Long Weekend Day Off

Oh it's so nice to be at home on a Monday because it's a holiday, and you are not using leave time, nor will you get grief from your co-workers when you go back to work on Tuesday!

Yes, today is my third day of the Columbus Day holiday weekend.  And yes, I'm well aware of all of the reasons why Columbus Day is evil, so please do not lecture me about it.  The bottom line for me is that it's a day off.  I'm never gonna say no to that.

Lots of knitting and knitting-related things happened on Saturday and Sunday, as well as of course other things.  It would have been really nice if the weather had cooperated, but the heat and humidity stuck around (and are still here today) and that was the annoying part.  We are getting rain leftover from Hurricane Nate, and I don't mind that, but it's just so uncomfortable.  Yuck.

Anyway, on Saturday I went to a friend's house because she had kindly offered to help me put my Custom Fit sweater together.  You may remember that I managed to successfully seam the shoulders, but even after watching many YouTube videos, could not understand the rest of how to seam the other pieces together.  Kathy (said friend) is a major sweater knitter, and I knew she would be a great person to help me. 

Well it turned out to be not just helpful, but a wonderful afternoon.  I got to meet her kitties, her pup, and we had a great time talking and laughing.  Best of all, I got one of the sleeves added to the sweater and now I "get" it - yay!  I'm going to finish up as much as I can today.  She had a set of these clips, and boy did it make things simpler!  I'd never seen them before, but you can bet I'm ordering a set for myself.  Kindly, she let me borrow hers to finish up my seaming.  She showed me a fairisle vest she is making for her trip to Fair Isle next July!  It's going to be a really gorgeous knit, and the trip she is taking sounds ridiculously amazing.  Included besides all the knitting and fiber stuff is tea and cakes every afternoon and wine with dinner - how could it NOT be perfect?!

So hopefully very soon I can show you an actual, seamed, finished sweater.  :-)

Also on  Saturday, I had put ingredients into the crockpot for dinner.  It was a recipe I had made up in my brain, and was really wanting to try.  It was something I thought would be really yummy for a cool, fall day.  I got tired of waiting for that, so went ahead and tried it.  It turned out to be so incredibly yummy!  I'm going to try and write up the basics of it so I can make it again when [someday] it is cool again.  If you are wondering, it was Potato-Mushroom-Sausage soup, and unlike many of the recipes I make up in my head it's a keeper.

Saturday was a very successful day.

Sunday was just as nice, if quieter.  Not a day to really be outside, as it rained on and off all day, but a good day for knitting.  I have been somewhat obsessively working on this:

Above is the bottom border of the Main Street pattern, which, as you may recall, was hard to get cast on because there were so many stitches and I kept having to start over.  Well, a week ago yesterday, I finally got things cast on properly, and with the help of many stitch markers, I finally got started.  I gotta tell you, once underway, this was pretty addictive and easy to memorize.  In this photo, I'm a little more than halfway through the bottom border, but as of last night, I finished it, so it's on to stockinette for a while.  When I started knitting this, I thought that I should have waited since it's really other than a cold weather knit.  But now I'm thinking it would be fine for this weather ...

We spent the rest of Sunday reading, I also did more knitting, and we had the football game on in the background.  After The Tim made dinner, we watched some shows we'd recorded last week.  So it was a quiet and pleasant Sunday.

Today I hope to seam at least a bit more of my sweater, clean up a couple of things around here, read a bit, and if I have the energy and/or desire, cast on some socks.  It's still rainy at the moment, so it's nice to not have to be out in it.

On the one hand, I'm glad it will be a short week as far as number of workdays go.  But this coming Friday night is Members' Night at work, which means I'll get to work at my usual 7 a.m., but not be able to make my way home until sometime after 9 p.m.!  So it will likely still seem like a long week.  Which means I want to make the most of today, that's for sure!