Fair-isle Fingerless Mitts Get Fingers

I mentioned earlier in the week that I have been working on a fair isle project.

It is a project for a gift that was completely finished in June 2011. I followed the pattern exactly.
Heather's Mitts by Spilly Jane


 (There are three because of a gauge error.  The first one was practice)
The pattern is great but my friend here has small hands and they trumpet out. Plus she mentioned that it would be great if they had convertible mitten tops.  So, I stole them back, frogged out the top, re-knit the ribbing and then picked up the stitches on the back and knit up the top.





Then I will do the second. It is lots of fun because I had to make my own choices on lots of it. No pattern to follow. :-)

Knitting in public

Bugs, my 7 year old son, went off to Grandpa's house today and left me home with just Boo, 4 year old son.  I asked Boo what he would like to do and he said Monkey Joe's. Imagine a warehouse with 10 big moon bounces plus video games and party rooms and you have the basic idea. Imagine also that it is 14 degrees outside on a Saturday and you can guess that most of Winchester with small children was there.

Boo ran around getting on all the moon bounces and I congratulated myself on dressing the child in brown/orange/blue and white stripe shirt.  It stood way out so I could see him from where I was sitting.  I still worried as I sat knitting, with him in eye sight.  Lots of parents were following their children around, huddled in front entrance of each moon bounce for their child to get back out.  I didn't want to do that because I hate standing in crowds but did that make me less of a parent?  Would he be safer if I followed him around?  Then my brain caught up with this train of thought.  I am a great parent and if he gets hurt, it will not matter if I am 1' away or 10' away, he will still be hurt.

Sometimes I would lose sight of him and I would worry that he was hurt or that someone was going to take him (kinda hard to do with the security system MJ's has in place but my anxiety has little to do with reality.) When this happened, I would take a deep breath and tell myself I had to finish a row before I went looking for him. Only once did he not show up before the end of the row and it turned out he was talking to a pretty female employee on his way up a slide.

So, knitting in public keeps me sane. It calms me down and it prevents me from acting before I think.

He fell asleep on the way home and I got to listen to NPR. Win-Win.

PS. I was knitting on my SKYP in the Woods socks.