Busy

Lots of movement on the crafting front this week.   Here's the scarf I mentioned earlier.  I like it surprisingly well knit up- I'm not usually a fan of thick and thin yarns, but it does look pretty.  One more skein to knit up and I'll be through with this yarn.

And here's the completed chemo cap to go with it:

On the sock front, it's out with the old- I have finished the Moorish Lattice Socks:

And here's a close-up of the pattern.  Pretty, but the way it decreases stitches for a couple of rows makes the leg pull in much more than the total stitch count would lead you to believe.

And then it's in with the oldest- for the new Use-Your-Oldest-Yarn KAL, I unearthed this project.

This came to me in a big bag of yarn odds and ends from my Mom, that she had gotten from someone else.   (Note that I asked her about this yesterday and she denies everything.  But this is my blog, so my story.)  Anyway, this was long before I started knitting socks and I said, "Really? Fingering weight yarn.   And it's pretty, but even if I finished it, the sweater would be too small for me."   And my mom spun me this tale out of whole cloth about how it probably belonged to some elderly knitter who couldn't finish it, and how grateful she would be to know that someone else took on the project.

Now, this was a long time ago- pre-internet, and I had not at that time encountered the knitterly habit of putting misbehaving projects in eternal time-out.   So I fell for my mom's pathetic (and completely fictional) speculation, and took the project.   Which has sat in my stash for roughly 20 years.   In the intervening time, the pattern got lost.  I tried at one point to reverse engineer it.  I discovered that even if I could duplicate the pattern, the original knitter and I have vastly different gauges.

....and then, many years later I was thinking about frogging it and doing something with the yarn and looked at the label to see that it is in fact superwash wool and nylon.  In fingering weight.  Sock yarn, in other words.  And finally I had a use for the stuff.   So.  Despite having A Plan, the sweater continued to hang out- the lace was pretty, I had other sock yarn, and I just never got a Round Tuit.   Until the KAL.  So, today I frogged it onto my yarn swift.

And skeined it up so I can give it a quick wash and try to get the 20-year-old squiggles from prior knitting to uncurl.  Here's all the yarn wound up.

And I've cast on a sock, from the unknit skein.  I'm not holding out a lot of hope for making the KAL deadline, as it would mean knitting 2 pairs of socks in this same yarn back-to-back, but at least it's gotten me to frog the sweater and get the yarn ready to use.  Which is way more than half the battle.

The pattern is the Open Rib stitch, again from my go to sock book, Sensational Knitted Socks, and it's one I haven't tried before.  So I'm looking forward to getting a few more repeats on the needle and seeing how it looks.   And I'm psyched to have completed a couple of things and cast on new projects!

The Modeled Shot

Meet Aamire Anthony, showing off his new sweater.  It's a bit large on him at the moment, but I expect the fit will improve over the next few months.  Aamire's got a several months left to his first winter. 

I think this kid has a future in modeling, don't you?

I'm ridiculously thrilled to get this picture.  Thanks to his mom and grandfather for allowing me to share it with you!

And Four

After starting the year thinking that if I would just be monogamous and finish up the sleeves on my sweater I could have it done in no time...yeah.  Haven't touched it.  Instead I finished the hat that I started in December, ran out of yarn halfway through, decided that with the design as I had it, there was no way to finish it without it looking lame.  So I ripped a bunch of it back and rethought the design until I had something less lame.

That's three partial balls of yarn completely used up plus part of a fourth.  Two of them finished the round with only  a couple of inches left.  Using all the yarn is so gratifying.

And I also knit another baby sweater, even smaller than the last one.  It didn't use all the yarn but was still cute.

Pencil included for scale.

And then there's the scarf that I haven't photographed yet, and I'm past the heel turn on the current socks.    But my poor lonely sweater needs love, so I mean to give it some.  Real Soon Now. 

Something Happened on Friday

Somewhere in my brain, the desire to finish something collided with a vague intention to make more sweaters this year, and then tripped over the reminder that a couple of my coworkers have new grandchildren.  Before I quite knew what was going on, I had downloaded a pattern from Ravelry and cast on a baby sweater.

I wove in the ends and sewed the buttons on just after dinner this evening.

And for good measure, I fished around in my knitting bag and came out with this pair of mittens that only needed ends woven in and finished those as well.

So.  That's the first two FOs of 2017, in the bag.   Not that knitting was the only thing I did this weekend.  I took down the tree and packed it away (Jake, Cookie and Biscuit all helped- Cookie and Biscuit thoroughly inspected all the boxes, and Jake closely supervised the removal of the decorations and tinsel garland.)  And I took apart the light fixture in the kitchen, which hasn't been working, and was able to quickly identify the problem and fix it- not a given with electrical problems.  Plus, shoveling snow, laundry, etc.

And now I'm going to go park myself under a cat, as I'm freezing.  Fortunately, when Biscuit is sleepy, I can simply pick him up and deposit him on my lap, or move him off if I need to get up for some reason.  He's very complacent.  And warm.

This Is Why

This is why I wanted to have a sock on the needles and ready to go for our Annual New Year's Board Games Extravaganza.

All that sitting around, chatting, eating and playing games?  Lots of knitting happens.  These are the Moorish Lattice socks.  I'm happy to report that shifting part of the pattern one stitch to the right fixed all the weirdness.  However when I got several inches into the leg, I found that this pattern pulls in a lot.  Rather than rip it back and add a pattern repeat, I'm just going to finish it in a smaller size and gift it.

Lots of eating happened too.   And I discovered that maple cotton candy bears a remarkable resemblance to poofs of Biscuit fluff.   I'm taking great care to ensure the two are not confused.  I prefer to leave spitting out hairballs to the cats.

I don't know that I have any special resolutions for the new year.    I decided to try changing up the look of the blog.  I'll probably be tweaking it for a few weeks until my satisfaction with the look of it balances with my laziness.

I still want to pursue all the hobbies I'm already pursuing.  Only more so!   I expect work to continue to be busy.  My husband and I are plotting the year's travel.  We're thinking shorter trips but more of them this year, so there will be more travel pics.  We've been saying for years (particularly after seeing the Ken Burns series on the National Parks) that we wanted to visit some of the western parks, so that's on the slate for this year.  

I've got my next several knitting projects picked out, but am trying to finish the current sweater before I cast on anything new.  This would be easier if I spent more time actually working on the sweater, but it's getting there.

2016 in knitting was another light year.  Only 30 projects.  The only sweater was for a baby.  There were 3 scarves, 7 hats, 5 pairs of socks, and 14 pairs of mitts/mittens.  I'll hope to do more this coming year.