The Fog Creeps Out

Slowly, the flu-induced fog is receding on little cat feet. Or whatever kind of little feet it is that flu travels on. Little germ feet, maybe. Cilia, I suppose.

I just hope world's-most-patient-husband does not pick up this bug. It's no fun at all, and I don't want him to have to take a turn with it. But as much as I've been moping around the house all week, touching things, coughing, and just generally breathing around the place, I'm sure it's one giant booby-trap for the unwary. I'm just going to have to hope that he can get some extra rest and take good care of himself and manage to duck the whole thing.

As for me, I missed an entire week of work, and, more critically, time getting ready for Christmas. And in a cruel twist, even though I was stuck at home too weak and listless to do anything else, I did not feel like knitting! I went so far as to think that knitting seemed boring and pointless. I'm convinced it was the fever talking. (I mean, pointless? Knitting needles? :) Thank goodness the fever finally subsided and went away a couple of days ago. Good riddance to it.

So I'm slowly getting back to being not too much worse for the wear, other than some surplus tiredness and the occasional bone-rattling cough. And, boy, have I got some catching up to do. I hope to turn into a little Christmas dynamo for a few days. We'll see how that goes. I may have to make a few compromises here and there.

Merry Christmas, I got you this... pack of gum. Hope you like it! No, of course, I'm kidding. Balls of yarn for everyone! No, I'm still kidding. What compromises there are will have to be of the baking, card-writing, and decorating variety, to try to save time for shopping, wrapping, and spending time with family.

Anyway, one thing I did manage to finish is the rest of the striped border silk scarf from Victorian Lace Today. My version is a little smaller and more demure than the original in the book, since I went to smaller needles for a more contained and fine-grained texture. I did add a good dollop of extra repeats in the main body to get it to a decent length, however.

Once the main body was done, it was interesting doing the second border as a knitted-on border. I hadn't done one before, but it makes perfect sense. It's just basically this. As you go back and forth across the border, the last stitch of the border is knit together with one of the stitches of the body each time you bump back into it, allowing the border to "climb" up the side edge. It sure beats sewing seams!

In the picture, the knitting-on process is part-way done. The stitches of the border, being worked from side to side, are bunched toward the top/right side of the needle. The remaining stitches of the main body that was knit vertically are the smaller bunch on the left/bottom waiting to be folded in one at a time as I come to them. An interesting little chain stitch forms across the junction of the two sections.

The whole thing is sheering off at an angle at this point, partly due to the joining operation at hand, but it's also part of the general biasing that I hope will be brought under control by a good stiff blocking. Maybe I can work up a good head of steam and ambition to get that done tomorrow.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what this scarf will grow up to be!