Department of New Yarn:
I received my order from Wandering Cat Yarns just after Thanksgiving. And just the packaging was so pretty, I decided to save it and open it at my knitting group so there would be more than just me to appreciate it. For example:
And the yarn itself inspired a round of impressed petting and serious lust among my fellow knitters:
Department of Holiday Preparations:
Holiday prep is going about as well as can be expected. The last bit of baking is in the oven, boxes that needed to be shipped have been shipped (late, but what else is new?), and all shopping is complete and wrapped. Despite the best efforts of my stalwart assistants...you know what is less useful than a cat helping with your wrapping? Two cats. And I'm given to understand that curling ribbon is very, very exciting. I did not get any photos of this activity, being rather too busy trying to rescue the wrapping and gifts. Biscuit was miffed.
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| Curling ribbon, yum, yum! |
You notice what I left out here? Yeah, that would be the knitting. Which is actually fine, given my usual known propensity for putting more on the knitting list than is actually humanly possible to accomplish. Since I have learned to accept this and divided my knitting into an "A" list and a "B" list (that's the wildly optimistic part of the list), it's not really a problem. Thanks to the Lost Projects, I wound up demoting one project to the B-list, and the rest is
Speaking of B-list, the last chunky hat didn't make it in time to be collected at the knit-a-thon, so I'll have a starter for next year's holiday knits.
And that brings me to:
Department of Lost Projects:
This hasn't been the sweeping masterpiece of efficiency that I hoped it would be (I knew better, but hey, optimist here.) But I have made some progress. I was astonished and pleased when I went to look for replacement buttons for a favorite jacket and found:
Identical buttons to the missing one still being sold. (The top one is off the jacket, the two below are the new ones.) How awesome is that? So I got just the two and sewed on a new one plus the one I'd snipped off to take to the store with me (it was loose and needed to be re-sewed more securely anyhow). And that was one.
And for my next trick, I tackled the glove liners my husband has been asking for- he loves his knitted wool gloves, but on windy days, they just aren't warm enough. This is the project I bought rip-stop nylon for- not once, but twice!- and hadn't gotten to in over a year. It went surprisingly quickly once I remembered (from my last foray into glovemaking circa 1993) that all the fiddly little sewing is much easier to do by hand than on the machine. It didn't hurt that I've done enough hand-quilting since then that my hand-sewing is a lot faster and neater than it used to be either. They look kind of funky- being liners, I left the seams on the outside so the inside would be more comfortable on the hand, and I had to put darts in the side-seams (the pattern was written for a stretchier fabric), but they came out fairly well. I'll see how they wear- I'm considering a layered concept for a future pair of gloves. For an encore, I darned up a hole in the gloves. (Another pair of gloves is going to become a priority for next year, I'm thinking.)
The first piece of rip-stop nylon that I mislaid hasn't turned up yet, but I'm expecting it any day.
So- now it's time to go back to knitting on my A-list project, dreaming about promoting the B-list one back onto the Christmas list, and wondering if I can fit in another lost project without losing my grip on the other two. Hey, we all have to have ambitions, right?
Glad the yarn was a hit!
ReplyDeleteI haven't started wrapping yet, but I'll have the same kind of help.