Finere e Inizio

For those of us who don't speak Italian, the above (very) roughly translates as Endings and Beginnings. (Or so I hope. I don't really speak Italian, and visited one of those dictionary sites to try and figure out a decent translation.)

Why the emphasis on endings and beginnings?

1) I finished my Jaywalkers Wednesday night.

I think they came out looking very nice and the Socks that Rock makes for a comfy sock, too. The flashing is kind of bizzare, though. On the first sock I completed, I thought it may have been due to a minor error. (Yes, I had a minor error and I didn't fix it. I had an argument with Jamie about it, much to the amusement of several friends, because I refused to frog several inches after I discovered I had accidentally increased the stitch count in the middle of the sole. I decided to just decrease and accept the fact that I would not have perfect socks. Jamie kept insisting that I must rip the work out and do it "right.") However, on sock #2 I got the same flashing effect once I had moved into the straightaway and wasn't increasing or decreasing anymore along the foot.

2) Last night, I cast on for Mom's gloves, which I'm making for the Knitting Olympics. (No photos yet, as I don't have much to show at this point.) This will be the first pair of gloves -- first pair of handwear, actually -- that I have ever made. I'm using Filatura di Crosa 501, a light worsted/DK weight superwash wool and size 4 needles. I had thought about using fingering/sock weight yarn, but I just couldn't get myself to figure out how to translate the pattern gauges for such fine weight yarn. (I'm using the generic glove pattern from Ann Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns, and the smallest gauge in her chart is for 9 sts/inch. My swatch in sock yarn was much smaller than that. With the 501 yarn and size 4 needles, I get 8 sts/inch. It's much easier to follow the Budd charts as written, instead of recalculating gauge.)

The week has been pretty intense and busy. Lots of work, and travel thrown in to boot. Next week will be more travel for work, but I don't mind that much. Travel gives me time to knit, so I should make some good progress on the gloves. Yay!

Although, with all this travel and work, etc. I'm glad to have Rachael around all day, spending some quality time with the "girls" (i.e. dogs Hannah and Sadie; knitten Fiona). Rachael's been here while recovering from her surgery because it's really not advisable to walk up 3,000 stairs right after major abdominal surgery. (OK, maybe her third-floor apartment really isn't 3,000 stairs up, but there are a lot of stairs.)

Rachael's recovering well (yippee yay!) and has been feeling so great that she actually created a blog yesterday. Today we went to the grocery store and made stops to visit Val and have a coffee. The best news of all is that the pathology reports came back A-OK, so she is now cancer-free; no need for chemo or radiation either.

Gotta get back to the Olympics now. If I don't finish at least a cuff tonight then I'm going to have trouble keeping up with the competition.