Multitasking

Right now I should be working on character arcs for the novel. Instead I'm writing about knitting. Actually, I'm doing both at the same time. My husband tells me this is a peculiarly female ability, doing one thing that actually requires thought while mulling over something else in another part of the brain. I do tend to knit in front of the computer. Occasionally I even finish things.

This is honorary daughter (long story, another time, OK?) Emily wearing her holiday sweater. She picked out the pattern, yarn, button, I did the fairly mindless knitting.
It's made of Gedifra Lordana boucle, pattern from 1020 from their Highlights 072 book. Funny that 1950s styles are back in lately. In the past few weeks, I wandered through the local Nordstrom's and past windows of maybe ten other women's retailers on the way to the Apple Store too many times (another story, OK?) and saw a dozen sweaters for spring in exactly this flared shape. And I'll be knitting a sleeveless one called Flow for String Theory out of Nora Gaughan's new Berroco book in a new yarn called Seduce. If I'd titled this post Seduce, it would probably have landed on spam lists, no?

My last Nora Gaughan outing was this:

It's the Elodie shrug from Gaughan's first Berroco book, knit in Shibui sock yarn. Way comfortable. But if you want to knit it, check out the pattern corrections at the Berroco web site. There's a major oops in the lace set-up row. Kristen and I sent in a fix, which they posted immediately. Without the fix, when you do the final stitch drops for the lace pattern, every other one of them will unravel right through the ribbing, leaving it in tatters. Funny, on the page it looks like such a little tiny proofreading error, a misplaced YO in that one row. But there you are.

Finished the entrelac shrug out of Kureyon sock yarn, even wore it to the Apple Store yesterday (I was considering taking a mortgage out on one of their black stools at the tutoring table, but I think I'm done there for awhile). Also comfortable. The shrug, that is. Liked it so much that I've got another one in the works for spring made of non-wool Noro. It helps that I've taken to keeping a knitting journal where I note what I'm experimenting with, yarn, needles, and pattern directions if I'm making it up as I go along. Which I'm doing more and more these days, for no good reason that I can ascertain. I can actually tell you how I made the Kureyon sock shrug. Sometimes I just amaze myself. Anyone who has actually seen my office/studio is probably saying about now, "Who is this woman and what has she done with Lisa?"