Be still my heart

Yesterday DD and I were in my room and she spied some of my knitting on the floor. (I have astonished myself in recent years by getting control over several of the rooms in our house, but sadly our bedroom is still a complete disaster area, so yeah, there's knitting on the floor...among other things.) She was going to bring it to me, but I said I didn't need it right now, so she left it alone. And then...

"Am I bigger?" she asked.

I had an inkling of what the deeper purpose behind this question was all about, but thought it was too much to hope for. So I just told her that she was certainly bigger than she used to be, and that she would get even bigger as she grew up.

She persisted. "Am I bigger?" she repeated.

So I decided to try out my theory. "You mean," I asked, "are you big enough yet to knit?"

The answering nods were very enthusiastic. "Well, do you want me to show you how to knit now?" I asked, with bated breath.

"Yeah!!!" she yelled. There may even have been some jumping up and down. I was too blown away to remember too clearly. :)

So I sat down with her and the knitting (which, as it happens, was my practice piece for the combination technique, so no great shakes if she messed around with it) and guided her hands through all the movements. She seemed to like it a lot, and bragged about what she was doing to DH, and even tried to do a stitch by herself (which didn't work at all but who cares, it's the motivation that counts). She lost interest pretty quickly, but clearly the drive is there. I'm delighted, and will happily guide her hands through the motions again any time she asks!

My munchkin is only two and a half. I have no illusions that she will be flying solo any time soon. But if I can nurture her enthusiasm and not let the difficulty of starting up discourage her, I think I might have myself a wee knitter pretty soon. I'm not holding my breath, though. The Yarn Harlot (whom I greatly admire) has frequently stated her belief that if a child can do something as difficult as reading, they can do something as easy as knitting. This is a very intriguing theory, but for myself, I disagree with it a tiny bit. I think that although the mind is ready to grasp knitting if a child can do something as tough as reading (which DD is almost doing...she has come very close a lot of times to sounding out a word all by herself), the manual dexterity ain't necessarily there. My theory tends to run more along the lines that if a child can tie a bow, they can probably knit. And DD is pretty far away from being able to tie a bow. But we shall see. I live in hope.

In other (albeit not nearly as exciting) news, I decided to try printing my hangtag design out on photo paper instead of regular cardstock. It worked like a dream:

You can't really see from this shot how great the print quality is, but trust me...it's awesome.

Also, we managed this weekend to get some photos taken of my BIL's Stornaway sweater modelled by DH:

front


back

This means I can now wrap this sucker and put it under the tree. Oh, and Aven, thank you very much for your compliments from the last time I posted some completed shots of this sweater. :)

I also got a completed shot of DH's Christmas socks:

So all in all, I'm pretty damn content with the world right now. Or at least I would be, if it were not for my WIPs...

Fafner blanket for baby Muth

27 pattern repeats to go. Yes, that's right. One lousy pattern repeat since last I posted. I suck.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

I have reached the halfway point of sleeve #2, which means I am about 40 rows away from being finished, if I stay with the short-sleeved version. However, I'm now looking at the amount of yarn I used up in the first half of sleeve #2, and the amount of yarn I have left, and I'm wondering...maybe I have enough for full-length sleeves after all? If so, it would be both wonderful and terrible. Wonderful because...well, I'd be making the sweater I wanted to make in the first place. Terrible because...well, I'm kind of a week behind. I'd have to do two half-sleeves in one week in order to have the sweater done by the morning of the 24th (when we leave for my MIL's). So. All this *#$(*@&!!! planning and once again, I may be screwed.