I had a relaxing weekend, for two reasons: my back problem had flared up and it rained a lot. The latter kept me indoors, while the former prevented knitting. Or it ought to have. I kept finding myself holding needles. Fortunately, there was also a lot of Yarn Harlot and Wendy Knits reading going on, too.

The beau got out the welder, an old g-clamp and some scrap metal and whipped this up for me:

A clamp for my wool winder. (Obviously not the wool winder itself.) He even mixed some blue and white paint together to make a shade close to the blue on the wool winder. He got it pretty close.

He’s a sweetie.

I kept finding myself listening to knitcasts while working on the Liquorish Allsorts jumper. In one of the CastOff podcasts a guest knitter recalled how he tried knitting the very pattern I’m using – Elizabeth Zimmerman’s raglan sleeve jumper – and quotes her saying that once you begin the raglan decreases it zooms along. He didn’t find himself zooming along at all.

This had me laughing heartily, as I had reached exactly the same place in the pattern and was thinking exactly the same thing.

However, last night I did find myself noticing how the rows were taking less and less time to knit. Suddenly I can see the end nearing. It’s exciting.

I’m still a bit worried that I have enough black wool, but it’s clear I have more than enough orange, pink and white. I was hoping to make a matching beanie, too. Trouble is, I don’t want to mail order just one ball of black in order to do it, but I guess if I run out of wool for the jumper I’ll make sure I order enough to make a beanie as well.

I frogged the Jaywalker socks back to the toe on the weekend too. The yarn is a little thinner than the usual sock yarn, and the foot of the sock was knitting up a bit too tight. And I had suspected that the reason the original pattern says to cast on so many stitches is because the zig zags make a narrower tube than straight knitting.

I made eight more stitches to the 60 I started with – one for each panel of the zig zag – and it’s coming up a better fit. The original number is another eight stitches more – 76 – so I’m reassured that I’m still knitting a skinnier sock than the original.

Finally, I finished Wendy Knits on Saturday morning. It was a very enjoyable read, with moments of humour, some history about the knitter from before I started reading her blog, and references to things that have happened since. Yet it’s not all anecdotes. There are patterns and lots of knitting advice. It’s an enjoyable read and a good resource, too.

It’s a new phenomenom, reading a book by a blogger. I liked it.

Oh, and I should add that Amazon are sending me a copy to replace this one. Hopefully it won’t also have an upside down section!