Jaywalkers Update

The Jaywalkers are finally finished. Actually I finished on Thursday. I wanted to see if I could get some better pictures, especially of the colour, in natural light. Unfortunately, the sun decided to da a disappearing act just as I was getting the camera out. It's supposed to be pretty much cloudy over the next few days, so I opted to go with what I could get. Otherwise I'm going to have to save up projects to photograph on the weekend, when the sun just happens to be out. Picture me on the balcony with 6 weeks worth of knitting laying on various pieces of furniture trying to get it all photographed before the sun disappears. The neighbours would have a field day with that. It would become a weekend past time for the whole village. "Watch the crazy American try and utilize natural light for knitting pictures" time. Since I might eventually actually try and get my Swiss citizenship, just because it might come in handy one day, like if another Bush ever gets into office, I'll have to pass on providing weekend entertainment for these people. They are, after all, the ones who vote on whether they will give me citizenship or not. - Switzerland is a direct democracy. Everything gets voted on. This includes people who live in the village and want citizenship. Your neighbours quite literally vote on whether they will allow you to have citizenship in their village or not. Too many nays, and you can forget it. You also can't just up and move to another village and have a re-vote. You have to live in a village for 3-5 years, depending on the village, in order to apply. This is after you have already lived in Switzerland for a total of 12 years. Unless you're married, then it only takes 5. I could have actually gotten citizenship when I was married, but didn't bother. Now I haven't lived long enough in one place to get it. - The point being, that if you are even remotely considering going for citizenship, it's recommended that you don't out and out prove your insanity to your neighbours before they vote on you. After that, you can do what you like. They can only revoke citizenship if you become involved in actual criminal activities. Knitting doesn't yet fall into this category so unless you begin wielding knitting needles in a dangerous manner in public, you're safe. Just never knit anything more complicated than a garter stitch scarf when out and about and you should be OK.

Back to the Jaywalkers. I'm fairly happy with them, although I have to admit that I prefer the plain ol' phone socks for daily wearing. They're more comfortable and stay up better. I might adapt the pattern for ankle socks so that the pattern is really only on the foot part and just do a ribbed ankle cuff. It won't make much difference to the average observer anyway since no one ever sees more of my socks than the foot part, and even those who do don't care.

Thepinksheep is going to have a filed day with this, since this is the second time that I have to admit to really liking a yarn that has pink in it. I might even buy more of this one if I can get it this winter. It's 4-ply Regia Nordic Color Bergen. I'm hoping they might have it in 6 ply this winter. 'Twould be nice anyway. It's a cheerful colour. I'd love to be able to extract a couple of the colours in it, like the blues and purples and make a sock yarn out of that. That would be brilliant. Alas, I can't/don't dye my own yarns and Schachenmayrs are probably not going to be making a TheBlackSheep yarn any time soon. Even if I did dye myself, I'd probably get it wrong so we'll just stick to the commercial stuff anyway.

I've now embarked on a hat for a friend's birthday. I'll also be continuing work on my phone socks. It's actually quite likely that I'm always going to have one of those on the needles at any given time, if only to render my conscience a little less guilty for spending hours on the phone.