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.