alisonknits

Birdbrain

This lovely robin has been visiting the tree outside my dining room window several times a day for the last three or four days.  How picturesque, I thought, the first time he showed up.  Then one of the cats spied him and stalked for a while.  That was pretty interesting to watch as well.

But every time he visits us, he keeps flying into the glass trying to get into the house.  It's so sad.  He's not hitting the glass very hard, so I hope it's not hurting him, but man.  You'd think he'd learn after all these days and his many, many attempts at flying through the window.

The husband thinks we should just open the window and adopt him as a pet.  Now that is birdbrained.

Update:

A quick (though temporary) solution seemed to be to put stickies on the window so that the robin would figure out it was a window.  It worked... although I did catch him looking for sticky to sticky with a confused look on his birdie face.  (What? You don't think I can read bird expressions?)

Cable-Down Completed

Specs...

Yarn: Lang Soft Shetland, in garnet
Needles: Knit Picks Options size 7
Pattern: Cable-Down Raglan by Stefanie Japel, from Interweave Knits, Spring '07
Modifications: see below, and my previous post about the raglan increases.

For better or worse, it's still sweater weather here in New England, and I'm glad at least so that I can wear this sweater a couple times (please let it only be a couple times...) before it warms up around here.

This was a really enjoyable sweater to knit, and I'm thinking about making up my own design in this general style, but in cotton, for spring/summer wear.  I think this neckline is attractive, and it was so satisfying to finish knitting the second sleeve, weave in the ends, and put the sweater on!  No sewing involved, not one little bit.  Woo hoo!

A few observations: the options for the length of this sweater are quite limited by the approximately 4" tall main cable motif.  In the pattern, she tells you to go to a certain length, about 1-2" apart for each of the sizes, ending on pattern row 30.  But I don't know how you could stop at those intervals given those 30 row pattern repeats.  Also, I was picky enough to calculate where I wanted to start the waist cables based on what would allow me to end both patterns on the last row of the 2 patterns - one of the motifs is 28 rows, and the other is 30 rows, so it took a little extra planning.

For the sleeves, I expected to have to end the smaller cables somewhere other than on the last row of the pattern, since I hadn't been thinking about where to start them, I just started when the pattern told me to.  However, it miraculously worked out and I ended both cables on the same row as I did on the body.  This was fortuitous, and wouldn't have occurred if I had knit a 3/4 sleeve as the pattern called for, but I had decided to knit a long sleeve.  It was just a happy coincidence, clearly a reward from the Knitting Goddess for my forethought on the body, right?

One sort of annoying thing that I might change were I to knit this again, is that the borders at the bottom of the body and sleeves flare a bit, because the cables pull in, and there are no decreases to make the stockinette/reverse stockinette border the same width as the main pattern.  However, I'm a fan of bell sleeves, so I don't care enough to re-do it.  Just a word to the wise...

In spite of these small complaints, I do really love the sweater.  It fits well (after another bout of ripping when I discovered that the 41" size was too big, and switched to the 38"), and I love the design overall.

Tomorrow I'm off to NYC for a conference with a few members of the youth group I work with.  Six teenagers in the big city for three days... think I'll live to tell the tale?  It's a little weird to be going to New York and probably won't have time to see anyone or visit any of my old haunts.  Must make a recreational trip back to the Big Apple one of these days soon...