A Flurry of FOs

Every morning heralds the approach of November with a grey, gloomy sky and a chill that keeps me huddled under the flannel sheets and extra quilt for as long as possible (not long with two small children clamoring for the day to start).

This is the weather to make things quickly.

Things like sheepy hats with high wool content and giant Baa-bles.

And wee baby mittens in delicious shades of autumn morning grey (though the pattern is called (delightfully) Bleak Midwinter).

And of course, little cowls that look like bandanas.  I used the same pattern and the same modifications as when I made this in red for Silas.

There have also been a couple of dishcloths.  With all this winter knitting I have made the executive decision to leap from the dishcloth bandwagon (unless Knit Picks puts out a pattern that I can't resist), so these may be the last couple this year.

Weeks Irrelevant

Pumpking Dishcloth by Teresa Gregorio
Knit Picks Cotlin DK, Clementine and Peapod

I'm a sucker for all things pumpkin. If it says pumpkin spice on it, you already have my money.

Campfire, by Marjorie Dussaud
Peaches & Creme, Rosemary

This was the first Dussaud dishcloth that I have enjoyed in a while. It was fast, fun, easy to memorize, and the drape is delicious.

I'd like to be the kind of person who makes my kids' Halloween costumes, but not yet.  I have always been the kind of person with really good luck at thrift stores, however.

Ezra is sporting a dragon coat and a sparkly jumpsuit found at the bargain shoppe.  Silas wore it for his two first Halloweens.

This year Silas is Thomas the Tank Engine, courtesy of Once Upon a Child.  This should fit him for many Halloweens if he's agreeable, because it's completely open-sided, which also means that he can wear it no matter the weather - even a bulky winter coat will fit under it without disrupting the effect of the costume.  This year wasn't too bad, he's just wearing his Thomas rain slicker (and his new rain boots, which he was one hundred times more excited about than the costume, and which he is still wearing).

Ryan reprised last year's cowboy costume.

Everything out of his own wardrobe, basically.  I'm a fan of men owning cowboy hats - it makes for very easy costumes for Pioneer Day when you're in school if you can just raid your dad's closet.

I should have gotten a picture of my entire outfit, but you'll get the gist.  I went for fall spirit/Mother Nature/wood Elf, etc.

Sparkly green dress courtesy of Goodwill, 2006.  Fall garland courtesy of Wal-Mart clearance sale, 2014.  I was going to wear this last year, but it turns out that dresses you could wear when you were 19 will not fit you when you are 9 months pregnant, no matter how forgiving you think that A-line is.

Here's a pic from 2013, the second time Silas wore the dragon costume, where you can see a bit more of the dress (generic princess that year):

Now just imagine it with 12 feet of fall foliage draped around it, and you'll get the idea.

Loose ends

I've been in a finishing mood lately, though I would have thought I'd had enough of endings.  There's something to be said for closure, at any rate.

I finished the twined mittens I started back in February.  I need to take a better picture so I can upload it to the pattern page.  The technique was a lot of fun once I got the hang of it.

I made myself a hat:

It's the Star-Crossed Slouchy Beret that's so popular on Ravelry (13000+ projects - so viral I would have avoided it except I saw one in person and fell hard in love).  I had to make some mods to get it to fit my head, mostly just adding stitches and then adjusting for the increases and decreases so the cables still worked.  I love the colors in this yarn (Knit Picks Chroma in Hollyhock).  Purple and grey may be my new grey and pink.

I've also caught up on a few dishcloths.

Zig Zag dishcloth by Faith Schmidt

Simple Lines by Chelsea Berkompas

Orbital Dishcloth by Stacey Winklepleck

And my showstopper:

Petticoat Dishcloth, by Kendra Nitta

This dishcloth is just a little crazy.  You start at the outside edge and cast on 200+ stitches, knit a bit, and then on a separate needle cast on another ridiculous number of stitches and knit a bit and then join the two pieces together, cast on a third piece, knit, join, and finally knit down to the center.  Were I designing this I would have started from the center, worked out, and then picked up the stiches for the second and third ruffles so everything was worked in one piece, but perhaps that isn't as simple or neat as it sounds in my head.

The yarn is Cotlin DK.  I started this thing in April, all that ruffling in light yarn took this long to finally finish.  As long as it took, and as frustrating as it was to try and join so many stitches on a 16" cable without twisting, it was really a lot of fun to knit.  I can't even imagine using it as a dishcloth.  Right now it's sitting on my bathroom counter collecting bobby pins and hair-ties, kind of a fiber-happy take on the those catch-all bathroom trays that I've noticed we're selling in the Domestics dept. recently.

In other news, it's officially footie pajama weather.

Warm hands . . .

When my mom called on Thursday to tell me that Dad had been moved to a smaller room on a more hospice-like floor of the Veteran's Home building, so that he could receive more frequent oxygen treatments, I felt the old familiar chill of worry creep into my chest, that terrible feeling of helplessness and foreboding.  When she said that his hands were cold, I thought, "This at least I can fix."

I spent the next couple hours exploring my yarn bins and Ravelry, trying to find the right combination of soft, warm yarn and quick pattern so that I could have a completed set of fingerless gloves when I visited him on Saturday.  I decided that I was going to knit him lots of fingerless gloves, nice ones, historical patterns that he'd appreciate not only for warmth but for their origins as World War II artifacts, but for now I'd stick with a fast, easy pattern in bulky yarn.  I had a tiny amount of blue yarn with alpaca that would be perfect trim; alpaca for extra warmth, blue for my dad's favorite color.

I worked on them for the rest of the night, eschewing laundry, dishes, cleaning, and forgetting to eat.  When I told my slightly exasperated husband why, he immediately understood.  Here was the one small thing I could do for my dad - keep his hands warm.

I went to bed late that night, and late the next, trying to finish them.  I had to rip out the end ribbing on both gloves and knit fewer rows, because I ran out of the blue yarn right before the cast off.  I finished the gloves but for the ribbing minutes before we were out the door for the long drive to Marshalltown.

I wove in a couple ends while we ate lunch with my brother, but there were still several left when we paid our tabs and headed for the Veteran's Home.  I was confident I could finish them up during the course of the visit, and Dad would be able to wear them before we left.

Nothing went as planned.

Afterwards, they told us that it must have been very quick.  He couldn't have suffered - he was almost certainly gone before he hit the ground.  His heart just gave out, unexpectedly, suddenly, and sometimes these things just happen.

It's cold, cold comfort to the children who found their dad lying on his bathroom floor, to the son who tried vainly to give CPR, to the daughter who ran screaming for the nurses whose station was only a few feet away from his room, then held tight to his icy hand and prayed for him to wake up.  Those prayers didn't seem to leave the room.

The chill that settled into my chest when the nurses asked us to step away was familiar, though not the same one from before.  This was a chill I had felt while lying in a dark radiology lab, watching the silent screen of the ultrasound and its flat white line.

I felt my heart turn to stone again.  My brother fell apart and I envied him the release of tears and oblivion, but I clung to the cold, hard feeling in my chest like a pillar, and it kept me standing.  I followed directions, I called my mom and told her what was going on with remarkable coherency, I calmly thanked the nurses when they brought us water and tissues.  I took care of my brothers, I made Phillip call his fiancee.

When the nurse told me, "I'm sorry, he's gone." I said, "Okay, okay," and thanked them again.  I told Phillip, I called Mom, and I was infuriatingly unable to allow myself to cry.  If I could have had a moment to myself, the tears would have come without effort, but instead I comforted my brothers, I made phone calls, and I wove in ends, and had to stop myself from laughing, because it was such a futile task, but I couldn't leave them unfinished now, and I had to have something to do with my hands.

They're finished, and I suppose nothing I could have done would have allowed them to be finished in time to actually warm my dad's hands, but I tucked them beside him when we said our last goodbyes, before they closed the lid and draped the flag over him.

My dad was buried with full military honors, because he was a veteran who loved his country, and he was buried with a pair of grey and blue fingerless gloves, because he had a daughter who was a knitter and loved her dad, and wanted him to be warm.

Weekly (whatever) Dishcloth

In spite of all evidence to the contrary, I am still managing to output some washcloths.  "Weekly" may be a gross misnomer at this point, but they are still trickling in.  It's just that I'm very slow to do things like weaving in ends, taking pictures, blogging . . .


Week 24
Square Check by Marjorie Dussaud
Peaches & Creme, Hippi

This was what I'm beginning to think of as a very typical Marjorie Dussaud dishcloth - disproportionate garter stitch edging around a needlessly complicated stitch pattern.  They're nice enough, but the repeats are often too large; I hate having to keep referring to the pattern to find my place.  A chart would be incredibly helpful.  I left off one repeat because I got bored of it, and 3x3 seemed like a nice route to go.  I made several mistakes while I was at it.

Week 25
Pinwheel Dishcloth by Allison Griffith
Sugar'n Cream, Red, Hot Green; Peaches & Creme, Ecru, Bright Blue, Bright Pink

This dishcloth was a lot of fun to knit, I loved the swinging rhythm of the short-rows and the resulting drape of the garter stitch.  I hated weaving in the ends.  So many ends.  I'd like to try this one again in a variegated yarn to see the effect (with fewer ends).

Week 26
Angkor Wat by Allyson Dykhuizen
Knit Picks Cotlin, Canary, Surf

This is a typical Allyson Dykhuizen dishcloth pattern; dk weight yarn, applied-icord edging, difficult-to-pronounce name derived from architecture that has nothing to do with the stitch pattern but leads to interesting Wikipedia searches.  I ditched the icord edging after several aborted attempts and went with a (poorly executed) single crochet border instead.  It was so much faster, if not quite as pretty.  I think the icord would have worked better if I had slipped the edge stitches to make them easier to pick up, though it's the first time I've ever seen directions for an icord edge that first required you to pick up stitches all the way around the border instead of picking them up as you go.  The end result is on the small side; I'm thinking it's going to be a baby washcloth instead of a dishcloth after all.

A Workhorse Washcloth

It was near midnight, the house was dark and muggy, and I was zoning out watching YouTube videos.  I tried knitting on an acrylic afghan block, but in the high humidity it felt like my fingers had a light coating of pancake syrup.  I needed something mindless, something breathable.  There was some dishcloth cotton yarn and straight needles at hand, so I picked them up with a notion of knitting a basic corner-to-corner Grandmother's Favorite Dishcloth.  Somehow I cast on 46 stitches instead of 4.  It was late, and sometimes when you get going with a long-tail cast on you just forget yourself and keep cranking out loops until something draws your attention back to your hands, like remembering what it was you were trying to make.  I thought about it for a minute, then dropped a stitch back off for a more easily divisible 45 stitches and took off with a vague shape of pattern in mind.

This is as simple as it gets.  Knit a few stitches, purl a few stitches, lather, rinse, repeat, stop when it's big enough (or in my case, when your remnant of a skein runs out).

Yarn: Lily Sugar'n Cream, yellow, 54 yds
Needles: US 9
Gauge: 4.5 sts/in

CO 45 sts

Row 1: (K5, P5) 4x, K5
Row 2: (P5, K5) 4x, P5
Repeat these two rows once.  This creates the first row of blocks.  The next rows will reverse the directions, to alternate the purl and knit blocks from the first row.

Row 5: (P5, K5) 4x, P5
Row 6: (K5, P5) 4x, K5
Repeat once.

Start again from the beginning, and repeat this sequence of 8 rows 5 times or until washcloth reaches desired size.  BO all stitches and weave in ends.

Weekly Dishcloth: Stripey FOs

Week 17

Sherbet Stripes, by Gillian Grimm
Peaches & Creme, Bright Orange; Sugar'n Cream, Red

This was a gloriously fast, simple knit, utterly mindless in the best way. The only thing is, it's tiny. It's only supposed to be 6" x 6" on size 5 needles, and I barely got that on size 8. Incidentally, you work it up on two dpns to facilitate the slip stitch pattern; a short circular would work, too (so would a long one, for that matter, but you would have a longer distance to slide it).

I also finished my pence jug.

It's another quick knit, and a delightful bit of Victorian fiddle fiddle. It makes me wish I had a larger collection of British coins.

A Few FO's

I'll be going back to work on Monday.  I'm a little worried by the fact that I'm not more worried about this fact.  I have a vague notion of getting things in order - I've been packaging up lunch-box friendly portions of cut-up veggies, leftovers, and breakfast items that will be easy to eat on the run, I've downloaded extra podcasts for the commute, I'm getting my milk-transporting supplies in order and pumping in between feedings so that I'll have a fresh batch ready and won't have to dip into the emergency stash in the freezer.  I'm looking forward to getting back to work and having a set routine; I tend to be very disorganized and unmotivated if I don't have a schedule to adhere to, but I'm not looking forward to the milk-production grind.  Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful that I was able to keep up my milk supply for 13 months with Silas and that we never had to resort to supplementing with expensive formula, but it's a big time and energy commitment.  There were also times when I didn't wonder if I was spending as much on batteries for the pump as I would be on formula anyway, but on the other hand it just means that I was spending money on providing healthy, all-natural, ideal food for my son (and losing weight while I was at it), so given the choice, that's certainly where I'd rather my money was going.

At any rate, my blogging time is going to be even more minimal than it is now, so enjoy it while you can!  Here are a couple of things I made in January that were never blogged about:

Outlier, by Laura Aylor

This was a mystery knit-a-long; the designer posted a small set of directions every day, and we didn't find out exactly what it would be until we were finished. It's meant to be somewhere between a cowl and a poncho (and also to be worn by a smaller person, methinks), but what it turns out to be is a great nursing cover.  I've only used it thus a couple of times, and it would be terrible in the summer, but for nursing in public in the winter, it works beautifully, besides being delightfully colorful.  I used Ella Rae Seasons, which is a wool/acrylic chain-plied bulky yarn, very affordable with a very generous yardage, especially for a bulky weight.  I didn't have to think twice about grabbing two skeins (and when the colorway is "Rainbow" you know I'm going to have to buy at least one).

Poppy, by Justine Turner

First of all, the pattern is an absolute joy to knit. Short-rows are my potato chip knitting. It's knit flat, but entirely seamless. It's as cute as a button.

Alas, it is also decidedly feminine.

It's not a beanie, it's a cloche. It isn't as obvious when Ezra is wearing it for now, but I put it on Silas (it is very stretchy), and it is definitely a cloche. If I put it on Ezra so the edge of the button tab is towards his face, you can tell that it's a cloche. I have very pretty babies, so this kind of thing can lead to some confusion. It's not a big deal, but it's annoying. I really wanted it to be a beanie.

The yarn is RHSS Camo, colorway Dress Blues. A very handsome monochromatic variegated yarn, excruciatingly scratchy until it went through the washer and dryer, now it's quite acceptably soft. Definitely planning on making more things with it.

In other news, is there anything more delicious than getting a skein of buttery soft pink bulky yarn in the mail?

It was on sale.

Finished Object Friday: Slytherin Baby Sweater

It really wasn't until I had uploaded the pic to Ravelry that I realized that my favorite color combination is a Hogwarts House color combo as well. How about that; I'm an even bigger geek than even I knew.

I made the 24 month size, but except for the usual raglan bagging under the arms it's an almost perfect fit for a little boy who's otherwise not quite grown into his 18 month clothes.  I think I probably should have made the sleeves and the body longer than the pattern called for, if only so he could wear it for a while longer, but I so wanted this to be done.

I have much more yarn leftover than I thought I would, which is exhilarating. It's so soft and scrumptious. I don't know yet what I'll use it for, but I foresee much Ravelry browsing in my future. 

Belated FO Friday

I did actually start this post yesterday, but I was sick, expecting company today, and the baby was teething, so the post was full of vitriol and self-loathing.

I finished the stocking on Wednesday.

I'm not entirely pleased with it - I messed up the colorwork in several places and the floats are way too loose inside, and it's so colossally huge that I feel uncomfortable with the idea of filling it with gifts.  I don't want Silas to grow up with the expectation of Christmas being all about lots of presents, because it should be about one really big present 2000 years ago, and about love and family and goodwill towards men.  However, it was fun to make, and it's a really handsome decoration.  I suppose when we have another child someday I'll have to make another one, too, so it's just as well that I have oodles of yarn leftover.

Hat time!

I finished the hat I was test knitting, and the pattern is now available - Cedar Shakes hat by Kate Boswick.  I finagled Ryan into taking some pictures with his good camera while I was at work on Sunday.

I'm not an expert on slouchy hat style, but it seems like it came out a little over-long, but Silas isn't complaining, and he got many a compliment on its debut at church.

I really can't express the fullness of the joy I find in dressing my son up like a little hipster.

He just needs some headphones and a little Starbucks cup, don't you think?

The pattern is absolutely mindless knitting - I memorized the repeat after executing it once and it was great TV knitting.  My appreciation for fingering weight projects continues to grow - I really like how it turned out in this yarn, and the self-striping worked really well with the stitch pattern.

I need more sock yarn!

Speaking of socks - I can finally show off my swap projects!  My letter was 'F,' and my swap partner loves shawls, so I was originally going to make her a fichu, or at least I was going to make a shawl pattern that started with F (Frederica, in fact), and call it a fichu, because really - close enough.  But then my partner said, "Please don't send me any shawls, I am making enough of my own," or something to that effect, so I had to reevaluate my choices.  I decided on fingerless gloves, and I had elaborate fair-isle plans with finches and the word 'flight' and so on, when someone asked the group, "What would you really like to receive?" and my partner said, "Socks, but you don't have to!"

Sure, I don't HAVE to . . .

Challenge accepted.

I waffled over many a sock pattern, and had many a false start, before I finally found the February Lady socks, which had the advantage of being the only pattern designed for the kind of tiny feet my partner ostensibly has, based on the measurements she provided.  I don't have small feet, not remotely, and it is difficult for me to scale down my expectations of how big a sock is.  My first attempt was much too tiny, so I ripped back, used larger needles, and I'm praying that they fit.  It is very challenging, not being able to try a sock in progress against the foot in question.  I knit three socks, and finally ended with a matching pair (after ripping back the toe on the second one to make it bigger . . .).

I dyed the yarn myself with Kool-Aid and a crockpot, and I took lots of pictures of that progress and detailed notes of the colors I used, and then Ryan threw my notes away.  In his defense, I wrote them in marker on an old church bulletin, so it probably didn't look very important.  The point is, I have no idea if I'm going to post the pictures now because I can't remember what I was going to say about them.

After I had gotten all my swap stuff together and cast a critical eye over it, I knew it needed something more.  I had been pushing "Ice Queen" up and down my queue for a while, uncertain if I could make it suit my needs, but I finally struck on the inspiration and the right color of yarn that I needed.

I had originally wanted to make it flame-orange with the same mix of red, orange, and yellow beads, for a fiery effect, but alas, there was no orange kidsilk haze to be had.  There was fuschia, but it left me cold.  My swap partner's winter jacket is cherry red, and while fuschia and cherry red probably look fine together, it wouldn't work with the beads.  Cherries, cherries, cherries.  Green stem?

Please excuse my terrible photography skills - I was using my phone.  I really liked the idea of the flame-colored mix of beads on the green, like a forest fire, but the end result was a bit more Christmas-y than I might have preferred.  Festive, though!  I'm not a cowl person myself, but I have to admit that this one was so light and easy to wear and pretty that I might make one for myself . . .  I'll have to get more yarn, though.  The pattern is supposed to take exactly one ball of Rowan's Kidsilk Haze, but I went up a needle size (because it was all I could find), and one ball was exactly enough to leave me screaming with frustration when it ended half a row before the bind-off.  I had to buy a whole 'nother ball of yarn just to finish that row, bind off, and and pick up the provisional cast-on and bind it off, too.  Another entire ball, just for two and half rows.  I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of it, but obviously it won't be enough for another cowl.  It's such a gorgeous shade of green, I'm eager to use it.

Anyway, that about catches me up.  On my needles right now are the Changement shawlette for the mystery KAL the designer is hosting, and a hat for my mom for Chanukah (coming up way too fast this year, btw).  It's entrelac, a new technique for me.  Can't wait.

One last baby shot to carry you out!

I love autumn, don't you?

Too hot to knit

Not that I'd let it actually stop me, but it has certainly been excruciatingly humid around here of late. It's a change from the rain, but oy vey. Thus, I have tried a new fiber! I picked up a few skeins of Fibranatura Flax at The Sheep's Stockings while visiting my dad in Marshalltown. Lovely little yarn shop, by the way, with a very friendly, helpful owner. The yarn is 100% linen, which turns out to be like knitting with something halfway between cotton and twine, though I've been assured it will soften up beautifully with washing. I'm not too concerned about it, because I'm just making market bags out of so far.

The Monteagle Bag, of Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines. The pattern fully admits to being made up of entirely trippy stitches, and there was much growling, swearing, and frogging in the making of the first one. The second one worked up much more quickly, and for all the craziness I discovered that I'd fairly easily memorized 90% of the directions while making the pink bag. The other 10%, alas, left me frogging. I was baffled by the design choice of seaming the bottom. Seams?! Psh! Even without a working internet connection, my web browser was able to pull up Judy's Magic Cast-on for me, and there were no seams, unless kitchenering the end of the handle to the bag counts, but I consider grafting and seaming to be two different animals. I'd graft over picking up stitches any day of the week.


The bags hold quite a bit.  In trying to get the veil stitches to open up, I must have stuffed at least a dozen cans of various pantry items into the blue bag.  In the end I did have to go through and stretch almost every individual stitch out, but we had Netflix on in the background, so it wasn't too tedious.

The pink bag took almost every last yard of one skein (137 yds), and the turquoise bag took a little less - I have about 13 yds left over. I have no idea what to do with 13 yds of sport-weight linen yarn, but you never know what will pop up.

 I've been working on this baby blanket for Project Linus. It has also led to an awful lot of frogging, tinking, and dropping stitches down a few row and wrestling with a crochet hook. It's a very simple lace pattern, which makes me cocky, which makes me think I don't have to pay attention, which makes me miss YOs or add them where no YO was meant to be. Fortunately I don't have any kind of deadline for this one, especially considering I'm only able to work on it comfortably in places where the air conditioning is mighty cold indeed. There's nothing like acrylic squeaking through your hot, sticky hands on a muggy day to make you contemplate jumping ship to a less tactile hobby.

Crocheting and cotton yarn really are a better combination for this kind of weather. I made a scrubby, whose enormous bobbles please me greatly.

Did I mention that I bought a drop spindle? It spent weeks sitting on the desk with the bag of Romney roving that came with it, while I eyed it with apprehension. Finally I manned up, watched some YouTube videos, and made some really appalling yarn and an absolute mess of the roving. In desperation I flung myself on the mercy of the Ravelry forums, where I was gently instructed that I was doing everything wrong. The step-by-step directions one Raveler gave me led to a much more confident plowing forward and something that looked a bit like yarn instead of one long slub. I was amused that one person's advice, however, was to ditch the drop spindle and get a wheel instead. Okay, Internet spinner! I have $300 lying around here somewhere!

 There will be pictures as soon as I find my camera charger, so, you know, in six months or so.

Getting Back to Normal (or something like it)

I checked my email today, and discovered that there were a couple comments on my xanga.  "Really?" I thought.  "Someone still reads that?"

They turned out to be vague and spammish, but I took the opportunity to read over some of my old entries, and then I clicked over to Ravelry and it felt strangely empty.  Somehow a life full of knitting doesn't quite compare to how a life full of writing used to feel.  I'm not sure what I want to do in the face of that realization.

I was sick yesterday.  I was amused to note that part of it was really nice (the part where I got to stay in bed and read knitting magazines while sipping Sprite while in the distance I could hear my husband vacuuming and playing patty-cake with Silas), the rest was about what you'd expect - writhing in agony on the bathroom floor in between bouts of dry heaving and the horrible-yet-glorious-relief of actually throwing up.

Today I feel much better, and I am looking forward with great anticipation to eating something other than soda crackers and chicken broth.

I finally, finally, finally finished my Belle Ruffle fingerless gloves last month.

I wore them out on Saturday with my new purple coat and the paisley scarf Amber gave me eons ago and I felt very colorful and uniquely styled.  Indeed, while I was standing in line at the cafe in BAM! I looked around and thought, "For once in my life, I think I might fit in to a scene."  Of course, then I took my iced chai and my copy of VogueKnitting, stripped off my coat and gloves, and used the scarf as a nursing cover up, got lots of funny looks from the college crowd, and the feeling kind of dissipated.  A few minutes later Ryan got out of Best Buy and tapped on the window, and Silas's face lit up and they waved and cooed at each other while I improvised the scarf into a kind of sling so that I could carry the heaviest baby in the world on my hip without collapsing from the effort (he's getting so big!), and I mused that being a creative Mom with a happy baby and a great husband was an even better feeling.

As we were checking out at the bookstore the cashier gushed over how pretty and cool the gloves were, too, so my day was officially made.

On the needles right now I have a baby dress that I was mostly making for the sheer joy of making a tiny dress, and tentatively it was going to be for one friend's new baby girl if I could complete it before she'd outgrow it, but then I found out that my friend Angel is having a baby girl in a few months, which gives me time not only to finish this dress (optimistically), but also hopefully to make some accessories to go with it, because I've had my eye on a couple baby patterns from Jane Austen Knits, Fall 2012 . . .

I made Silas a pair of fingerless gloves because his hands are often freezing, and because the whimsy of making teeny tiny fingerless gloves is not lost on me, but thus far he refuses to wear them.  He cries when I try to put them on him, and he'll pull them off with his teeth as soon as he gets the chance.  I'm debating whether it's worth weaving in the ends and blocking them.  They are very darn cute.

I made a little progress on my snowflake afghan, and then ran out of yarn, so that's back on the back burner for now.  I spent way too much at the LYS a few days ago; there will be no more yarn for a good long time. My stash is looking pretty comfortable right now compared with my queue, and I'm thinking if I can get my sewing machine back from storage that I might delve into some non-yarn related projects for a change of pace.  I've been in the kitchen more lately and I could really use a couple of aprons.

Gifts

I finally, finally, FINALLY finished Jenn's convertible mittens.

I am so glad to see the back of these horrible things.  I still need to wash them and mail them out to her, but we'll get there when I have money for postage.

I also made a hat for my mom.

I had my work cut out for me with this, too.  She picked out the yarn, and a pattern for a cloche with a cute bow detail.  The yarn, Red Heart Fiesta, I quickly discovered to be a pain to crochet with - that darn thread of gold played merry hob with my patience, catching and snagging and generally being a nuisance.  The cloche pattern was quickly abandoned.  Like many amigurumi patterns, it's worked in spirals of single crochet, but with staggered increases to make a rounder crown.  Single crochet is a cruel and unusual stitch that does not allow for any kind of meditative rhythm, and staggered increases make it impossible to keep track of where you are without incessant counting.

While browsing one of my old crochet magazines, I found a hat that looked cute and whimsical, just the sort my mom would undoubtedly accept in place of the first pattern.

A closer perusal of the pattern revealed - wouldn't you know it - unjoined spirals of single crochet with staggered increases.

I could have cried.

But I plowed through it, and finished a few days after Christmas.  It still needs to be mailed out, too.

At least one person did get his Christmas present on time: my coworker, Nathan.  Nathan is an obsessed Starbucks addict.  Last year I gave him a Starbucks gift card.  This year,  I bought him a Starbucks gift card, BUT I stuck it in a Starbucks cup covered in these:

Reusable cup sleeves.  His favorite is the giant granny square sleeve.  Partly because of the colors, partly because granny squares are awesome, but mostly because I very intentionally made it out of Vanna's Choice yarn, and Nathan is very much in love with Vanna White and game shows.



Sometimes you just hit it right out of the park.  All of the sleeves used stash yarn, too, so they were doubly green.

That pretty much catches you up on December of 2012.  There were other knittings that went on in months previous, but I feel no particular rush about sharing them, so they will have to languish in the annals of my hard drive until my ennui passes.

Am I using that word correctly?  I'm too tired to bother.

Right now I'm working on Mason-Dixon Knitting's Moderne Baby Blanket, and what can I say?  I was intrigued by the modified log cabin technique that it employs, and garter stitch, the temptress, did woo me in. Now that I'm knitting row after row of it, I'm ready to scream.