basic crochet, so that you will always be able to make yourself a supply of dishcloths," and to my pleasant surprise, she agreed.  ("Someday I might want to do some Irish crochet," she said thoughtfully.)  I couldn't find the hook I usually use for dishcloths, so she had to use a size smaller -- I went smaller rather than larger just because the cloths tend to stretch out a bit when they get wet, and we tend to like them a bit snug.  The first one, at the bottom, is single crochet, and the others are double and half-double.  It's kind of funny, because I remember the girls' bits of knitting -- fifteen years ago! -- that were all wobbly and full of holes, and Julia I think didn't even get an inch knitted before she decided that she wasn't interested at all, and now she worked a row or two with me showing her what to do, then she went off by herself and focused intently on it, after a few wobbles at the start keeping the stitches perfectly uniform.  That is what a year or two of making bobbin lace can do for one's concentration and standards!

(That, by the way, is pretty much exactly how I learned to knit, getting the basics from my mom, then going off by myself to work at it until I figured out how to get it all going smoothly!)

My New Year's resolution this year -- yes, the only one -- is to finish my three 1:12 shops.  I don't know why I was so uninterested in them the past few years -- well, not uninterested, it was just that other things were more interesting, I guess -- but there it is.  But to that end, I bought a few new-to-me things to inspire myself, including these little charmers for the tea shop, which are from Old Bell Pottery -- I love that the teapot even has that little steam hole in the lid! --

Pomegranates and Pinwheels

Linen and threads to start the "Pomegranate Sampler" by Darlene O'Steen -- I'm looking forward to this very much!  The linen is Weeks Dye Works' in "Cocoa" with a collection of threads from Weeks, Classic Colorworks, and Simply Shaker, converted from the DMC list on the chart.  I'm also relieved to see that although I had to choose both the fabric and the threads without seeing them in person, the results are fairly successful!

A crocheted snowflake for an exchange-by-mail with our lace group.  This one is called "Matterhorn" one of the amazing variety from SnowflakePatterns.  I had planned to use starch to block this, but it is so ethereal that I was concerned it wouldn't hold its shape for long, so I re-blocked it with full-strength white glue.  This one is in Coats size 30 crochet cotton using a US9 steel hook, and, impressively, is not as difficult as it looks!

The second of my two Temecula Quilt Company kits, an unnamed pinwheel.  I'm quietly pleased to find that I'm getting better both at piecing and at hand-quilting.

The "Léontine Coutances" sampler by Mamilou, a free reproduction chart of a ca.1900-1910 French sampler.  I decided to work this to look a bit more like the original than like the chart, so I left out most of the now-missing stitches and kept some of Léontine's mistakes, though I confess I added a few of my own!  I like the effect of using three strands of floss instead of the more-usual-these-days two -- it does have that plump "vintage" look, as I'd hoped -- and was not too much for this rather loosely-woven Charles Craft linen.

And my "Camptown Races," thanks to no less than three concerts of Julia's for which I sat knitting while waiting for the curtain to go up, is actually starting to look like it's going to be a scarf!  Huzzah!

Thoughts on the Basic (Baby) Blanket

This, at last, is the "Basic Blanket" from Simple Crochet for Cherished Babies by Jane Davis, which I have to say, was an utter pain most of the time I spent on it, but is very pretty now that it's finished and draped artfully over the arm of a sofa.  I had searched for blanket or afghan patterns that called for 10 balls of Jaeger Baby Merino and would be fairly quick to make, and this seemed to fit the bill perfectly, but ten balls were not enough by at least one, and I spent quite a lot of time having to figure out not only the instructions themselves but how to arrange it so that I could get as much of the pattern worked with almost every inch of the ten balls I had.

Strangely, although my gauge came out noticeably larger than given in the book, with the same weight yarn and my usual 1-size-smaller hook, the finished measurement of the panel was smaller than given.  How can that be?

There really should be a more-clear photo of what this blanket is supposed to look like when laid flat. I suppose that this --

-- which is the photo from the book, is clear enough once you've already made the thing, but before I got to that point, I heartily wished to see it more fully.  (What does the seam look like? for example ...)

I found out early on from reviews on Amazon that a lot of people have had difficulties with a number of patterns in this book, so perhaps I'm a bit more salty than I would have been if I thought it was just me.  I suppose I can figure out that if the instructions say "weave in end after row 11" that I'm supposed to break off the yarn at that point, or that if it says "sew the panels together" that I'm supposed to make a second panel, but it doesn't say so at all.  But I was mystified by the instruction "Work row 8 along the top and bottom edges of the blanket" -- it's multi-directional, so which edges are the top and bottom?!

This edging, by the way, is simply begging for a chart, but I am not at that stage yet, myself.  (Laura herself came in not long after I'd hidden the blanket-in-progress but not my attempt at a chart.  "What's this?" she asked, "some weird code??")

After trying to puzzle out the directions, then trying to figure out from the photo what was meant in the directions, I came up with these alternate instructions for certain rows, with my choices and some clarifications in boldface. Note that in the main body of the panel, the initial ch3 does not count as a stitch -- you are making loops in which to anchor the edging.  (This, if I remember correctly, is not what the general instructions say at the beginning of the book.)  The initial ch3 in the border, however, does count as a stitch.  I also did 1 less ch than specified at the beginning of each row, as mine tend to be a bit looser than average, I guess, so that one less ch made my edges a bit straighter than they would have been --

• Row 3: Ch3, 1 DC, [ch1, sk 2, DC, ch1, sk 2, 3 DC in next st] 32 times (on the last rep, 2 DC at very end) [129 sts].
• Row 4: Ch3, DC, [(DC, ch1, DC) all in next st, 2 DC in next st, sk 3, 2 DC in next st] 32 times, (DC, ch1, DC) in top of ch3.  Note that the "sk 3" will be above a DC in the row below.
• Row 5: Ch3, 2 DC in 1st st, [DC in sp of sk3 section, 6 DC in ch1 sp] 32 times, 3 DC in top of ch3. Note that the 6-DC cluster will be above the 3-DC cluster in the row below.
• Row 6: Ch3, sk1, 1 HDC, 1 DC, sk1, [2 DC, 2 HDC, 2 DC, sk1] 32 times, 2 DC, 1 HDC in top of ch3.  Note that each bracketed section will be centered over the 6-DC cluster of the row below.
• Row 7: STDC, DC in 1st st, DC, sk1, (2 DC, sk1) 64 times, 3 DC (the last in top of ch3).

As I said, I did not have nearly enough wool to do the four rows of DC mesh at the top of each edging section (which is worked four times!), so in frustration, I just worked the mesh on each side until the wool ran out, estimated how many rows total I could get, which ended up being about a quarter of what was called for, and then ripped out the ones that had gone past that.  In the end, I decided that, really, an open section of mesh down the middle makes a rather drafty afghan, and so I would work the edging only through Row 7 on one side of each of the two panels, stitch those two together, and then work as much of the mesh as I had yarn on the two "outside" borders. 

It also seemed to me -- and perhaps I'm mistaken, not having that much experience with crochet -- that having a mattress-stitched seam running through a quite-pretty lacy panel might look just a bit clunky, and so, remembering some particularly clever methods I'd come across for joining crochet squares and used myself with tolerable success, I decided to do one of those instead of a mattress-stitched seam.  (I used the fourth one from the top, the one with the sort of "telegraph pole" look to it).  I thought this suited the pattern quite well, actually, and would recommend it to anyone making this blanket, certainly if not using the full complement of mesh rows down the middle.  (I ended up, by the way, after joining the two panels after their respective 7th rows, getting a grand total of two rows of mesh on the two outside edges, four altogether, far less than the sixteen the pattern called for with ten balls of Baby Merino, even subtracting maybe two of those which got used up in my join.  Oof.)

But -- as I said -- it turned out very pretty, and I'm also quite happy with the color, which was Jaeger Baby Merino 233 Lilac overdyed with 1 package of grape Kool-Aid per ball.  Interesting that it came out mottled even though I did not try to get it so.  It looks very different in different lights, as you can see!

(Yes, that is my HST quilt, finished and on the bed!)

Out of the Frying Pan

I decided that both because I was quite unsure if the amount of wool that I have would make it all of the way through the "Modern Classic Baby Blanket" and that the mottled over-dye distracted from the lovely stitch pattern anyway, and that, to be honest, being still a novice crocheter there were times when I couldn't understand what I was supposed to do -- I would set that pattern aside and go for a more sure thing.  I searched online for patterns specifically using Jaeger Baby Merino DK, and came up with the "Basic Blanket" from Simple Crochet for Cherished Babies by Jane Davis, which, wonder of wonders, is held by my public library and was on the shelf at that very moment. 

The construction is a bit strange, and not quite clear since there is only one photo of the finished blanket in the book and it's scrunched and folded over on itself, and the instructions never say "make a second panel" but I think this is how it goes: you work the DC panel, turn that on its side and work the edging, then break the yarn and work the edging on the other side, and then make a second panel in the same way and sew them together up the middle.

You can't quite see them in my photo, but there are three safety pins where I joined in new balls of yarn -- the first about a third of the way up the main panel, the second almost two-thirds up, and the third a row or two into the edging (near where the crochet hook is at the moment).  That is, yes, four balls of yarn so far, with six more rows of the first border section and all eleven rows on the second still to go -- and I have ten balls altogether.  Rather naïvely, I suppose, I did not make a gauge swatch, since I'm using the same yarn and a one-size-smaller hook, but it turns out that my gauge is much bigger than the one in the pattern, so I suppose that's at least part of the issue.  Regardless, though, I don't think ten balls of yarn is enough as it stands now, and so I need to figure out how much smaller I must make the blanket in order to use as much of the yarn as possible.

I do rather like the overdye with this pattern, though -- it's not quite as "busy" as the Modern Classic blanket (which, again, I think would be wonderful in a solid yarn, and I will keep it in mind as a potential future project).  It might be also that this one has a bit more "space" in the twiddly part, more lacy-ness, as it were --

A Little Bit Here, a Little Bit There ...

Well, it has been over a month since I posted, and I didn't even realize it.  I finished the "Honeysuckle Sampler" ages ago, enjoyed it very much despite the egregious number of queen-stitch flowers in that border (!) -- haven't blocked it yet, though, obviously.  I made some very slight changes, re-positioning the signature line a little, and centering the date by moving it down a single thread -- feeling a bit of an outlaw as I did so, as nobody ever seems willing to suggest that sort of thing even though sometimes a motif looks quite strange with two two-thread rows below it and only one above.  (I think I made the "J" a stitch wider as well -- and why not?!)  These thread colors look very well against the natural linen, I think!

Also unblocked, "Samplings IV" by Ellen Chester, from her "Quaker Samplings series.  This is on the 36-count Edinburgh linen that I coffee-dyed over the summer.  I enjoyed working this little sampler very much, and the thread is quite handsome -- Gentle Art's "Brethren Blue" -- and so I look forward to the rest of the series, which I will do in a selection of different colors.  I've started the "Samplings V" -- in Gentle Art's "French Lilac" but got distracted ...

I got a new phone for free so felt entirely justified in splurging a bit on a new case, the first one I've ever bought, since all my others were hand-me-downs.  Some folks might recognize the place names as being in the Lake District, others might realize, from, say the campsite just there near the compass rose, and the Amazon Boathouse across the lake, that it is actually Swallows and Amazons!  It makes me happy every time I see it, and that's the first time I've ever said that about a phone, to be sure, so well worth the extra few dollars.  And it has prompted me to start rereading the series -- I'm now in the middle of Pigeon Post, so about halfway along.

I had a bag of Jaeger Baby Merino in the bottom of a box, that I kept passing over because while the yarn is delicious, the color was just kind of meh.  I debated with myself for months about overdyeing it -- what if it went badly? aaugh -- but a few weeks ago, I said to myself, "Right, just do it."  I wound into skeins and dyed it with one envelope each of grape-flavored Kool-Aid, and was pleased to see that everything turned out rather well.  It's a bit more mottled than I was expecting -- that was really the only surprise. 

I had been half-planning to make a Christmas-present afghan with it for Laura -- whose favorite color is purple -- and I liked the "Modern Classic Baby Blanket" by Kirsten Holloway, though I've stalled a bit after working the first end section.  It seems to me that the mottled color of the yarn obscures the intricacy of the design -- the purple is a bit darker in real life than in the photo -- ironically, the yarn and the pattern would most likely have suited each other better with the yarn in its original state.  The stitches are on the complex side, and it took me a while to puzzle through some of them, but it worked out well -- but the other thing that is giving me pause is that it's very yardage-hungry, and this bit alone used up a whole ball and a good portion of another, and I've got only ten!  So my choices are to forge ahead and hope for the best, to try out the "plain" panel and see if the yarn goes further, as I could omit the inner fancy-work, or try something else altogether.  Ten skeins sounds like a lot; I can hardly believe that I couldn't make a lap blanket out of ten skeins!

In my indecision, I came across this "Japanese View" cross-stitch chart, available free at Smart Cross Stitch, and thought it also might make a good present for Laura --

and so as I have accumulated a considerable stash of 28-count Monaco in the past few decades, I thought, "Go for it!"  But I have had the dickens of a time with it -- counted wrong and somehow couldn't figure out where, picked out all of the mountain bits I'd done, got off again and picked it all out a second time (luckily not so far along as before), ran out of the medium-purple (of course, half of it was in shreds on the floor), did it a third time using a couple of in-betweens I had in my needle case as re-positionable guide lines.  Now at last I feel like I'm getting somewhere and it looks like the beginnings of a mountain view instead of a bunch of random specks, which is encouraging.

(Why multiple presents for Laura?  She has just gone off for her first year away at university, after spending her post-high-school years thus far at the local community college.  She is still in the same time-zone, but far enough away that I know she isn't living at home any more.  The compulsion to make things for her is especially strong.)

Lest you think I do not knit anymore -- I have been working on this scarf (which is "Camptown Races"), albeit for what seems an eternity.  I might rename it "Grandmother's Footsteps" as I keep finding that I've been daydreaming and lost track of which row I was on, so that some of the sections have far too many stitches, and I have to rip back to the point where it went wrong.  It's very nice yarn and lovely to knit with, thank goodness, and doesn't seem to mind my two-steps-forward, one-step-back.  If we take the train to visit Laura, this will be a perfect carry-along!

And there is the binding on my "Persuasion" quilt, which binding is very long (somewhat over queen-sized), but of course would probably be finished already if I didn't keep getting distracted ...

Lacy Curtain Panel

A new curtain panel for one of our closet windows, using the "Wheel Lattice" Square (8-round version) by Dayna Audirsch in no.10 crochet cotton, joined with a chain-stitch zigzag I saw here,

Snowflake

This is the snowflake pattern I chose for a gift exchange -- it is a free pattern by Maggie Weldon. I used no.10 crochet cotton with a 6 steel hook, and starched it with 1:1 starch and water.  Quite pretty, I thought!

Anna So Far

My math was off (there's a shock!), so that the picture-frame mat I'm using to hold the Anna Ohman sampler is just not quite big enough at the top and bottom for me to work the whole thing.  I had just removed it from the frame when I took this photo yesterday, before turning it sideways.  As ever, I'm really delighted with this sampler, and find it very satisfying in spite of my mistakes.  (Discovered late last night that what I'd planned would be a Golden-Spike moment with the two sides of the top line meeting in the middle, was off by one stitch, so I had to pick out the wrong half and re-do it.  Now it's more Lewis-and-Clark.)

I'm also auditioning some crochet snowflakes for a gift exchange next month.  I like both of these, but am thinking that finer thread might be prettier --

Summer Reading

I was sitting here some weeks ago thinking suddenly, I need to read more, and so I pondered for a while what to choose.  I decided that it was time, after a great many years, to reread the Narnia books, and though I finished Prince Caspian with a sigh of pleasure and my hand was reaching, metaphorically, for Dawn Treader, it occurred to me that there were six volumes of Arthur Ransome's "Swallows and Amazons" series on my shelf still utterly unread.  I had picked up Swallows and Amazons at our beloved local children's bookstore, and enjoyed it very much, enough that when the owner decided to retire and was selling off her stock at half-price, I went over and bought all of the rest of the series that she had -- and yet, there they sat on the shelf, for years.  And so I thought now that they would be just the thing right now, in these difficult times when one wants children's stories with plenty of adventure but the assurance of a safe homecoming at the end.  It had been long enough that I thought I should read the first book again, just to get the sail filled, as it were, and I enjoyed it just as much as the first time around.  But I have to say that, while the first book is certainly good, Ransome really hit his stride as he went on.  He clearly knows his stuff, both boats and the Lake District in which many of the stories are set, and better still, he has that rather rare ability to write from a child's perspective that makes you forget that he isn't one himself -- as I say, I love the Narnia stories, but it is always clear that they are being told to you by an adult, where Ransome reminds me quite a lot in this respect of Elizabeth Enright's Melendy family series, a different sort of story but with that same feeling of immediacy, of being immersed in it yourself, this is what it's like. 

I read, in rapid succession, Swallowdale, Winter Holiday, Pigeon Post, We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, Secret Water, and Great Northern?, coming suddenly to the end of my collection with a sigh of dismay.  They are all, of course, boat-related but the focus is on different things in each, and new characters come in here and there, so that each book is quite different -- especially, I thought, We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, as throughout the series there are adventures and risky situations of course, but, perhaps because I'm a parent now and long past being the same age as the Walker children, the very real danger they are in at being literally swept out to sea was more than unsettling.  (This one contains the only mention in the whole series of one of the children being seasick, and the physical reality of it comes as quite a shock.)  But, as I say, I enjoyed the series immensely, and can see why so many readers still think of them as beloved favorites.  I am amazed only at the fact that I had never heard of them before!

(The photograph is a still from the 2016 movie version of the first book.  I haven't seen it -- I found out about it not long after I finished the book the second time, but after reading in reviews that the writers felt it necessary to insert a completely new subplot about real spies, I thought, "oh no!"  Hearing that Susan has been turned into a whiny bumbler who can't even manage to cook a fish made me shriek -- apparently Peter has also been made "more real".  Why, why, why take classics that generations of children have loved passionately, and change them??  Oh, well -- it looks beautiful, at least.  Sigh.)

The D.E. Stevenson list is reading Amberwell, and this time around I volunteered to lead a section, offering a summary of each chapter and some discussion questions.  Mine turned out to be quite early in the book, chapters 4-6, which I estimate to be taking place around 1930.  The Ayrton family live in a fine old estate on the west coast of Scotland -- the story begins a few centuries earlier with the building of the house and the establishment of the Ayrtons, but by chapter 4 the main characters of the "present day" have been introduced, Mr. and Mrs. Ayrton, his two sons from his first marriage, and three daughters from this second, which daughters are all still under ten and in the care of their Nannie.  One of the central events of this section, and a recurring motif in the story, is the dedication of Mr. Ayrton's contribution to the estate -- others in the generations before him were a walled garden, a bowling-green, a stone terrace, and so on -- Mr. Ayrton has decided upon a fountain with the statue of a little mermaid. On the day of the ceremonial Turning on the Fountain, the girls are sitting on rugs on the bowling-green in their best dresses and the boys in their kilts, waiting for the festivities, and Nannie is nearby keeping an eye on them, and knitting.  This seems too good and opportunity to pass up, to choose something for my "Knitting with DES" virtual knit-along -- so what might Nannie be knitting, I asked myself.

This is a bit later than ca.1930, by about a decade, but how could I possibly resist three little girls in matching boleros? and just the right ages!  This is in the Bestway 749 booklet, this pattern available for a small fee from FabForties.co.uk (who seems to have changed her name recently from The Vintage Knitting Lady, perhaps to specialize in the 1940s?).

(The house in the photo above, by the way, is Inchmarlo, not on the west coast as in the story but in Aberdeenshire.  My Scottish-immigrant ancestors worked there, according to the 1840 census!  The descriptions of Stevenson's Amberwell and a number of the dust-jacket illustrations in the book's long publishing history remind me of Inchmarlo, and so I was delighted to find this photo available for Creative Commons use at Geograph.uk -- this one is by Stanley Howe.)

"Swallows and Amazons" leads quite naturally to a grown-up sea adventure, and I picked up Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander after many years -- too long!  I've only just finished the second in the series, Post Captain, enjoying every moment.  O'Brian's prose is so complex yet wonderfully fluid that it is a pleasure to read, and his flashes of wit and deft characterizations are sheer genius.

(The photo -- from Wikimedia Commons -- is the stern of the Surprise built for the 2003 movie and now at the Maritime Museum of San Diego.)

It's been too hot lately for snuggling-under-a-blanket reading, so I just made one instead, and gave it away as a house-warming present -- it is the simple-but-effective "Modern Granny Stitch Blanket" by Jess of Make & Do Crew.  I used the recommended Lion Brand "Heartland" yarn, in "Glacier Bay", "Hot Springs", "Olympic", "Mount Rainier", and "Kings Canyon" (for a lark, try guessing which is which! I think I got only one right). 

I ran out of "Olympic" just a little over two rows short -- there had been only one skein of it in the store, so I bought a sixth color but decided that I'd risk looking for another skein somewhere else.  And rather surprisingly, because it's 100% acrylic and therefore produced by recipe that isn't subject to the whims and eccentricities of natural fibers, the dye lots of "Olympic" at least are noticeably, even disappointingly, different.  There is much less of the black in the second skein, leaving the color rather dull and flat -- oh, well.

I'm not generally a huge fan of acrylics, but this is quite pleasant to work with, and I must say it makes yummy tassels!

On the Needles

This is the back of the DROPS 118-26 vest/waistcoat/sleeveless cardigan/thingy, for which I decided to use the Knitpicks Palette that my mom decided she didn't want any more.  I started this a while ago, then waffled about it, then decided the other day to carry on.  I got down to the lower edge of the armscyes, shushing the inner voice that said "it's too small, something isn't right," then laid it out like this and knew at once that it is indeed far too small.   Part of that, to be sure, is that between "a while ago" and "the other day" I forgot which hook I used to work my gauge swatch, and then picked up the wrong one -- smaller, of course -- but part was that the instructions do indeed tell you to work 5cm before beginning the increases for the bottom of the armscye, when clearly 5cm is nothing in the world of armscyes.  I decided that, joy of joys, I am confident enough to adjust a crochet pattern to fit me, and so in looking around for some advice about shaping armscyes and coming across Elinor Brown's article and the calculator linked therein, I worked out that I need to have 5 inches, not cm, before (because it is worked top-down) beginning the increases.

And so the piece in the above photo was ripped out and re-worked into this -- which is the right front, instead of the back, being a smaller piece to work before I judge whether the alterations will be sufficient --

I figured that since I was ripping it out to modify the pattern anyway, I might as well shape the shoulder while I'm at it, so I worked a graduated set of SC, HDC, DC, and TC across the 17 sts of the first row (to be worked in the opposite order for the corresponding back shoulder). 

And in knitting news -- because, glory be on this knitting blog, there is some -- David asked for a ski-helmet liner for his birthday, so I've got the beginning of one on the needles.  I can hardly bear to confess how many stitches I've had to ladder and pick back up in the proper direction because I'd purled instead of knitted here and there, but it was a lot.  Oh well, dark green wool in distracting times! there it is.