Time flies when you're busy knitting!

I've been working pretty steadily on my Mr Greenjeans sweater. It's turning out lovely, although I'm afraid the bottom will look stretched rather than hanging freely. I have large hips, you see. It makes me think I should have not gone down a needle size for my ribbing, but I'm certainly not brave enough to rip out 9 inches of ribbing and cables for my own vanity, especially when I'm down to 2 or 3 repeats until I bind off the bottom!! Then there will be the sleeves and the edging. The only way to make things better that I see is to lose some inches on these hips!!

You can see my lovely ribbing although it's grown significantly since this picture was taken.

I've also started another pair of socks, my first from the toe up. And my first with a pattern. It's hard not to have firsts when you're only on your third pair of socks, though, right? For my birthday last week, my friend gave me Wendy D. Johnson's book Toe Up Socks for Every Body. It's got a ton of cute socks assuming you like lace, cables and colorwork!

I had this great sock weight blue yarn with sparkles in it, so I decided to find a pattern that I thought would look nice in sparkles. I picked Crocus because it seemed pretty and not too too fussy for the pattern to out shine the sparkles or vice versa. Now, not being a lace person and having only made two pairs of socks, I figured sock patterns must use sock yarn, right? It wasn't until I got to the first row of the pattern when I realized that my toe might even be too big for my husband that I checked the pattern information. I had been so concerned with getting the toe up magic loop stuff working that I completely skipped the part where the pattern was done in lace weight on size 0s! 0s!! I don't even like using 3s which is what I was using with my lovely blue sparkle yarn!

There I was at a crossroads. Do I try to continue or do I sack it all, stick my brand new book with the pile of other pattern books and get back to working on my sweater? I decided to undo the rows until I had the right number of stitckes for the small sock and see if that might fit my foot. I tried it on before even starting the pattern, and it seemed to be fine. Possibly a tad loose, but tolerable.

I went on to the lace pattern and completed my first run of the 16 line pattern from the chart (a big first) and everything is looking really good together! The pattern is visable, the yarn is sparkley, and it seems to be fitting my foot pretty well. What do you think?

In other news, Maryland Sheep and Wool is TOMORROW!!! I'm soooo excited!! I've been waiting for this since we decided to move to Maryland last April. I don't even know what to expect, but I'm sure it will be fantastic all the same. I've convinced my husband to go with me, and tonight we'll be staying with a friend who lives a tad closer to the Howard County Fairgrounds than we do. Then we'll all make our way out tomorrow morning for yarny fun!

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