Last night was not a knitting night. It was an eating night. In honor of my birthday, John took me to The Dining Room at the Ritz Carleton Hotel in Chicago. Definitely an awesome dinner! It reminded me of the wonderful food I had while I was in Paris in early December. Truly a night to remember, especially since I got to share it with someone who goes well beyond making my life a better place to be.
Tonight, however, was a knitting night. My Noro sweater was practically crying to me from one of our spare bedrooms where it was blocking. And who could blame it? All pinned down, blocked and ready to go.
When I unpinned it, I almost expected it to go back to its original posture. Instead, it held its new ground and just felt gorgeous. The drape is much different now that it is blocked. I can't believe I've avoided something that produces such wonderful results for so long. Blocking is definitely now going to be a part of my knitting religion.
I also wanted to try out another new thing: mattress stitching the seams. Mattress seams were something that I just had some kind of inability to do before. I'd read the instructions, try, fail and go back to my faithful old backstitch. But I after going through the same routine on the first raglan seam on this sweater, I decided I was going to do it until I got it right.
My perserverence paid off this time -- I now know a new technique and my sweater has much nicer seams than it would have otherwise. The colors didn't match up quite as evenly as I would have liked, but I still think it looks pretty good.
Tomorrow night, the collar and the finish seaming. The next pictures will definitely be the real thing!
