Knitting Update, April

 This year is flying by.  I know we're only a little over three months in, but wow, it seems to be barreling along at high speed.  Hard to believe it's the first Wednesday of a new month all ready; time for a knitting update.

And. . . I haven't done a whole lot of knitting in the last month.  I'd thought I'd get to at least work on my Vertex socks for a little bit each afternoon while babysitting Faline.  In actuality, I took my knitting bag--with yarn, needles, and pattern for the socks--to her house daily, but never did any knitting there.  The only time I worked on them was quite recently, and it was all done at this little place here.  Faline is awake for about 2 hours at a time now during the day, with a preference for a nap of 30-45 minutes in between waking hours.  So we play alot, she sleeps a little, and I didn't touch my knitting any during the 3-4 hours a day I babysat.

I did, however, manage to finish the socks right before Easter.  Phew.  Felt good to get the second sock off my needles and put them both onto my feet.  Honestly, I loved knitting this pattern.  Like all the ones I've tried from this designer, it's simple and easy to follow, yet the finished product looks complicated.

Love the colors of the yarn on this one.

Not liking the yarn colors so much on this one.

Close up of design on leg.

I knit very, very little on Honorary Son's Christmas stocking.  I hit a roadblock with a big blank spot in the chart where the pattern designer didn't include instructions on how to make that part of the stocking look exactly like the one she'd made. I felt that part was integral to the overall harmony of the colors in the stocking and I wanted to duplicate it. It took me a while (and the inclination to dig out my old books of counted cross stitch patterns in order to find a pattern to make a similar 'picture' on this stocking) to draft a chart for the next part and actually work on it.  But, I'm rolling along again now and should soon be done with the leg portion of the stocking,  If I keep working on it in the evenings, I might actually finish his stocking this month!  Then I can start on the matching one for DD1.  My goal is to have three: one each for Honorary Son, DD1 and Faline, finished before Thanksgiving.

Of course, I also couldn't resist the siren's call of sock knitting, plus I've been wanting to make myself more shorty (ankle) socks now that the weather is warming.  So yesterday I cast on for a pair using the pattern Early Spring Shorty Socks although I won't being doing them Magic Loop, and I'm making them a solid green (green is my favorite color) rather than with contrasting cuffs, heels and toes.  No picture yet, as I'm just 4 rows into sock #1.

Reading:

I read two books, yay me!  For a person who used to devour books 60 pages per hour, sometimes I find it depressing at how long it now takes me to finish a book.  I still do read fast, just not quite that fast, and not nearly as often as I'd like.  Life just gets in the way, ya know?  Not to mention that I spend some of my free time knitting (and sewing), not just reading.

Another One Bites the Crust by Ellie Alexander, number seven in her Bakeshop Mystery series.  An enjoyable and easy reading mystery, as always.  So as to not blow through all the books in this series in a few months, I'm limiting myself to 3-4 of them per year.

What Happens in Paradise by Elin Hilderbrand, the sequel to her Winter In Paradise, which I read last year.  It picks up right where the previous novel left off, moves quickly, and ends with yet another plot twist.  Which means I'll be looking for #3 in this series sometime late this year.

I'm still reading Dressage Riding a bit at a time when I have the mental power to digest the information in the book.  

For fun, my current fiction read is A Buzz in the Meadow: the Natural History of a French Farm by Dave Goulson.  I'm just a scant chapter in, and it seems like a book I will find both interesting and relaxing, like nature-watching with a friend.