The haul

Santa was good to me this year.

Here you see the following:

• a German knitting gauge that is FANTASTIC - it has all sizes on it (including 2.5mm and 3mm!) up to 10mm
• the 2008 Knitting-Pattern-A-Day calendar
• earmuff earphones to replace the ones I got last year that I lost a few months later (yes, it is knitting related...I use them to listen to knitting podcasts in the wintertime)
• the pattern for The Princess Shawl
• Arans & Celtics: The Best of Knitters Magazine
• The Sentimental Journey Collection
• three balls of Sirdar's Baby Bamboo yarn
• pom pom makers
• a ball of Trekking XXL
• a ball of Schoeller & Stahl Sockina Colori
• a hand-crafted 'luv 2 knit' brooch
• little plastic spiral coils to keep your knitting needles together, in two sizes
• a kit to make the Paisley Long Shawl, in 'ruby'
• a package of Knit Klips

Also, my wonderful husband surprised me ONCE AGAIN with his knitting prowess. As I think I've mentioned here before, I'm teaching him how to do socks. He bought himself a nice Regia Jacquard (a very nice self-striper with some self-patterning flecks in there too), and has been following my instructions for a top-down sock (with flap heel). He's been making excellent progress, so I figured there was NO WAY he could also be working on secret Christmas knitting, because the sock I was watching him make was growing so fast.

I was wrong.

It feels great on my foot so far.

Actual knitting reporting to follow in the next post...stay tuned to find out exactly how far in advance of Christmas I finished the Christmas knitting; how everyone liked their knitted presents; which project turned out to be too big; which project turned out to be too small; and probably also my knitting plans for next year.

Hope your holiday season is going great!

The finish line approacheth

Larry's Cabled Cashmere Pullover for DH

Either Friday or Saturday night, I had a sewing and ends-weaving-in marathon and finished the damn thing. PHEW. That was a whole lotta ends, and it sucked hard. But I ploughed through it, and the only thing remaining to do before I consider this officially 'done' is to block it. Ordinarily, I wouldn't bother, because it looks pretty good now. However, a fair bit of the front and sleeves were made using yarn that had been previously used for the smaller size that I started with, so it was all kinky. And unfortunately, it knitted up kinkily (is that even a word?), so it needs a good soak to relax. I'll give you pictures when I've done that and it's looking right.

Trouble is, I have no idea where or when I'm going to block this damn thing. I was thinking of bringing it over to my mom's when I drop my older daughter over at her place on Tuesday (they're getting together to make a gingerbread house, very exciting stuff) and blocking it there, but my mom said today that she's planning to pick DD1 up...so I don't know. I think I might call my mom back when DH isn't around and rearrange that plan.

Herdis for niece

Finally finished up the sewing and ends-weaving on Tuesday. I think it came out great:


front


back


button detail


gusset detail

I like it. Wednesday morning I sent it out to my niece, along with her Christmas presents, and it should be there early this week. DONE!

Pixie Outfit for DD1's doll

Last night I sewed on the buttons, so this is complete!

Lacy Ribs Scarf

After finishing off three projects, I found myself kind of at loose ends for something to do. I do have one more Christmas project to finish, but I'm procrastinating because I am SO tired of finishing, and that's what's left to do on the last Christmas project. I want to KNIT, dammit. So I turned back to this project. As planned, I ripped out everything I'd done and re-did it with one fewer pattern repeat width-wise. I kept going, and once again used up the whole ball. It looks good, is about as long as I'd expect half a scarf to be, and now all I need is to back to the yarn shop and get the second ball I need to finish the thing. Alas, it is incredibly snowy here, and although I succumbed to lunacy and actually went out to the shop in this weather, I discovered that the owner was far more wise about the elements than I, and had stayed home and left the shop closed up. So I'll have to wait until later this week to get ball #2.

A Very Harlot Poncho for moi

Once I could go no further on the scarf project, I went hunting through my knitting project baskets and dredged this up. Then it occurred to me that I might enjoy it a little better if I wasn't knitting it on a circular needle with horrible joins. So I switched to my Denise Interchangeables, and oh...the difference was like night and day. The stitches slide across the joins like budda. So I'm moving along on it really quickly now.

Something for Raymond

This past week, one of my best friends called up with the staggeringly joyous news that they have a little boy in their home now that they are fostering-to-adopt. I am delighted for her and her family. Naturally, I must knit the child something as a welcome gift, but it has to be perfect. I suppose I could whip up some lovely sweaters, or something, but I thought a cosy blanket would be much more personal. Blankets also have more potential to be cherished objects that make children feel safe, which I figured would be very important for this little tyke. Plus, I really want to knit my mitred corners blanket pattern again to work out the kinks in the instructions, because I think I'm going to submit it to Knitty. (I know that they don't ordinarily bother publishing blanket patterns, but this one has a very nifty and unique construction, which might be enough of a 'hook' to motivate Amy to publish it. We shall see.)

So! I shall be doing my mitred blanket pattern for this little boy. I want to use the 10 balls of royal purple Patons Astra that I picked up from the LYS at their sale this summer. Unfortunately, I've calculated the yardage I would need, and the 10 balls will not be enough. So I have to see if the LYS has two more balls in the same dyelot. Please cross your fingers for me.

Low-level Christmas stress

Thanks guys, for all the compliments on the MIL's Christmas gift. It has since been labelled, wrapped, and put under the tree (along with almost all the presents we'll be giving people...yes, I'm actually on top of things this year, don't hate me), and is awaiting a serious plotzing on Christmas morning. :) Tumblina, CONGRATULATIONS on getting out of vest purgatory. I'm delighted for you (though not, I'm sure, as delighted as you are for yourself). Good luck with the slippers.

Self-patterning socks #3 for moi

Last week my mom treated me and we went out to see this flamenco company perform. I greatly enjoyed it (although there were really only two dancers that were worth watching 100% of the time), but of course there was knitting time during intermission, so I pulled this out of my purse to work on. I got a few more inches done on the leg, I think.

Larry's Cabled Cashmere Pullover for DH

Very close to the finish line now!



Here you see the completed front, back, and sleeves, with the shoulder seams of front and back sewn together and the first part of the neckline (the folded-over ridge) done. I'm currently working on the mini-cowl part of the neckline that gets sewn in behind the ridge.

Herdis for niece

I'm kinda panicking on this one, because I'd like to have it done by Monday so that I can mail the package of Christmas and birthday presents out to my niece in Nova Scotia on Tuesday. That would give it 10 business days to get there, which would give me a lot of confidence that it would arrive in time for Christmas. Any later than that, and the confidence starts to quiver and shake.

Fortunately, it's fairly quick work. Since diving back into the project on Friday, I have corrected my gone-too-far-ness on the left front, finished the left front, done the right front, sewn the shoulder seams together, and sewn the back neckline:



You can't tell, but I'm really screwing the pooch on stuff like symmetrical decreasing and making the lengths of all the pieces exactly the same. This is because I'm in a rush and therefore not double-checking such things. However, I think the fudging is trundling along at an acceptable level.

Next up: sleeves.

I also have my mother's permission to steal buttons from her button stash for this one, which means - assuming her button stash contains buttons that would work with this cardigan - that I don't have to waste time shopping for them. Keep your fingers crossed for me?

'Honey, I lost my hat' hat for DH

My devoted-wife, hat-replacing activities turned out to be completely for naught when my parents came over last week...they brought DH's hat with them, which he had left at their place earlir. A thousand curses. Oh, well. The new one is thicker and warmer, albeit definitely too short. I shall have to add some length...one or two inches, I think.

Fair isle tank top

Well...*gulp*...I did it. Finished writing up the pattern, getting all the diagrams and charts and legend symbols and photos and whatnot together, and sent it off to Knitty. And now...I wait.

AUGH!

In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya...I hate waiting.

Of course, what I'm really hoping for is that Amy sends me an email immediately, gushing about how it's the best design she's ever seen, she's putting it on the cover, I'm a genius, hordes of knitters will flock to knit this pattern, it'll be the next Clapotis, my fortune as a designer will be made, etc. etc.

Right.

(Someone please tell me I'm not the only one with delusional knitting designer fantasies?)

Actually, speaking of Knitty, I really like a lot of the stuff in the new winter issue. I actually can't remember liking a single issue so much before. Ice Queen, Three Tams, Tudora, Aoife, Fair Isle Rapids, Chevrolace, Toasty Topper, Doddy and Jeanie (more appropriately named 'Genius', I think) are my favourites, and there are even more things in there that I might end up knitting, too.

We have the technology

My husband is knitting his first pair of socks. It's going quite well.

But for some reason, he decided to cast on for sock #2 before finishing sock #1. (Actually, I do know the reason - it's two-fold. Firstly, he wanted to avoid the dreaded Second Sock Syndrome that he's heard all too much about; and secondly, he had already forgotten how to do the long-tail cast-on and wanted a refresher.) So he dipped into my (rather substantial) collection of 2.75mm DPNs to cast on with.

However, he was really unsure about the gauge of them. Some of them fit very well into the 2.75mm hole of my needle gauge, others were a bit tight for it, and some rattled around in it. All of them, however, refused to fit in the next size down on the gauge. He was forced to conclude two things: a) that the gauge itself was imprecise; and b) different manufacturers make different widths of needles but label them the same. These conclusions were even more obvious to him when he succeeded in forcing some of my 3mm DPNs through the 2.75mm hole in the needle gauge.

(Those of us who have been around knitting needles and gauges for a while will probably react to my husband's discoveries with the phrase, "Well, duh," but it was quite an unpleasant surprise for him.)

So, what does he do to get more accurate readings of the sizes of my needles? Well, he goes down to his workshop (he's a custom golf club fitter and maker) and brings up this handy piece of gadgetry that he's owned for I don't know how long:



That, my friends, is a freakin' electronic caliper. It measures, to one one-hundredth of a millimetre, how wide something is. Can you imagine? Something that devastatingly useful to a knitter and he's been holding out on me all this time?!?

When he realised how excited I was about this tool, he got very glum. He knew this meant it would probably start living in the workroom with all my knitting stuff instead of down in his workshop where it belongs. So far, he's been right.

Self-pattern socks #whatever for DH

Once I realised I could use DH's electronic caliper tool to measure knitting needle diameters, I went on the hunt for a DPN in my collection which would match the one I was using for these socks, which I broke.

Sadly, no dice. The needles I was using all measure about 2.53mm, and the closest thing I have measures 2.61mm (2.59mm if I really squeeze the caliper). If I were knitting plain socks, I would just use the 2.61mm as a replacement and keep going on the sock. However, since this is self-patterning, the small difference in needle width is probably going to result in fraternal socks.

Blast.

So, I'm going to rip all of sock #1 out and restart with needles which are all the same size.

(It's not that bad. I really like the colourway and don't think I'll mind working it all over again.)

'Honey, I lost my hat' Hat

Somewhere in the last week or so, DH misplaced his hat. He has no idea where it is. (The same goes for his reading glasses, about which I am even less thrilled, since they are rather more expensive to replace.) So I measured his head (23"), grabbed some black Red Heart Comfort (100% acrylic, thick worsted weight) from the stash and some 4.5mm DPNs, swatched, and whipped up a hat.



The pattern was devastatingly simple. I cast on 100 stitches and worked K1, P1 rib for 24 rows. Then I started stocking stitch, increasing into every 10th stitch on the first knit round so I was doing stocking stitch with 110 stitches. I knit until I figured it was a good time to start the decreasing (although in hindsight I should have worked about an inch more in stocking stitch). The decreasing went as follows:

Row 1: *K8, K2tog, repeat from * to end.
Row 2 and every even row: K.
Row 3: *K7, K2tog, repeat from * to end.
Row 5: *K6, K2tog, repeat from * to end.

I continued decreasing in this pattern until I was doing K2tog across the entire row. Then I knit another row plain, at which point I had 11 stitches. The final row was: K1, (K2tog) 5 times. Then I cut the yarn, drew the tail through the remaining 6 stitches, wove in the ends, and - tadah! - DH had a hat after a few hours of work. Easy as pie. Happy and grateful husband.

(He rather foolishly, however, semi-complained about the blackness and worsted weightness of the yarn. I think, when I said I would knit him a replacement hat, he had envisioned something kinda fancy. Right. Christmas is coming up, he loses his hat, I manage to fit knitting a replacement in, and he wants fancy?!? I effectively told him to shut it and stop complaining about the free hat. :) If he wants a 'fancy' one, I'll make him one in the new year.)

Elizabethan Jacket for MIL

Hey, guess what? (Tumblina, warning...you're probably about to get hit in the heart yet again. Sorry to kick you like this when you're in the middle of vest purgatory.) I sewed in the sleeves:



Once again, I sing the praises of using binder clips for 'basting' your knitting garments together. They're the poor knitter's Knit Klips (children's hairclips would probably also work well in a pinch). They make sewing things in, especially really pain-in-the-ass stuff like set-in-sleeves, VASTLY easier.

Once the sleeves were sewn in, I was faced with a truly frightening number of ends:



This picture does not convey how bad it was. There were a lot of ends. It took a looong time to get rid of them all.

And then there were the steeks to lash into place. That was also a helluva job. There were ten of them, and of course every time I started a new length of yarn with the sewing of them, I had to weave in each end of that length. Blech. But, it got done:



Oh, and did I mention the buttons? Yeah, there were fourteen of the friggin' things:



So hey, guess what?


Front


Back


Interior (for you finishing freaks)

I love, love, LOVE it.

Larry's Cabled Cashmere Pullover for DH

I have two completed sleeves! Plus, the shoulder seams have been sewn, and at the moment I am working on the neck ridge. I'm using the last bits of the lighter dark blue for this, and unfortunately am running out fast. There's no way I'm going to have enough to do all 1.5" that the ridge needs. Fortunately, the ridge is formed by folding over that 1.5", so that only the first 0.75" or so that gets knitted is actually visible, and I think I miiiiight have enough of the lighter dark blue to do that. (After which I'm planning to switch to the darker dark blue.) I could be wrong, though...stay tuned.

Inside-out comfort socks for BIL#1

Done! Finished last Sunday: