Knit Frocks and Wool Socks: A Season with Fiber: Needles and how it's knitting.

We've still got plenty of snow here, and even after a night of rain, the snow started up again, going strong. We all thought we smelled spring last night, but this morning presented us, yet again, with mountains, trees, and fields blanketed in white. It's almost mid-March now, it ought to be spring, oughtn't it?

Snow drifts prevail.

Well, before cabin fever really sinks its teeth into me, I'm off to visit my mother for a week. And hoping to come back to signs of spring. Do you hear that, weather gods?

She'd like spring, too. Fresh grass, anyone?

I recently read about needle sizes somewhere. I've always wondered why, say, a size 8 needle is a size 8 needle. Is it totally arbitrary? Or did it make sense to someone at some point?

Turns out, it actually makes perfect sense. At least, it used to before we got so fancy with our yarns sizes. Here's the deal: until about fifty years ago, there were standards weights for yarn. This meant that any 4-ply yarn was the exact same weight as any other 4-ply, and any 8-ply was the same weight as any other 8-ply, and so on and so forth. Needle sizes were simply gauged to knit up the ply number they corresponded to. So a number 8 needle was for knitting 8-ply yarn. Smart, huh? What's more, 1 skein of yarn used to measure exactly 109 meters. Not so anymore.

Ahh, simpler times, right?

Speaking of knitting (haha!), I started to knit the Hiker's Waistcoat, and knit myself into such a frenzy that I almost finished the entire back panel in one day. Here are some glamour shots!