This week's mouse is named Groovy:
He's adorable. I am going to go nuts making brown mice. Maybe I can jazz them up!
I have not knit much. My 20-rows-a-day plan got sidetracked when I woke up one morning, after only two or three days of 20-rowing, with a severe pain in my one good hand. I decided to take a break from knitting for a couple days and did only one catnip mouse and 2 rows on the sweater. Since then, I've done only ten rows a day on the sweater, or 15 rows a day on the man sock. It is slow going, but slow progress is better than none.
Therefore, my Itchy-Scratchy sweater is not yet done the back, because it is getting heavy, and I really can't handle that. But I still do several rows when I work on it.
I have it done to about two inches beyond the armhole. Poor sweater, will it ever be done? The good news is, my technique seems to be working, as I have not had a recurrence of the hideous pain in my hand.
My sock is a lot easier to knit, as it's lighter and uses size 1 needles instead of size 8 needles.
I'm knitting them toe up. I like that way better now, since when I am finished, the toe is already grafted. I just can't graft with Kitchener stitch anymore, and I have tried. It comes out looking horrible. That's not to say I won't do it anymore, but I am trying to let it go and accept that toes of socks done that way are not going to be perfect as they were before. There is no really good way to hold the piece in order to graft it; you have to turn it around a lot and then it gets funky. As you can imagine, I am not letting go of this as well as I should, but until then, I'll make toe-up socks.
Except for these:
This is my current ball of adoration, pictured with "Saxony" socks by Lisa Lloyd in A Fine Fleece. I just love that design and that whole book. It is one small step to knitting all the items in the book before I die. The yarn is Ball and Skein's "Sophia" (80% merino/10% cashmere/10& nylon) in color Bittersweet. It is lovely. I have 1 skein, 400 yards, which is enough for socks, but maybe I'll look on Ravelry to see what other projects people are making with it. There are some lovely scarves in Victorian Lace Today that would be nice, too. It's fun to ponder!
