Back from a holiday sojourn with my husband’s family, I present my leaf sweater progress:

As you can see, the preponderance of twisted stitches (1×1 cables, not knit into the back of the stitch type twisting) do slow me down quite a bit. I can say however that I am almost done with the third 50-gram skein of Jaeger Matchmaker. Since I had just started the second before we left, I can attest to a modicum of progress. A couple people asked for close-ups of the texture pattern

Again, my poor photography skills do not do my object justice. This is however a very common twist stitch pattern, and appears as “Ribbed Leaf” on page 151 of B. Walker’s Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns. The Sarah James leaflet gives the directions in prose, very much akin to Walker’s. I however had to graph the thing out because I find working from charts much easier to do than working from prose. Here’s my chart:

On the holiday, we drove cross country from the Boston to Buffalo metro area, delighting in accompanying several zillion fellow travelers in the process. Thankfully most of them turned south and headed to New York City rather than trekking out across the upper part of the state with us. We spend a comfortable night in Utica, but send sympathy to Utica residents on what their local reviewers laud as an excellent restaurant. We found it to be grindingly mediocre at best (Italian restaurants whose sauces are both gummy and indistinguishable in texture from their pasta should be avoided). Also ear-splittingly loud.

The family and food at the end of the trip made the migration worth it, with the kids being thoroughly spoiled by their grandmother. And even us grown-ups had a chance to sneak out and have some fun visiting the Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House and the Roycroft cooperative over the weekend.

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