this and that

1. I was out of town for most of a week at the beginning of November, and didn't realize until yesterday that during that time the new Interweave Knits had arrived in the mail! My husband had put it on my nightstand under other mail, and I only found it on Friday, nearly a week after I got back. If you want my honest opinion, it was less disappointing than usual, but nothing really jumped out and said KNIT ME RIGHT NOW!!! I used to love IK, but the last couple years every issue has just been full of blah. I may let my subscription run out.

2. On the other hand, the new Twist Collective was launched a few days ago, and it's full of lovely patterns. I like nearly everything in this issue, especially Scribe, Aldershot and several sweaters, most of all Granville and Burrard, though I quite like Porto and Shoofly as well. My one gripe with TC is that the sizing of the sweaters is pretty hit-or-miss. I'm pretty small and distinctly not busty, so I have a narrow range of sizes I'm willing to knit for myself, about 30-33" including sweaters with positive ease. When you only measure 32" around after inhaling good and deep, a little positive ease goes a long way, is all I'm sayin'. Anyway, some sweaters in TC jump from 28" around (too tight! I'm over 30, yo) to 34" or bigger, or they just start off too big to begin with (Burrard, alas, is 38" for the smallest size, so I would definitely have to adjust the gauge to make it so I'm not swimming in it, though that design is so beautiful it's probably worth it). It's not like I expect designers to size everything in 1" increments, but it's damn irritating when their sizes don't appeal.

3. It's just as well. I've got plenty of Christmas knitting to do before I can start another sweater for myself. This year it's mittens. Mittens, mittens, mittens. Maybe some socks, if I can dredge up the motivation to finish them (SSS-second sock syndrome- hitting me hard lately!), and perhaps a hat or two. In the picture below, you can see I've got a good start on some mittens:

You can also see in that picture how much I hate knitting the thumbs. So small and fiddly and annoying, mitten thumbs are. I'll probably put them all off to the end and spend an entire evening doing nothing but knitting thumbs, at which point I'll bitch and moan about how I should have finished each one as I was going along, but there you are. At least I have this much done before Thanksgiving already, eh?

4. I really really want to knit myself a sweater. It's probably just to counter all the mittens I've been knitting, plus the fact that my clothes all totally suck (hard to look nice in stained, stretched out t-shirts from Target, yes?) and I hate shopping so the next best thing is to knit something.