Knitting in the Round

I have finished spinning my Rincewind/Melange fibre and thought that I had found the perfect pattern to knit it up.  It is a loose kimono-style sweater which looks both comfortable and warm and according to the picture it is well suited to handspun yarn.

But  . . . the body of the sweater is knitted in the round and I have not done that since  the Ds were babies and I knitted bootees and singlets for them  -  on four needles.  This pattern calls for 160 stitches on a 30" circular double ended needle.  I was aware that it was necessary to ensure that the knitting was not twisted but that was easier said than done as both the casting on and the cable itself earnestly desired to twist.

My first effort was a disaster because I knitted the first row back instead of round.  My second effort seemed to go well until, in the third row I realised that there was a twist.  I was about to give up but decided to sleep on it and give it one more try.  What I did was to cast on my 160  stitches, put stitch markers at intervals along the casting on and thread another cable through the stitch markers with stoppers at both ends since the cable wanted to slide out of its stitch markers.  But  IT  WORKED and I have now knitted about ten rows with not a twist in sight. 

Now I am sweating on the possibility that I will not have enough yarn to finish the sweater and may have to purchase more of the Melange (since Rincewind was a one-off for the Megasal) and put some stripes in the sleeves.  But it is going to be very pretty and I am excited about it. 

I am back to doing regular yoga after a pause while I recovered from the vertigo I developed over the New Year and, as directed by my doctor, I am drinking my morning coffee in the sun on the balcony and developing a suntan on my legs.  Recently I have been joined by Parsifal who has suddenly become a very cuddly lap cat.  Perhaps, in his very limited world, it is a new activity to entertain him since the pictures are all out of his reach.  He attacks my hat and browses on the cat grass and catnip with an occasional chew at the ponytail palm which invariably makes him throw up.

Poppy's domain is the Master Bedroom Suite which is her 'safe place' and where she sleeps during the day.  She is still a chronometer kitten and orders me off to bed about an hour before I am ready and then joins me on the bed when I finally make it there.

 We are starting back at COTA in the week of February 8th.  The two computers which we use are being rebuilt and will have Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 loaded onto them which is ideal.  I will be taking my little hotspot with me just in case clients with Windows 10 laptops need to connect their own computers to the internet; Windows 10 does not accept guest connections.  I believe that there is a way of doing it but from all accounts it is a very uneasy connection and flickers badly.  I do not want to go down that path and since the hotspot can support about 30 computers it means that Himself can also tune in to it.  I am not sure how I will go switching between the three operating systems  -  I had to think hard about how to get to 'tools' in Windows 7, having spent the last few weeks using only windows 10.  We will see ...