Is It Spring?

This Winter seems to be endless, and we just started what is typically the coldest month of all. Thank dog it's a short month.

Aging and Winter
As I get older, I find my body has less and less tolerance for stresses, like cold. I've always believed that stress...physical or emotional...is the largest contributing factor to people being sick, so it's no wonder to me that many folks get sick as the weather gets colder.

And it's strange how the way my body is affected by cold is changing as well. It used to be that my extremities got cold, but my core body heat and legs weren't very much affected. Now I find I have to wear scarves and sweaters to keep my upper body warm and warmer pants for my legs.

Fortunately, knitting has allowed me to amass a collection of warmer garments.

Current Knitting
Speaking of which, I was working on two different projects this week. Both of them for warming the upper body. The one I worked on most is a secret project...for now...which I should be able to show you in a few weeks. It's coming out better than I could have possibly hoped.

The second one, was the stranded sweater.



I was hoping to have finished the first sleeve this past weekend, but I ended up spending more time on the secret project because it was much more satisfying. Just to give you a sense of where I am on the sleeve, if you count the full diamonds running down the sleeve, there are currently 8...I need to have about 12 or 13 before I start doing cuff ribbing.

Readers' Comments/Questions
Regarding the stranded knitting on the sleeve, Richard asks, "Don't you find that the light color "bleeds" through the black?"

I was concerned it might...especially in the all-black sections of the sleeve. I've alternated where I weave in the yarn on the back in an even pattern (I'll try to get a picture of the inside sleeve to show you what I mean), and it seems to have worked to not let the white bleed through.

Richard also writes, "I don't feel that I am particularly morbidly curious but could you provide some background/context for the picture."

I really don't have any. I found it doing a Google search on "knitting with her feet" and it was part of someone's Flickr account...looked like travel photos.