In which the Two Sock Knitters....

... celebrate a new holiday.
Finishing Day!
It's where we sit across from each other at the dining table and mutter while we seam sweaters that were languishing in baskets under the coffee table.
It has stretched into a two-day Finishing Festival!

We've had an eventful couple of weeks, starting out at Stitches Midwest, where I bought some Blackwater Abbey for the Japanese twisted stitch sweater and where we picked up some sock yarn (because we couldn't help ourselves, and besides, we found Lorna's Laces on sale.) I also bought Beth Brown-Reinsel's gansey book, even though I am no friend of knitting sleeves in the round.

Franklin spoke very highly of the book, so I thought I'd take a chance. The Fool and I spent a pleasant half-hour or so in his company, walking the floor and discussing sock yarns for men who do not care for flamboyant foot-coverings. We also spent time talking with strangers, most of whom said something like, "Is that Franklin?" in a reverent whisper, before shoving us into racks of yarn and needles to shake his hand or ask after Dolores or tell him about a sedate charcoal gray wool/nylon fingering weight just two aisles over.

Actually, I'm kidding. No one shoved us into a wool display.

We also spent some time at Pennsic, the annual event for the Society of Creative Anachronism. Some of our friends, who we do not see often, are into this, and so we took it as an opportunity to dress up in fake medieval clothes, play music for pocket change (and to beg firewood - the Tune For A Log campaign was highly effective) and buy funny hats.
Well, only the Fool. It's a very good hat.
The fun thing about hanging with folks that are into historical re-enactment is that they are often into fibery things. I saw some beautiful examples of historical knitting, of nalbinding and of spinning. The Fool bought a wee bag of flax, just to see what that was like, and spent several enjoyable hours messing with it.

Now that we're home again, I've been afflicted with a terrible case of knitting monogamy. Remember Eris? I tried it on again to see how far back to rip the sleeves and realized that I could rip the sleeves out all I wanted -- it wouldn't change the fact that the shoulders were weird and bunched up.
I figured the yarn didn't really want to be Eris. It wanted to be the Pearl Buck Swing Jacket from Interweave last winter. So I've knit that and tonight, as part of the Finishing Festival, I'm going to block parts of it and start putting it together - providing I can discourage the cats from sitting on my damp knitting.

Hairy mongrels.