The dire threats of weather men are manifesting as heavy rain and gray skies instead of the threatened snow.

A day for indoor pursuits: cats, tea, making a necklace, and gloating over yesterday’s good mail:

A crow patch from bird&b at etsy.
And all the way from Australia…

…a bracelet by Helle at gooseflesh, which I immediately put on and wore out to an art opening. It kept me smiling in the middle of a roomful of networking arteeests.

Subway Knitter is a blog devoted to knitting in public. Mystery Knitter of the Week is my favorite part; a feature in which she shows covert photos of strangers knitting on the subway, in airports, and even walking down the street.

Highly entertaining, although in future I may be torn between focusing on my commuting project and scanning for sneaky photographers.

It may be November before I have a picture of my newly completed beret on my head. In the meantime I can tell you that it’s cute and comfy, and give you a picture of sunlight shining through the knitting, exposing the incidental nifty little flower at the center.

Sunday night and I’m still tired. A month into adjusting to a new schedule, new outside work, and increased commuting, I figure it’ll take another month or two to recover my stride.

I’m spending daily chunks on public transportation. A week ago I watched the man in front of me on the bus crochet a hat at high velocity as we bumped along. Just when I was wondering if he was following a pattern, he carefully took off the wonderful hat he was wearing (and had obviously made) and placed the little hat-to-be, yarmulke-style, on his head, checking that the shaping was correct. By the time I got off he had it down to his ears.

Inspired by this sighting as well as by Jude over at Spirit Cloth who quilts while commuting, and having run out of reading material, I have started knitting while traveling. I thought I’d feel self-conscious but I’m far too absorbed for that. And when standing on the subway, I’m far too busy keeping my balance. (I’ve found that bracing against the door frame and keeping my knees bent works well.)

It’s amazing how much I can get done in these in-between times. I finished a beret in a few days, a bigger version of the Purl Bee pattern, which is being blocked as I write, stretched over a dinner plate.

Another excavated photo; I had completely forgotten knitting this elbow patch for my college roommate’s sweater. This could be a good solution for both my moth-damaged woolens and my unused box of knitted swatches.

I’ve had a considerable amount of dental work done over the past year. I go to a university dental school where the students are required to seek the approval of faculty before they do any thing, which makes for a lot of waiting. I usually bring a book, but yesterday I had my knitting.

There was a classic rock station playing, and here’s what I have to report: You’re The One That I Want from Grease makes for some serious speed-knitting. Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly With His Song, not so much.

I am ridiculously pleased with my fingerless mittens. This whole blocking the knitting properly was magical; they’re soft and smooth, and they fit well at my wrists, a bonus just when I had resigned myself to their slight saggyness.

This little bird is whispering, “Put on all your brightest clothes and dance around the room.”

I finished the first of my fingerless mittens last night. My cursory reading of the pattern led to the increases being in the wrong place, and offset instead of symmetrical, but I’m surprisingly un-bothered by this imperfection. Besides, there’s the second mitten in which to get it right.

Here’s the close-to-finished mitt:

and a close up of the flower pattern:

Stash is almost as good a word as swatch. It conjures squirrels, eccentrics, and tubs filled with yarn - all good things.

Liza sent me this article which argues that we should change the way we think about our stashes of craft supplies and consider them instead a collection. There must be something in the air because the Yarn Harlot had just posted about “pet skeins” of yarn, and The Next Stop Will Be was coming out about his accumulation of watches.

I love collections, like with like. As a young teenager I told my grandmother that I wanted to collect something, and soon afterwards she gave me three small boxes.

The silver one in the middle is from her time in India and still contains red pigment used for bindis.

Over the years those three boxes were joined by more, like this one from a friend who traveled to China:

and these four in my bathroom.

Good thing she didn’t get me started on something large!

I like that word. Swatch. Today I swatched. I shouldn’t have but I couldn’t help myself; once in a while this woman has to swatch.

The temperature has dropped to normal winter frostbite levels, and I find myself glove and mitten-less. I could buy a pair and be done but instead I’m lusting over the Endpaper Mitts from See Euny Knit!, which also look good over at Knitting Box. I could just knit them, but I can’t seem to leave a good pattern alone; I feel compelled to modify it. It’s not you, pattern, it’s me.

The flower and bird motifs are adapted from Knitting in the Nordic Tradition by Vibeke Lind. This book has a dull cover that looks out of date, but don’t pass it by if you’re a knitter, the content is juicy and inspiring.

Feel free to place bets on when my hands will be properly attired.