Small Blessings

Here are my Green-Socks-in-progress, posing atop my Contracts notes. The socks couldn't help but look beautiful in that company, but I'd be impressed with them in any setting. The yarn is Knit Picks Memories, in the Fly Fishing colorway. I was gifted this lovely yarn by Purl, my Yarn Aboard pal.

I admit, as taken as I was by this yarn in the skein, I was very nervous about knitting it up. Frequent visitors of this blog may recall that I have had very dramatic pooling issues with this yarn in the past. In fact, those issues led me to give up on that pair of socks altogether. So imagine my grateful surprise when, on my first attempt with these skeins, I got the perfect size and no pooling whatsoever. Huzzah!

The EZ sweater is going well, but has stalled for technical difficulties. I decided on the Seamless Hybrid and I am working on the saddles. The problem is, at this point, La Zimmermann's pithy instructions become less like guidelines and more like a pattern. I can't figure out how many rows to knit back and forth for each saddle for the size that I am making. Can anyone help?

I forgot to mention that I am knitting this sweater for the Manly Giftalong and here's the "man" I'm knitting for. Luckily, there's no Sweater Curse for sons.

Unless, of course, you consider the ever-present-with-kids possibility that the sweater will be lovingly knit and then summarily rejected.