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.

Yarn Along

I haven't been reading much for myself lately; when I reach for my Kindle it's usually to play Candy Crush. My attention span when grieving is basically nonexistent. I still read to Silas, though.

Silas will have outgrown the last sweater I made him by this Christmas, so I've started a Sherwood for him. In fact, I've started it about six times now. The irregular rib and the odd charts threw me for several loops, and then I managed to twist the cast-on when I joined. Oy vey. The yarn (Plymouth Yarns Encore) is a wool/acrylic blend similar to Wool-Ease. The book is Harry the Dirty Dog. I wasn't familiar with it before Silas got it for Christmas, but my sister-in-law implied it was a favorite in my husband's family.

This post is linked up with Ginny Sheller's Yarn Along

X is for...

Christmas.

Do you know anyone who gets worked up about the abbreviation Xmas? Their fears are unfounded. Its use isn't an attempt to take Christ out of Christmas, it's more like when my mom writes bday on the calendar. In Greek, Jehovah starts with an I, and Christ starts with an X.

Χριστός

Personally, I'm not even a fan of bday, but sometimes needs must.

Xmas-y patterns I love:

Bitty Beady Christmas Tree
Holiday Mice (free!)
Good Grief! - an iconic little tree
Julevotter Adventscalendar - advent calendar of tiny numbered mittens (free!)
The Nativity Collection - no one does knit amigurumi like Alan Dart
Stjärna - star-shaped ornament with nifty construction (free!)
Praying Angel Ornaments - crochet (free!)

My Christmas board on Pinterest has a few yarn-unrelated ideas as well

C is for...

Christ is risen!

(or, Catching up on my missed letter)

Philippians 3:10-12 

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Crocheted Cross Bookmark.

I'm not sure how I feel about this next quote from the inestimable C.S. Lewis; I was raised to believe that the 'merely festal character' of Easter was at least sacrilegious and at worst nearly blasphemous - no Easter bunny darkened our door and it was years before I could regard a jelly bean without feelings of misgiving. Now that I have children of my own, with a husband who had all the trappings of the holiday from sunrise service to Easter basket, I'm torn.

C.S. Lewis

There is a stage in a child’s life at which it cannot separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas or Easter. I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began ‘Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen.’ 

This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and admirable piety. But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of Easter; chocolate eggs will no longer seem sacramental. 

And once he has distinguished he must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat. They will have taken on an independent, and therefore a soon withering, life.” 

I hope to be able to guide my boys to always put the spiritual first, without having to make an anathema of Cadbury Creme Eggs.

Wearin' of the Green

I needed something green to wear to work to celebrate the wee bit of Irish in my blood and to avoid any potential pinches, so I whipped up a quick shamrock in about fifteen minutes, including time to hunt down a safety pin.

The pattern is for a garland, but a single motif makes a dandy pin.

I was in a dishcloth swap, so I made a thematic dishcloth and potholder:

I plan to make duplicates for my own enjoyment; these were both delightful to make and so cheerfully seasonal.

What I Did on My Christmas Vacation, Pt 2.

This was a really cute way to display our Christmas cards.  It was also wildly impractical.  The cards are stuck to the door with loops of off-brand Scotch tape, which does not hold well to begin with, and certainly not when a two year old is practicing his door-closing skills.  Next year we'll try something a little sturdier . . .

The star is cut from felt.  I made a stencil using these directions for cutting a five-pointed star with one snip, attributed to Betsy Ross.  Sounds apocryphal to me, but whoever the inventor, it works like a charm.

I had a hard time parting with this last minute gift for my brother's girlfriend.  For that matter, I had a hard time parting with the C.S. Lewis anthology that I gave her, too.  Absolutely should have bought myself a copy, too.

The ornament is a dressed up yarn doll, a model that has been around for decades (I made my first one in fifth grade (almost two decades ago), out of directions from a book from the fifties, and I'm sure the idea is older than that).  There are quite a few variations online; my inspiration came from these directions for an Angel Ornament, with a few mods.  Everywhere she directs to use hot glue, I used needle and thread instead.  Hot glue is messy (and I would have had to dig the gun out from who knows where in the basement).  Instead of wrapping wire around bead garland I made my halo out of size 6 (E) seed beads on 24 gauge gold wire.  For the doll itself I used basic string from the hardware store - I liked the way it went with the plaid ribbon and overall I think it gave the angel a sweet and rustic look, well suited to the recipient's home on the ranch.

Silas likes the ranch

Ezra slept through the ranch

What I Did on My Christmas Vacation

I didn't knit for anyone this Christmas except myself, and as none of that has pictures yet I won't bore you with it.  I did put a few more rows on Silas' Moderne, and toyed with the idea of picking out colors to make one for Ezra (grey, green, charcoal, and white?), but I don't expect either to come to fruition this year, or even next.

I did however make some gifts.  I made a whole bunch of ornaments, a few of which you can see here:

The snowmen come from this recipe for a cornstarch/baking soda dough.  It makes for a lovely, smooth, very white ornament (provided you don't over-toast them . . . ) that almost feels like porcelain.  The black details are Sharpie, and the scarves are glitter glue.  Thank goodness for glitter glue.  Remember the dark ages of drawing your designs with white glue, and then shaking loose glitter over it, oh so delicately pressing the glitter into the glue, shaking the excess off, getting glitter everywhere except where you really wanted it?  Don't get me wrong, that still sounds like fun.

I used the same cornstarch dough to make two of these;

Terribly rough, but the grandparents were enchanted.  I wish I had made impressions of Silas' newborn sized feet, but I remember at the time being way too exhausted to attempt any such thing.  Having done it with Ezra, I can attest that it's almost not worth it, trying to wrestle a newborn into making a good impression.

I tried using salt dough and mitten templates to make ornaments of Silas' handprints this year, but it was a lost cause - it is perhaps unsurprisingly more difficult to get a squirmy two-year-old to make a good handprint than trying to get those feetprints from the infant.

For the cinnamon ornaments, I combined a few different recipes and came up with:

1/2 c. ground cinnamon
1/2 c. applesauce
2 Tbsp. white glue
2 Tbsp. loose glitter
1 Tbsp. cloves
1 tsp. mace (because I couldn't find nutmeg - if you use nutmeg, use a tablespoon)

Mix it all together, wrap it in plastic wrap and allow to sit for an hour on the countertop, knead it a few times on a cinnamon dusted surface, roll it out under a sheet of waxed paper to 1/4", and go crazy with the cookie cutters.  I misjudged my thickness and many of the ornaments were only 1/8" thick; much curling and fragility were the result.  Make holes in the tops with toothpicks or a drinking straw, and bake on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet in a preheated oven at 200 degrees for 2 hours or until dry, flipping the ornaments halfway through.  Transfer to a I used a silver Sharpie decorate the gingerbread men, and more glitter glue on the one little round ornament.  I was tempted to decorate the rest as well, but I really liked the way they looked plain, so I held back.  Next year I may make more, and then the glue may run a little more freely (especially if Silas helps).

I hope you all had very merry holidays!

Catching up on the FOs Friday

Here's to mad one-handed typing skills, brought to you by one of my most recent and highly anticipated FOs:

Ezra Lee, born November 26th, a couple days late as far as the due date and a couple weeks later than everyone expected based on my rate of dilation, but this child won't be rushed on anything.  He was 8 lbs, 10 oz, 21 and 3/4" long, perfectly healthy other than a mild case of jaundice (nothing that a little sunbathing at home in the warm sunny windows won't take care of, I have been reassured), and to my own particular glee, he has my hair:

It may well lighten up as he gets older, but I hope not.  

Of course, he needed a stocking.

I used the same Mason-Dixon Knitting: Outside the Lines pattern that I used for Silas' stocking, and just reversed the red and green .  My fair-isle was much looser this time, making those portions ever so slightly larger than the plain stockinette, which is annoying, but not so much so as to tempt me towards trying to steam-block RHSS.

I also made a couple of headband style earwarmers.

Both are made using the Morning Walk Headband Earwarmer pattern with a few mods.  For the fuchsia band I used bulky weight yarn (Malabrigo Chunky in Fucsia - absolutely delicious) instead of the super bulky that the pattern calls for, which turned out fine as far as gauge went, but I forgot to allow for my gigantic noggin and blithely made it to the length in the pattern.  So now my mom has a spiffy new headband earwarmer.  What is family for but to provide us with a variety of body types and sizes so that when things don't fit us they don't go to waste?  The other mod in Fuchsia's case is that I swapped out the flower in the pattern for the more striking Crochet Picot Flower.  I like picots.

The festive headband is made in Wool-Ease Thick and Quick (color Oatmeal), which while not as buttery soft and dreamy to work with as the Malabrigo, is cozy and warm, and this time I added an inch and half to the length of the piece so it actually stays over my ears.  I was tickled by the idea of a very Christmas-y earwarmer, so I subbed in some holly for this one, using the Holly Bookmark pattern, obviously omitting the bookmark chain and replacing the thread called for with a double strand of RHSS.

Finally (and it only took two years), I finished this little elf ornament from Knit Picks.

The red and white are Sockenwolle, the face and hands are a double strand of Alpaca with a Twist Fino, and the body and feet are Lane Cervinia Forever Jacquard.  I went with jingle bells instead of pompoms, because teensy pompoms were more than I could manage.

I also made a couple of Dorset buttons for a swap, based on directions from Jane Austen Knits Fall 2013, this tutorial, and a little improvisation.  And beads.  If there's an option to add beads, I will always opt for that.  The swap was a simple ornament swap (my partner went a leeeetle overboard and sent me not only an ornament, but also cookies, tea, cocoa, coloring books . . .) with a Jane Austen theme.  Dorset is where Delaford is located in "Sense and Sensibility," so the button idea seemed appropriate.  Finding a ring big enough for the ornament I had in mind was trickier than I expected, though I have since discovered that there are places online that supply exactly what I was looking for, and I ended up using a 2" welded ring that I finally located at the local hardware store.  You can't beat the hardware store for those odd items that you only need one or two of without having to buy a whole package of whatever.  Just need four drywall screws?  You buy just four, and they put them in a cute little brown paper sack that makes you feel like you just left Olsen's Store in Plum Creek.  If only they carried stick candy (which can be had around here at the local apple orchard, which is awesome and made Silas the happiest two year old in September, I can tell you).  The yarn is the same Sockenwolle that I used for the elf ornament, and the beads are size 6/0 (E) glass seed beads, also from my stash.  The button sized button was made from a Boye stitch marker and size 10 crochet thread.  The trickiest thing about making the buttons is figuring out how to hide the ends.

   

Silas Monday, on Sunday

Two significant things happened this weekend:  I finished a cowl for Silas, and found him his Halloween costume.  They aren't actually related, but my husband thought they should be.

The cowl is Purl Soho's Bandana Cowl, which originally calls for super-bulky weight yarn on 10 1/2 needles, but Silas' is worked up from Lion Brand Wool-Ease (worsted) on size 6 needles.  It follows the pattern to the letter, except that for the decreases after the short rows, I worked only 3 over the 24 rows instead of 6.  The result fits perfectly, and looks pretty dashing to my eye.  Of course, mine is the eye of the person who made not only the cowl but also the adorable child (with help), so it may not be the most neutral information source.

There is a hat that goes with that jacket, incidently.

Silas Monday, on Tuesday

One of my New Year's resolutions for 2014 is to blog more often; to that end I've been toying with the idea of assigning each day to a certain knitting project. Mondays are for Silas knitting. I've been oddly reluctant when it comes to knitting for my babies. I couldn't tell you exactly why when I was expecting Gabriel, though it ended up seeming disturbingly prescient. After Gabriel, the hesitation was all too understandable. I'm determined to shake this, so I have resolved to always have something on the needles for Silas from here on out, and Monday is the day for working on it.  Tuesday apparently is the day for blogging about it, since I didn't manage to finish writing this until today.

The sweater is complete.  I know I posted about it being finished a couple of Fridays ago, but it wasn't really truly complete until there were pictures of the baby wearing it, complete with yogurt smudges.

A very nice bit of mindless knitting, with stripes for visual interest. I carried the unused color down the inside, despite reading somewhere that one should only do that if there are three or fewer rows per stripe. In future I think I will restrict that method to shorter stripe repeats after all, and just resign myself to weaving in the extra ends. The end result would be neater.

My new project for him is Lottie's Basic Doll Body. I keep stumbling over the advice that it's a good idea to let toddlers have a doll to play with, to practice social play and dressing and etc. I am a big fan of dolls, so I'm game. A friend bought me some Lion Brand Fun Fur in a color reasonably similar to Silas' hair, and I'm using two strands of RHSS Aran held together down together for the body. Of course that means that it's coming out huge, but that's alright.

I'm still working my way through "Rilla of Ingleside," it being my bathroom reading means that it takes a little longer for me to finish it. I've reached the sock knitting! The indomitable Susan says her allowance is one sock a day. I wonder if Ms. Montgomery truly knew someone who dedicated themselves to that speedy of an output of socks for the soldiers, or if it was a bit of creative license on her part. 

Rilla is described as 'knitting four and purling one's and then later in the chapter as 'purling four and knitting one' so unless the author was giving a subtle hint that our heroine was very mixed up in her knitting, it sounds like she knitted the leg flat to be seamed at the end. The same method is alluded to in the American Girl book "Molly Learns a Lesson," wherein Molly's classmates decide to knit socks for the soldiers.  By the time Molly convinces them that they've overreached themselves (sock heels being very tricky to turn, after all), they all have large squares knitted.  In the end they seam them together into a blanket for the Red Cross instead.  As far as I've seen in historical sources this wasn't the common way to make socks, so I suspect the writers weren't sock knitters themselves.  I have seen sock patterns that work this way, but they're usually modern socks designed to allow for intarsia, which doesn't work in the round.  According to Ravelry, "Knitting America" has the original patterns socks written to be made for soldiers in WWI and WWII.  I've put it on my Amazon wishlist.  If you just want a quick sock for any man in your life that has Rilla's 'knit 4, purl 1' pattern, Thuja by Bobby Ziegler makes a nice heavy sock.  The pattern calls for worsted weight yarn.

My brother says he pulls out the pair I knitted for him when it's really, really cold out.  I imagine if that's the case he's had reason to wear them the last couple of days.

I should really pester him for a better picture - bless his heart, he couldn't figure out why I had knit the second sock so differently from the first until I told him that it was inside-out.

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.

Yarn Along

I wistfully follow Ginny Sheller's blog, "Small Things," admiring her peaceful voice, beautiful photography, and lovely family.  I stumbled across her on Ravelry, while doing a random search for projects including the name Silas, as a way of pointing out to my husband that Silas is a name skyrocketing in popularity.  The name is growing on me, as being attached to my son, but it's still not the name I would have picked for any reason ever except that Ryan wanted it so badly.  Anyway, I was fascinated by the little glimpses I caught in her project page, both of beautiful knitting and photography and wonderful literary names for her six (now seven!) children.  What really caught me by the heartstrings, unsurprisingly, is that she, too, has sons named Silas and Gabriel.

She has a weekly Yarn Along that beckons to me, as she posts a picture of a book and a knitting project that she's reading and working on, respectively, and the picture always hits me right in my coziest spot.  I've refrained from joining, because I feel the disparity in the comparison of her pretty, soft, woolen projects and my acrylic monstrosities.  This week, however, I'm joining in, late as always, self-consciousness be darned!

When I started the New Ancestral Christmas Stocking from Mason Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines, I knew it was big, but I don't think it was really impressed enough upon me just how big.  It's a lovely Christmas decoration, but as something that I'm supposed to fill with gifts, it makes me feel . . . daunted, to say the least.  What on earth am I ever going to put in this gargantuan sock?  We don't even have a fireplace!  What am I thinking?

Part of it is the longing I often felt for a Christmas stocking as a child.  Part of it is how much I like argyle.  Part of it is how darn inviting Ann Shayne and Kay Gardiner make all of their patterns sound.  They have a gift for imparting their love of knitting in their writing, and it makes me want to have as much fun knitting log cabin afghans as they do.  Then I try it and discover that endless permutations of garter stitch make me ill.  Life is so unfair.

I'm very eager for this stocking to be over with.

Right now I'm reading Jane Eyre (or more accurately, re-re-re-re-reading it) on my Kindle, but I threw my hardcopy into the photo because I thought it would make the picture more dynamic.  Jane Eyre is just one of those books that I am always in the mood for.

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.