I'm Back!

I can't believe it's been so long since my last post, though I should hardly be surprised. I'm enjoying my first day off in two weeks. Did I mention before that I'm in retail? Most of the year I work behind the scenes as an office manager, doing the scheduling, payroll, receiving, some buying and generally putting out fires as needed. But as Thanksgiving approaches I'm needed more and more on the sales floor as extra help. Of course I still have all my regular work to do too, so 60-70 hour work weeks are pretty much the norm for me in December. I'm not complaining (though my feet still are!) I just wanted folks to know my lack of blogging lately hasn't been due to a lack of interest, just a lack of time.

I did manage to finish the Silk Garden project I was working on, the Noro Striped Scarf which I gave to my father yesterday. It's made of two skeins each of colors #221 and #226.

This was my first project with Silk Garden and I love it except for all the knots. The knots are really aggravating. Six knots in four skeins and three of the knots joined very different colors. I made the mistake of not rewinding the the skeins into balls first, otherwise I would have been able to foresee some of these problems. I tried to avoid having very abrupt color changes and after weaving in far too many loose ends for such a simple knit, I was pleased enough with the end result to immediately start another one for my husband. I'm even happier with the colors I picked for his scarf, #206 on the left and #86 on the right.
Unfortunately this is about as far as I got on this scarf which was meant to be a Christmas present. Fortunately my hubby was quite understanding, especially when I explained I waited for him to fall asleep first every night so that I could work on it in secret. I was having trouble staying awake long enough to work on it after my long days at work. So here I am, stuck having to knit on a fun project with beautiful yarn on my first completely free day off in weeks. I think I'll go get to it right now.