Greetings from New York

Times Square (woot!)



Central Park with skyscrapers in the background.



How much money the US owed at 17:25 yesterday!*

It's just a flying visit at the moment - we arrived yesterday afternoon and this morning we're catching a train up to Norwalk for my sister-in-law's wedding - but we'll be back on Sunday for a few more days. I'm really looking forward to checking out the New York yarn shops! I should have enough knitting to keep me going in the meantime. I'm currently knitting Melissa LaBarre's Garter Yoke Cardi (originally published in an issue of Knit1 but now available as a download from the Vogue Knitting Store) and I've nearly reached the point where I need to divide for the body. I'm knitting it in the Blacker Yarns Shetland DK which I bought at Knit Nation with the intention of knitting a Deco only to find I had insurmountable issues with gauge**. Entirely my own fault for not double checking the needle size used in the pattern before buying the yarn, if I had then I would have known it was far too heavy - despite having the same weight and yardage as the Corriedale which Kate uses. Anyway I trawled through Ravelry until I found another cardigan which I could knit with around 950 yards of DK yarn and came up with the Garter Yoke Cardi. It seemed vaguely familiar and when I looked at the projects tab I realised why - Megan had knit one back in 2009 and I remembered it looking really great. So far it's going really well and I've already had one compliment on the colour (natural light grey Shetland) from the one of the flight attendants on the plane. Yes, I knit on the plane! Knitting needles weren't mentioned in the list of prohibited items at the check in desk so I unscrewed the points on my interchangeables, put the end caps on the cable (just in case there was a problem I didn't want to be doing all that in the baggage screening line) and put the points in my handbag. In the event there were no problems whatsoever and I got a good six hours of garter stitch and stockinette in whilst watching the Twilight saga back-to-back (United does not have a good selection of recent movies compared to those on Singapore Airlines). My only slight worry is whether I'll have enough yarn. I should be OK, the pattern gives 918 yards for the size I'm knitting and I have 952 but I seem to be going through the balls awfully quickly!

I'll post a picture of progress so far once I've divided for the body, at the moment it's so bunched up on the cable that you can't really tell what's going on.

* This might just be me but I would find this incredibly dispiriting if we had a similar "clock" up in London. It's not really the way to make people feel good about the state of the economy.

** I actually got stitch gauge with the recommended needle size but the density of the fabric was such that it would have been a kevlar cardigan.