Look ye below – methinks I see some sleeves! And a back! Made of yarn! And not connected!

Yessiree bobaloo, I am knitting a sweater in pieces. Vertigo by Louisa Harding (I added it to Ravelry but it’s not listed now; it may have to be approved. It’s in my notebook, however, under “auragone”). Since the photo was taken I have finished the back and cast on and knit two rows of the left front. My hands hurt, however, from the cabling and that was all I could bear for tonight. The fronts shouldn’t take too long; I cast on for the back on Thursday and finished tonight, and did the normal stuff in between (worked, cleaned, ate pizza, painted a wall, attended a kid birthday party, slept, etc.) so I am hoping to zip through the fronts. I have a feeling the right front is what will kill me – by then I will want to be DONE with the thing. It was my goal to finish this by the end of January, and that I doubt very seriously, as I am getting 51 papers tomorrow and have to hold the same number of conferences with students the rest of the week.

And then there’s that issue of seaming. Which I’ve never done. GAH! Tips? Please let me know!
But I do love the sweater so far – I’m using Beaverslide’s worsted in Mountain Twilight, a very pretty dusky purple with flecks of hot pink. I think I’m ready to knit things in colors besides green-blue and blue-green (and therefore I won’t be showing you the beanie I made in Dream in Color “Good Luck Jade.” But damn it looks good with my auburn hair – yep, I dyed it. Anyhoo.) Here’s a close-up of the yarn and cables:

In this pic the color is a bit gray – not entirely accurate.

In the top pic, you might also notice a furry creature. I now have two black cats (and a beautiful doggie as you all know). Ladies and gentlemen, meet Iggy.

We adopted him from the local pet shelter (there is one in my little town, complete with a very cute storefront and kittens in the window. We were powerless!) just before New Year’s. We had seen the little guy several times over at least a month, and all of us, including my dh, loved his cute little tufts of hair sprouting from his ears and the tinge of gray on his mane and tail. Not to mention his squirrelly nature. He was just very sweet to us and playful. The kids were DYING to have him, but both dh and I were apprehensive, about money for the adoption fee and how Simon the grouch would do, now that he had finally accepted Gracee after a year or more of giving her hell. But we kept seeing kittystill at the shelter and then one day the kids went to see him and he came running to them, and an elderly woman was there and she said, “You know, that cat has a connection with you. It just seems like he knows you.” So we struck a deal – the kids would each pay 1/3 of his adoption fee. And so Iggy became ours.

The eerie thing? I did the math and discovered that he was born sometime around Bernie’s death. Huh… And this kitten acts very, very similarly to the Bern-Tern although, aside from his absolute driving need to eat my yarn, he’s a bit better behaved and a little more love-y. As dh put it, “Bernie turned it up to 11.” Iggy? He can get close to 10, but no further. I adore him. He’s become very attached to me and I love that face. It’s hard to tell in the pics but he has a bit of a schnoz. I dig it. Simon would like to murder him but he’s been mostly good, and Iggy just keeps on trucking. Gracie loves to play with Iggy, although the Igster is still getting used to what that looks like. On the name: the youngest named him. Half the time I call him Bernie and dh likes Biggie, and at the shelter he was Toby, so he can be anything from Ignatius Tobias to Iggy Toby to, well, plain old Bernie. I forget a lot.

The sweater and the Igster are the two new things in my life… Now it’s time to present a decision. Once I blog the FO of this sweater, I’ve decided to post no more to Auragone Knitting. I’m developing my writer’s web site, and I plan on blogging there from time to time about writing and odds and ends. Since I have really been an unreliable knitblogger pretty much the whole time I’ve had this blog, I think it makes sense to close shop. And then there’s Ravelry – I figure I can put up all my goodies there and over time, update all my past FOs and stash and keep up with all of you. The best thing about knitblogs, for me, are reading what all you folks do. I love, love, LOVE reading new posts and finding new blogs and searching for tips and techniques. And I’ve made a few pals along the way, which I GREATLY appreciate. In that spirit, if you’d like to know the URL of my new web site (give me a couple weeks to put it up, though), please send me an e-mail (auragone AT gmail DOT com) and I’ll let you know. Until then, a few more posts to go!