Spent the afternoon at Skein. One customer waiting for me when I arrived. We worked together for about 45 minutes until she finally understood (well, I think she did) how to deal with decreases at the neck edge. You know, the instructions say to work the second side reversing shaping. I don't know why so many people find this a difficult concept. This particular customer, in many years of knitting, had never made a sweater in pieces. Always from the top down as a single unit. She doesn't seem to have a problem shaping a garment this way, adding stitches as needed. But she just couldn't get the subtracting stitches. And then binding off and decreasing. But after many sketches and graphs she seemed to get it. Then we worked on shaping the sleeves. All over again with the binding off and decreases. More sketches and drawings. I know she knows how to make Christmas stockings and socks. I just don't see why she had so much trouble with this. We have one more chance on Friday if she can't do this. She's going to visit her daughter in Texas and wants to present the sweater to her grandchild when she gets there. I can hardly wait.

It was a pretty good day overall. One of my former students came in and got a bunch of new stuff for some more scarves. We had a chance to catch up on what she's been doing. A couple of more people came in and saw the yarns Ann Mary was winding and they got all jazzed and bought a bunch of stuff that they didn't come in for. It was also the start of a new series of Wednesday night classes that are taught by one of the yarn reps that we deal with. So that brought in a whole group of people I hadn't see in a couple of months. So mostly it was a fun, chatty sort of day. I worked on the mohair shawl most of the afternoon and am almost done. Will finish on Friday, I think.

Didn't touch the raglan pullover. I did start re-reading the Designing Knitwear book. It's been a long time since I looked at it and I've had a lot more experience in the meantime. And technology has changed a lot since the book was published. But the basic concepts are still as valid as ever. Like swatching. Not for gauge but just to learn what the yarn looks like and how it behaves. So I'm pretty excited about this, all over again.