In Which the Pirate Did What She Said.

Remember how last week I said I was going to “shut myself in my room” and finish knitting the purple sweater? Well, I did! I knit and knit (and surfed the internet and chatted with friends) and was frantically working the last few rows when Pirate-Husband came home from his night class. I finished the bind-off just as he was coming through the door. So now that is done!

Tonight I have a good chunk of afternoon and evening to myself again, so I plan to make some progress on the pink sweater. Right now it’s completely thoughtless stockinette as I work my way up the back of the sweater.

I went to go visit the niecelets on Friday evening. They are definitely too small yet for the sweaters! Here I am with Niecelet Number Two snoozing on me. (She and her sister both spent almost the entire visit snoozing on someone or another.) I think she’s going to be the recipient of the pink sweater.

The niecelets are kinda cool, especially because they’re tiny and quiet. Their older sister the nieceling is also kinda cool, even though her energy and volume levels seem to be permanently set to 11. She can drain my batteries in three minutes flat. It’s quite impressive, really.

I’ve gotten good responses to the moratorium on knitting for babies. Pirate-Husband was especially supportive, saying that I shouldn’t let feelings of guilt create the obligation to knit things I don’t want to knit. I do like the *idea* of knitting babyclothes – they’re so cute! and tiny! and fun! – but the actuality is that after the thrill of casting on a new project is gone, I generally don’t like the yarn very much. At least not the yarn I’ve used so far. Cotton is great for babies but I hate knitting with it (perhaps I’d feel differently about crocheting it). The first baby sweater I made from wool that wasn’t superwash got felted when the recipient didn’t take “no really, handwash” very seriously, so I’m hesitant to use untreated wool again. The KnitPicks yarn that I’m using for the current sweaters isn’t very pleasant to knit with either. I am so ready to cast on a sock or something with a yarn I like better!

Spring has definitely sprung up on the mountain; our trees are in full leaf and the early flowers are giving way to the later ones. Strangely, the weather this past weekend was much more like March than May – not even 60 degrees and drizzling. I woke up on Saturday morning to find that a trio of deer had had a slumber party on my front lawn. (Click to enlarge the picture so you can see them!) The deer do get sort of annoying; they are always darting across the road or standing in the middle of the driveway. But they are cute, and I always enjoy seeing them, even if I do have a tendency to think of them as walking dinners. In a couple of months I’ll be trying to get pictures of the new adorable little fawns.