Lessons, mosaics and socks, OH MY!

Whoop, whoop.

Sooo... Josh's knitting lesson went okay. He was doing wonderfully until I tried to explain binding off. I just couldn't make it clearly enough for him, so he got confused, frustrated and collapsed into a small ball at the foot of my bed (as predicted). I put his swatch off to the side in case he wants to pick it up again.

I finally finished grandpa's first sock, and took the opportunity to try and learn grafting again. It didn't work. Again. So I caved and used the three needle bind off for the toe (place stitches on holder, turn sock inside out, bind off). It's so much less stressful than grafting and finishes up with a nice, neat seam on the inside. Eventually I will have to face the evil kitchener stitch, but for now I'm sticking with this method.

The other day I took a walk up to the library and checked out Barbara Walker's Charted Knitting Designs. I like the book, it helped me a lot with slip stitch color patterns, and it includes an "Uncharted Miscellany" chapter with some very pretty (and one very scary) stitch patterns. The down side to my discovery of the book, though, is that it inspired me to take up ANOTHER project. One that actually requires (GASP) assembly. It's just a bag, but all of my completed projects have been socks.

Ever since this god-awful heat set in I've been designing like crazy. There's a really pretty pink-and-cream skirt (knit with size 10 cotton and size one needles) floating around in my head. But until I get a lace pattern worked out for it, that's where it will stay. I would like to use a pretty chevron eyelet pattern, but I can't seem to get the pattern to repeat the way I want it to. Pfft.