SSKAL 2017

What a busy summer it's been!  I can't quite fathom how it's already September and the little boys are already back to school!  We finished off summer holidays with a bang and took an amazing ten day trip out West making it as far as Revelstoke, BC.  It was fantastic and we did so many amazing things on our trip!  One of the things that I did on the trip was knit.  Did you know that driving across Manitoba and Saskatchewan leaves a whole lot of time for knitting when you're not actually the driver?  A WHOLE LOT.

Thanks to the trip and hours upon hours of knitting time, I was able to finish my project for the Very Shannon Summer Sweater Knit Along.  The KAL ends today and I think this may be one of the few times I wasn't hoping for a deadline extension.  (Good thing too - Shannon mentioned recently that there wasn't going to be a vote for an extension this time!)

When the SSKAL was announced, since the rules allow for finishing up WIPs, I decided that I was going to take the opportunity of motivation of the KAL to finish up a project that had been languishing in my knitting bag for a few months and hopefully knit another project.  The project in question was Little Man's new Greyson sweater.  I had started it in March when I realized that there was no way he could squeeze himself into his original Greyson anymore.  Of course I shouldn't have been surprised.  He'd been wearing it since he was four years old.  No wonder it was too short and too tight!

I let him pick out yarn from Webs and he'd chose red and black James C. Brett Aztec - an acrylic, alpaca blend that I think will prove to be soft and very cozy.  He also chose how he wanted the stripe pattern to be. The sweater knit up fairly quickly given the very little I worked on it and within a month or so I was done.  Except the neckline was horrendous.  I should have taken a before shot to show how bad it was because it defies description.  I'm not sure what I did, but all my centered double decreases were not centered. Nor were they even in line with each other.  It was a hot mess.  So I was frustrated and left the sweater laying in my knitting bag until about a week into the SSKAL.  Then I ripped that offending neckline out, picked up the stitches and had it done and looking good by the end of the evening.  It was perfect timing, because the next morning Little Man woke up feverish and miserable.  Shivering and cold he curled up in his brand new sweater claiming it made him feel much better.

A few days later I had the chance to wind the wool for Baby Boy's sweater, because his second Greyson had also long since been outgrown.  He had also chose the black Aztec yarn and then had picked out some Estelle Chunky - an acrylic, wool, nylon blend - from the lys in the city and planned his stripe pattern.  I was determined to get his sweater done in time for wearing in the mountains, so knit like the wind, working on it every spare moment I had, which unfortunately with work and other mundane things like taking care of the house and yard wasn't a whole lot.  Thank goodness the sweater is small!  I started it on August 14th and by the time we headed out on the  highway August 26th I had just put the sleeve stitches back on the needle.

By the time I put my knitting down just outside of Moose Jaw, SK. because it was too dark in the truck to see anymore I had one sleeve done and 18 rounds plus a cuff left to do on sleeve two.  That was a LONG drive!   The next morning I picked it up again and had the second sleeve and ends woven in about a half hour or so west of Swift Current, SK.   Good thing too.  The next morning when the boys crawled out of the tent in Drumheller, AB it was quite chilly.  Baby Boy was thrilled to have his new sweater to put on and stay cozy until the sun warmed everything up.

I had high hopes of getting the perfect finished object photo in the mountains, but trying to get photos of these two little goofballs when they're excited proves to be difficult, so I had to settle for this next one atop Whistler's Mountain in the Rockies.  You can sort of see the town of Jasper below through the smokey haze.  (No worries - there was quite a bit of land behind that rock they're standing on, it is just the angle that makes it look like they were perched on the very edge of the mountain!)

Finishing Baby Boy's sweater so quickly gave me loads more road knitting time, but I'll tell you about that project next time!  I've got to catch up on some housework and then get the boys out to their power skate workshop this afternoon, plus I'm sure if you've read this long, you probably have other things you need to be doing too! LOL

Just one other quick "housekeeping" thing before I leave off.  I want to apologize for how some things are looking on the blog lately.  As you may be aware, Photobucket, which is what I used for a few years for photos on the blog, suddenly changed their policies without any warning in the spring.  In order to keep the photos showing up from them on the blog, they want a fee of $399/year.  Not going to happen!  So I need to clean things up and re-upload photos, but unfortunately I've had no time to do so yet, so please bare with me while things are in a bit of a messy state.