Knit-o-tron 3000

With the extent of my Christmas day knitting limited to casting on, I made up for lost time with an absurd amount today. While America rushed to the stores to exchange gifts and make additional purchases, I got cranking on a hat for myself. And by cranking I mean I knitted 8.25 inches and am ready to begin the decreases. It's outrageous, really.

There wasn't much happening around the family homestead. One of my brothers was flying into Chicago and taking the train to South Bend, a trip that lasted a lot longer than he had anticipated. The night before I tried to tell my dad how long it would take. I'd considered hopping on the train and meeting him at O'Hare. Once I saw that I'd have to be on the train by 6:30 a.m. and wouldn't get back until 4:00 p.m. at the earliest, I nixed that plan. It would have granted me plenty of knitting time, but I had that without hours on mass transportation.

Instead I plugged away at my latest WIP and intervened on numerous occasions when my mom made mistakes on her first scarf. It felt good to know that I could identify her errors and undo the minor damage. I showed her how to unknit stitches, not that I think she understands yet. (Hey, it took me awhile.) It's been easy to explain because she's using variegated yarn. The old stitch is usually a different color from the stitch being undone.

In the process of repairing her mistakes, I feel like I'm now more comfortable with frogging. It can still be a tense situation when removing the project from the needle and ripping out stitch by stitch, but my frogging attempt with her scarf was a calamity-free affair. Cleaning up the mess was much faster this way and allowed for spotting the problems better.

She's doing well. The time commitment may be her undoing in the long run, but she likes knitting for the time being.

There was a visit to a local yarn shop. Heckman's Quilting and Yarn in South Bend held a greater variety of yarn than I thought it might considering the order of the supplies in the store's name. I didn't realize that the trip was predicated on my mom purchasing yarn for me to make her one of the seaman's caps. She prefers the style and fit over the ribbed beanie I made her for Christmas, which I'll admit to being a shade tight. Truth be told, I'm getting a little tired of making these hats, but that's to be expected when I practically knit one in a day. She selected Cascade 220 in a deep purple shade that should be a fun color to work with.

If all goes well, my hat will be done when you hear from me tomorrow. I'm leaving for home sometime in the afternoon. The visit here has been less stressful than I anticipated it might be, but it will still be nice to return to my place.