It’s taking me forever to finish these gloves!  I’ve only had about 30 minutes knitting time since my last post, so I’m only to the thumb gusset on the left glove.  I haven’t touched the right since the last post.  I’m hoping to work on the gloves some more tonight.

 On a different note, I’m very nearly finished with the knitting on the Reid I’m knitting for my daughter.  I’ve got about 4 more rows on the two sleeves.  I’m knitting them both at the same time, which is really the way to go.  I hope to be blocking this weekend.  I’ll post some pictures once I have it pinned up.

I haven’t been able to devote much time to knitting over the past few days.  I’ve been working on a side project for my wife.  It’s a non-paying project, but you know how that goes.  I do a favor for her, and maybe, she’ll do a favor for me.  <wink />

 If anyone needs to migrate a forum from forumco to phpbb, I am now able to do it without much fuss.  I spend 10 or 15 hours working a small program to crawl the forum and generate SQL statements that create the topics and posts in PHPBB.  I don’t really have any problem patting myself on the back, so, I’ll say that it is a pretty slick little application.  Not to mention it works quite well!

I finished one of my fingerless gloves, and then decided I need to make them gloves with full fingers…

 The gauge is good, the size is right on, but they are THICK.  They are so heavy that I couldn’t use them as fingerless gloves.  Either I’d wear them when it was really cold, and my fingers would freeze, or I’d wear them when it was warmer, and my hands would be too hot.  I’ve decided to go back and finish the fingers.  I’ll make another pair of fingerless gloves with different yarn that is lighter weight.

 Maybe some of that wonderful Malabrigo.

I really like the way the Triquetra looks on the back.  You can see from the picture that I left all of my bind-offs loose, so I can easily pull them back off and join some new yarn to finish up.

My wife, daughter, and I went to our favorite LYS today, Ewe-Nique Knits in Royal Oak, Michigan.  We had the best time there today, and they didn’t even have what we were looking for.  We spent over an hour there looking at yarn, patterns and books.  My 32 month old daughter even had a good time.  They have blocks, coloring books, and a few other toys for the little ones.  To top it all off, one of the owners brought out her spinning wheel and showed my daughter how to spin yarn.

 My favorite part of the trip was when I looked around, and there were more men in the shop than women.  I think that’s the first time I’ve seen that at any LYS.  I’ve had different levels of acceptances at yarn stores, being a man.  Some, like Ewe-Nique are wonderful, others that I won’t name here are terrible.  They always treat me well at Ewe-Nique, they’ve never assumed I’m unskilled or inexperienced just because I’m a man.  I find the fact that other shops treat me that way amazing, especially given the history of women being treated poorly by male salespeople (think car dealerships).

 While I was there a man came in with a problem he was having with a pattern he was knitting for his wife.  Three different employees looked and they were all unsure.  They didn’t bat an eye when I came over and had a look myself.  I was able to help decipher the problem was.  Turns out it was a missing stitch on an increase chart that was causing the problem.  Not only did they help him with a pattern they didn’t sell him, using materials he likely didn’t buy there, but they didn’t mind me getting involved.  I’ve seen other shops charge for their time and not let you bring in projects and materials you bought elsewhere.

If you are ever near Royal Oak, Michigan, make sure to stop by and see this wonderful gem of an LYS.

 http://eweniqueknits.com/

I picked up the needles and cast on my fingerless gloves again.  This time, after I made a gague swatch.  Turns out with this yarn, I need size 6 instead of size 8 needles.

 So far, the sizing is much better.

 I’ll post some pics when I get  little further along.

So, last night I worked on my fingerless gloves.  I finished the cable panel, and I was nearly to the finger stubs, when I realized…

 IT IS FRIGGN’ HUGE!!

 Seroiusly, this thing is way too big.  It’s too long, and too big around.  Then, I measured my gague.  What was supposed to be 5 stitches per inch, turned out to be only 4.  So, with some crude math I calculate that it’s 2 inches too big.

So, I ripped it all out.  That will teach me for not doing a gague swatch before starting.

Anyway, before I frogged, I took some pictures.  I think I have the Triquetra cable down.

I made a quick trip to the only place open late to get some yarn.  It was a big chain store, so there wasn’t much to choose from.  I ended up with some Paton’s Classic Wool.  It’s pretty good, it’s wool, and it’s inexpensive.  Exactly what I was looking for to use for test swatches.

When I got home I made another alteration to my Triquetra pattern.  Here is what I ended up with:

I like this one better.  The top is narrower, but it’s still a bit round. for my taste.  Maybe I’ll work on that some more. 

I’m planning to use this as a pattern worked in the back of a pair of fingerless gloves I’m trying to design.  So I worked the knit stitches much closer to the pattern.   It is difficult to see in the picture, but it works well.