Denouement December 30, 2008

I haven’t written anything in a few days, have I?  Oops.  It’s been busy, what with felting four pairs of clogs. Oy, that was a lot of felting!  Even in the washer.  The father/brother-in-law got some nice heathered earth tones, Pampas, Camel and Amber Heather.  Very nice.  Lowell’s are Forest and Claret, a somewhat interesting choice and still up for debate.  It looked so darn good in the skeins.  My mother-in-law’s turned out the best, I think.  White and black with embroidered spots to look like dalmatians!  Very cute, I think.

 

     

  

 

I received some great gifts, like the Yarn Harlot’s page-a-day calendar and the first two volumes of Barbara Walker’s stitch dictionaries.  So many ideas… so little time.  Lowell and a friend bought me the whole set of Harmony interchangeable circulars, so I now can knit my worsted weight with more than a size 7 or size 10.5.  Very helpful, let me tell you!  Didn’t get that blocking board that I was hinting at but that’s okay.  I’ll acquire it another way, *evil laugh*.

 

In terms of gifts given to other people, they all went pretty well.  Obviously, I’ve told you about the family of slippers.  Did I mention that I’m now sick of that pattern and don’t want to see it again for at least a year… and now, right after I cast off the last stitch of the last slipper joyous about the fact that I wouldn’t be knitting any more slippers… now my pair of slippers developed a hole in the sole that apparently no amount of needle felting is useful against.  Oh, the irony!  Guess I’ll be knitting that pattern again very soon…

 

Oh right, other knitted gifts.  Well, my mother-in-law got a lovely pair of socks, knit from Dream in Color Smooshy in Deep Sea Flower.  The pattern will be up shortly (I hope.)

 

     

 

And Lowell got a hat (this was the last minute project that I’m still surprised I pulled off without him seeing much of it.)  I love this hat so much.  It turned out a little short for him (despite the obsessive attention to length), but fits me great!  I’ll be ripping back to before the decreases and making it a little longer for him; shouldn’t take more than an hour or so.  I will also be knitting this hat for me!  I’m thinking a white background with dark to light blue accents.  I may already have the yarn in my Knit Picks cart.  The pattern will also be up soon.

 

   

Happy Holidays December 25, 2008

We’re having a massively white Christmas here.  I mean, massively.  It’s pretty much been snowing all week.

  

I love it.

 

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all!

 

 

Also, cat:

Master Folder December 22, 2008

I finished my Christmas knitting!  It’s all done!  Ha ha, take that knitting gods! I have 2 days to spare.  I wonder if I could cast on another present…  Maybe I should be quiet, I don’t want the project that I’m blocking to suddenly spring free of its pins and shape itself into something resembling an orc’s butt.  That would be very bad, given that I’m head over heels in love with the thing.  Maybe Lowell won’t want it…

 

I actually haven’t been knitting too super much these last few days.  Oh sure, I’ve been knitting a lot by Muggle standards, but I’ve been doing other things as well.  Mainly wrapping presents, remembering presents that I forgot to buy, then purchasing and wrapping those presents.  And there’s been the normal, fun family hanging-out time (which for me often includes knitting but slower.)

 

Last night, I tried to rectify my sad lack of Christmas tree ornaments (which was today further rectified by a trip to the mall) by trying my hand at paper folding.  Specifically, tea bag folding from this tutorial on Folding Trees.  Tea bag folding came from Holland and can make some pretty cool looking things.  I printed out some tea bag paper from this site and started folding.

 

 

 

After I “mastered” the basic fold, I tried some others from this site.  The instructions are not always clear, but careful examinations of the pictures can lead to success (but not always.)   This is the Easy Star Fold, which was indeed easy.

 

 

Soon, being who I am, I got tired of tea bag folding even though it was pretty fun.  Really I got tired to cutting out the tiny squares. There’s really only so much cutting I can do at one time, even with a rotary cutter.  So I tried paper wishing stars, also on Folding Trees.

 

 

Also a lot of fun, and certainly a lot faster and involving less cutting than the tea bag medallions.  These stars are made with scrapbooking paper, cut 3/4″ thick for the big stars and 1/2″ thick for the small stars.  Pushing in the sides is not as easy as the tutorial suggests, but I got the hang of it.  I threaded some of the stars together with some beads to make ornaments.  I think I like the stars better than the tea bag medallions, but that may be because the scrapbooking paper is so pretty and rich.  I probably should have printed the paper on the good setting, not the save ink setting!

 

Counting Trick December 19, 2008

This post was supposed to be up yesterday.  I had it almost finished, put my laptop to sleep, and went to bed myself Tuesday night.  Now, this strategy has worked very well in the past.  I wake up, proofread over breakfast, and post.  This time, the rough draft was gone when I woke up.  The darn laptop had restarted overnight and I have to start all over again.  And since yesterday involved more cleaning than a circus after-party (??) I didn’t get a chance to rewrite it.  So here it is.  Finally.

 

I hate counting rows in knitting.  Well, not quite as much as I used to, since now I can actually do it if I have to.  But I still strongly dislike it.  I have a number of row counters and always keep a post-it note handy to make hash marks in order to keep track of rows.  I imagine this is not uncommon.  But both of those solutions involve putting down one or both needles to count a row.  And I hate to have to do that if I’m working on a small project.  And why should I carry around a row counter when I only need it once or twice and the rest of the pattern I’m fine?

 

Well, if you’re like me and hate counting rows even though you can do it and you only need to count a few rows at a time, I have found a solution.  It’s not a life-changing epiphany or anything, but I think it’s rather clever.  And it doesn’t even involve putting the needles down.  Unless you drop something.

 

Say your pattern calls for you to knit five rows (or rounds.)

 

Knit the first row (or round), then place an extra stitch marker after the first stitch on the right side.  Ta da!  Now if you go to cook dinner, you’ll know that you’ve knit one row/round of the five because there’s one stitch between the marker and the tip of the needle.

 

 

Knit the second row/round and move the marker to after the second stitch on the right side.  (This step is slightly easier to do in circular knitting, because you come to the marker before you come to the second stitch.  Knitting flat, it’s handy to have a locking marker for easy moving, or just slip the stitches back and forth on the needle.)  Isn’t this simple?  You can see you’ve knit two row/rounds when you stop to keep your dog from swallowing whatever that is.

 

 

Knit the third row/round and move the marker to after the third stitch on the right side.  You’ve got the hang of this now, right?  Just keep going on like this, moving the marker with each row, until you don’t need to count anymore.

 

 

Genius, right?

Give Me My Yarn! December 16, 2008

Remember that yarn that I said I ordered last week?  Remember how I said that I really, really needed it to start a project? 

 

It’s been bum-blisteringly cold here in western Washington.  It’s been cold everywhere recently, but we’re getting temperatures in the 20s which is really unusual for Seattle.

 

Well, my yarn got delivered on Saturday.  To my mailbox, not my porch, which is down at the end of the street.  The postwoman leaves a key in the mailbox that opens the special package locker.

 

The package locker is frozen shut.

 

Is this some sort of joke from the Knitter Gods?  Some sort of karmic retribution for not starting this project earlier or for my foolish confidence that I would complete all my other projects by Sunday? (Which didn’t happen, by the way.)  Or is this just bad, bad luck?

 

Sigh.  I think I’ll go down tomorrow and wait for the postwoman to open the locker for me. (She’s very punctual.)