Jobo Designs

Have you wondered where I disappeared to?  I?ve been hiding out, but with good reason this time?   My knitting time has been consumed by a new necessity:

Our Daughter Andromeda Lynn - ?Romy? was born Dec 30, 2011 ? at 6:23, weighing in at 7 lbs 13 oz.

Here we are at around 3 hours after her birth? the first time I got to hold her in my arms.  We had a bit of a challenging first meeting, and unfortunately we both needed a little help immediately after the delivery, so we didn?t really get to hang out and get acquainted for a few hours.  I?ll likely tell the whole birth story at some point when I have a bit more time to really write it out properly.

Romy, her Daddy and I are starting to get settled in now? I can?t believe that she will be 3 weeks old tomorrow!  We had some troubles with breastfeeding (which I hear now is a pretty common occurrence) but we are starting to move through them and things are gradually getting better with time.  I still haven?t managed to do much knitting, but I have really high hopes today that I might get to do a few rows on the socks I started the morning that we went to the hospital for labor to be induced.  I had knit about 3 inches worth of sock before the contractions got to be too intense to knit through :)

Welcome to the world little girly? oh all of the wonderful things Mommy wants to teach you and show you?

I gave in to a weak moment last week and ordered some pretty new sock yarns.  I wasn’t going to do that again before the baby arrives, just in case I don’t have time to knit much over the next little bit.  These were just too pretty to resist though:

This is Dream in Color Starry (Sorry for the link absence… their site is under construction)… which has little sparkly strands of silver incorporated right into the yarn… resulting in a shimmery sparkly yarn.  I’m not sure just how sparkly it looks knit up, but I’ve liked the way other people’s projects looked.  Lately I have a thing for neutrals and browns.  I might end up doing a pair of Cookie A. Socks with this or maybe some Hunter Hammersen Socks… hmmm so many great choices!

And This is String Theory’s Caper Sock… a bouncy, deeply jewel colored, Cashmere Merino Blend.  I tried to capture the gentle sheen and depth of shade… and this is the closest I can get.  This is really really garnet colored yarn.  It’s soft, squishy, and I love it to pieces.  This will need to become a shawl for me.  Not for anybody else… but to be wrapped around my shoulders and neck.  Now I just need to decide… which Romi Hill Pattern will it be :)

After the last pair of plain ribbed socks? I needed something with a little more Interest.  Flash. Pizazz.  Something less mind numbing.  I had purchased a copy of the Paul Atwell Socks from Emily over at the Family Trunk Project some time ago, and stashed it away for a rainy day.

Well I guess it must be rainy enough this week? I decided to cast on a pair.  I really like the ?gull? stitch pattern.  It looks complicated, but really isn?t.  It?s a 4 row repeat with a ?loose? float that you tie down by catching in a stitch in 2 rows time.  I also like that these are cuff down.  I don?t have a problem with toe-up designs, but I just find sometimes that the leg and cuff of a sock can be the most time consuming part? where you have pattern spanning the entire row for such a long way (as compared to the foot where usually half of the stitches are plain stockinette? that seems to make things run a lot faster for me!)  Surprisingly enough, I don?t even mind the seed stitch that lines up between the gulls.  This is weird for me, because as previously stated, I find knitting ribbing to be heinously boring, and seed stitch is just as bad.  I can do up the 4 row repeat (in a 72 stitch round) in a flash, and find the whole thing quite amusing and engaging.  I?m a messed up knitter.  Of this, I am aware.

2 more Gull repeats to the heel!  These are going to fly off the needles? which is surprising, since I?m making them ?Man Sized? in the 72 stitch per round, likely Men?s Size 10 Shoe.  I?ll never know why I can knit complex patterns so much more efficiently than ribbing.  huh.  Makes zero sense to me.