Yarn Along: Wrist Warmers with Colorwork

Rug space in front of the window is in really high demand

It's been awhile since I've picked up any knitting.  I think it took that long for my brain to recover from the anaesthesia.  For a few weeks now I've been glancing at my yarn stash, wondering when I would feel up for it again.

I had been meaning to make some nice wrist warmers, and the extra skeins of similar-weight yarn inspired me to try a few rounds of colorwork.  I made up the pattern, but I got some of the math wrong the first go-around - or maybe it was reading a really exciting book out loud and knitting at the same time.  Or chatting with friends and knitting.  Or being climbed on my the 3-year old and knitting.  Any of those.

The first one turned out really lovely, but needs a few adjustments.  I'm trying out the modifications on the next one, and I think I'll knit a couple for gifts, too.  And then at that point I might have another free pattern - another wrist-warmer thing.  Well, they're easy. 

We are just finishing Hexwood by Diana Wynn Jones, one of my favorite authors.  This particular book was really good.  I read it first, then Ethan took it and read it, and I read it out loud to the big kids, who loved it.

It's a science-fiction/fantasy blend, and I love the way she blended the two together.  The antagonist characters are equal parts appalling and hilarious.  It's a story about a weird old machine put on earth by the leaders of an inter-galactic corporation that exploits the resources of the galaxy, woven into the King Arthur myths. 

It might sound unlikely, but it was very fun to read.  The way the story is unfolded, you can't tell what's going on at first.  Time and space get switched around.  Everything seems muddled and strange.  Little bits of information are given here and there - some you don't pick up on the first read through.  At the end, the whole story is laid out for you and (most) everything becomes clear so that you have the sense of putting a puzzle together as you read.  That made it a really fun read-aloud book, because everyone was trying to guess what was happening.