Wool For Brains

We’re having a bit of a cold snap at the moment. It snowed all day yesterday and as the temperatures are predicted to stay below freezing all day all week I can rely on it being white to the weekend even if it doesn’t snow again. The negatives are fairly obvious, yesterday I spent two hours walking to school and back which I wouldn’t have minded so much if there had been more than an hour between me getting home and setting out again. At least today school was closed so we didn’t have to make the effort to get there and maybe we’ll get through some of the films that we recorded over Christmas.

On the plus side, the light is good and there’s plenty of it. I can knit in black right up to about half past three when it starts to get dark, snow or no snow. This is handy because my new knitting is black. I know what you’re thinking (doesn’t she know better by now, what is she thinking of) but I have an excuse, it was supposed to be red. I know that penguins are usually black and white but when you live with children of a certain age then they come in a multitude of other colours too. When I offered to knit a penguin hot water bottle cover I was confident that it would be his favourite Club Penguin colours, red and white. I even had the cherry red Cascade 220 in my hand when I was struck speechless to find that he wanted a traditional black and white production. It was a good thing that I was speechless because the alternative would have been colourful profanity.

I originally intended to make Mr Popper’s penguin from the current issue of Knitty except that I hadn’t read the pattern. When I came to look at it (after I’d bought the yarn) I decided that it wasn’t fulled as much as I’d like so I started from scratch. I made my swatch and mistreated it in the sink until I ended up with the fabric I wanted then came up with the relevant numbers for stitches and rows and drafted out the white bib. The knitting will look more elongated than the sketch because as I knit I’m adding one extra row for every three drawn on paper (I’d like to say “for every three charted” but I think it’s clear that “charted” is overstating it a bit). I could have started with a figure of eight cast on like an enormous toe up sock and knitted it in the round but because I dislike purling on the wrong side of a tube I elected for flat knitting with a seam. I don’t like seaming either but I only have to do that once, unlike purling back which goes on forever. I’m good until I get to the shoulders, at which point I have to work out what to do about the head. By then I will be committed so I’ll have to knuckle down and sort out a beak of some sort because there will be no other choice.

I’ve just looked at the weather forecast for the week, I really think we ought to buy a shovel.