Technologized Again

My laptop is home! True, there's no telling how much longer she'll last, but it's here. Any day could be the last, which you think would make me more diligent about backing up my work. I guess that's the lazy optimist in me. Besides, I'm not exactly doing rocket science on this thing. (I don't want her to know, but I'm already shopping for a new one on the side.)

I found my camera as well. It was right where I left it. Now I feel just a little sorry for blaming my husband for taking it. (He could have!) The darn thing was left in the glove box after our trip to the North Shore.

These shots were taken a few weeks ago, so the color isn't quite as brilliant as I'm sure it is by now. On the day we were up, it was sunny as we were driving, but by the time we got out for a hike at Split Rock, a bank of clouds and fog blew in from off the Lake. We took our usual walk to the top of Day Hill where this lone fireplace sits. According to some, it was built by Mr. Day as a way to persuade his smitten to marry him and live along the lake. She obviously was not as smitten as he was, or his idea of a dream home scared her off, because it's all that was completed on the point. We've been visiting this spot for years and have yet to follow through on our plans to bring a picnic lunch and some supplies to start a fire. I guess Mr. Day is still having trouble getting people to stick around. It is a great view, and no trip to the North Shore would be complete without walking to the top.

Now that I've got my technology back, I thought I should offer up a picture of the miles of cables that will soon be St. Brigid. The front and back are complete, and I have another repeat or so on the sleeves before I can knit the braided cable shoulder piece. Cables are great. They can make a knitter look so good, and you don't have to be very clever at all to pull them off. This is the easiest pattern that I've knit in awhile. No shaping, no math. So far, I have only made one modification from the original pattern. I originally thought about knitting the sweater in the round, and the alternating double seed stitch pattern on either side would not have worked out even on the seam, so even though I ended up knitting the sweater in pieces, I still switched off the seed stitch order on the sides. Does this make sense?

Let me explain. In the pattern, the first row looks like this...
XXXOOOXXX--All the other cables--XXXOOOXXX
(The X's being knit stitches, the O's being purls.) If you knit it like this, you'd be seaming an X to an X and the continuity of the alternating double seed stitch would be lost. When I knit it, I decided to make the first row look like this...
OOOXXXOOO--All the other cables--XXXOOOXXX
Now, when I seam it, I will be seaming an X to an O. True, I don't have the symmetry on the front, but that will bug me less than it would have to lose that symmetry going around the sweater. (Is this the definition of anal?)

I'm excited to see how it looks, and the cool weather just around the corner is coaxing me to finish.