Wilted

Imagine the steamiest shower you've ever taken, the hottest wettest laundry room, the alligator pond in full sun at a suburban zoo--scummy water with a cloudy overlay of mosquitoes and midges, mainly but not quite obscuring the rarely-blinking eyeballs of the mostly-submerged, sludge-colored reptiles. Humidity, heat, stasis, torpor.

That is today's weather in New England. It was also yesterday's and that of the day before, and it will be tomorrow's as well.

O divine goddess of the conditioned air, I thank thee for thy cooling breath that refresheth my listless, depleted, heat-enervated soul, and for thy wise, judicious thermostat that gloweth in the dark and maintaineth my dwelling in shady comfort. 

Of course, I am knitting socks. I mean, why not? Inspired by a recent post on the Knitting Daily blog, I did a heel in the Eye of Partridge stitch.

I like this! It looks kind of Byzantine, and it also seems cushier and is possibly more durable than conventional heel stitches. I'm thinking about how Eye of Partridge can be adapted to toes, which usually bear more stress than do the heels.

Meanwhile, I finished the buttercup yellow socks of North Light Fibers' lofty and light alpaca/mohair sock yarn called Island Meadow Blend, but it is simply too hot hot hot to wear them, so they obligingly struck a footless pose for me amongst drooping greenery:

Please note the fine stitch definition of this yarn.

Gentle knitters, if you have additional interesting suggestions about coping with sticky, horrible, horrendously humid heat, I should be ever so pleased to share them with the readership. Do let me know.

Three strikes, it's out...

The Knitting Goddess constantly stresses the value of The Swatch; therefore I must obey.  So I had a project in mind, a knitted toy, using some interesting bouclé yarn, but it absolutely wouldn't cooperate.  The pattern calls for #6 needles, and on that size it's almost unknittable.

I went up to sevens, then to eights (in photo). It's still too dense; moving the needles requires herculean strength.  At this point I realized the pattern isn't viable with this particular yarn.  And, it's way too hot here.  The project is now officially shelved.

My inner critter keeps telling me to remember that if it's not fun, I shouldn't be knitting it.

Jolly good, wouldn't you say?