My best enabler

Let me tell you about my mother-in-law. About as seriously perfect a mother-in-law as anyone can possibly hope to have: friendly, generous, supportive, and not the slightest bit interfering. All of that is of course fantastic, but there's one thing more that makes her almost magical in her awesomeness: the knitting support.

From her, I have received more compliments of and support for my knitting habit hobby than I can possibly remember. She's even looped a skein around her wrists/hands and helped me to wind it up.

And then, there have been the gifts, which not only give me oodles of glee and hours of knitting fun, but also have (I'm sure) been a source of delight to the owner of her LYS. Think I'm kidding? Over the years, she has given me:

• King Cole Sapphire Confetti DK yarn, which I used to make a sweater for my older daughter
• Plymouth microfibre baby yarn, which I used to make the Heart-Warmer sweater for my older daughter
• The pattern, yarn and buttons to make my older daughter's Baby Poncho
• The pattern book, yarn and buttons to make the Ljod cardigan for myself
• The pattern book and yarn to make my husband's Larry's Cabled Cashmere Sweater
• The pattern book, yarn and buttons to make my older daughter's Carnival Coat
• A yarn barn (an unruly knitting ball container)
• A knitting bag, needle case, and accessories case
• A skein of Fleece Artist Curly Locks in hues so gorgeous I used them as the basis of the colour scheme for this blog
• This package of Christmas gifts:
  
  Which contains the basket, the kit to make my Lotus Blossom Shawl, the kit to make my older daughter's Twizzle cardigan and hat, two books by Elsebeth Lavold: The Sophisticated Lady Collection and The Mellow Tone Collection, and enough Fortissima Colori sock yarn for two pairs of adult-size socks
• This package of Christmas gifts:
  
  Which contains the book Total Baby Knits, enough sock yarn for 3 pairs of adult-size socks, a pair of Knit Lite needles, the 2007 Knitting Pattern a Day Calendar and a set of Denise Interchangeable Needles
• The kit to make a vintage beaded bracelet
• Most of this package of Christmas gifts:
  
  Which contains the best needle gauge I've ever owned, the 2008 Knitting Pattern a Day calendar, the book Arans & Celtics: The Best of Knitters Magazine, a book by Elsebeth Lavold: The Sentimental Journey Collection, Sirdar Baby Bamboo yarn, pom-pom makers, a skein of Trekking XXL sock yarn, a 'luv 2 knit' brooch, plastic spiral coils for keeping stitches on the needles, the kit to make the Paisley Long Shawl, and Knit Klips
• A 100g skein of mostly-alpaca sock yarn
• A booklet of patterns to make with Sirdar Escape yarn
• 10 balls of Sirdar Escape yarn

To top it all off, she has been tremendously easy to knit for. It has always been laughably easy to find inspiration for knitted gifts for her. Moreover, her colouring and my family's are completely different, so when I knit for her, I get to pick colours I could never ordinarily use. As an added bonus, everything which has ever screamed "Knit me for your mother-in-law!" at me has been an absolute joy to work on - and is almost always a project which expands my skills. I would indeed be a much poorer knitter today without the experience of the projects I've made for her under my belt. And I have scads of beautiful, exciting projects planned for her in the future, not to mention a bunch of yarn I've bought (on sale!) to make some of them. Here's a gallery to show you the sort of thing I'm talking about:

Christmas 2004: Catherine Parr sweater

An Alice Starmore from the Tudor Roses book

Christmas 2005: Cape Cod sweater

Another Alice Starmore, this one using traditional fisherman's gansey construction, from the Fisherman's Sweaters book

Christmas 2006: Garden Shawl

Possibly the most complex lace concoction available from the fabulous Fiddlesticks Knitting

Christmas 2007: Elizabethan Jacket

A Jade Starmore blazer with steeking

This year: Lliclla

Just finished. It's gorgeously scrumptious and I love it to pieces. The knitting and finishing was all totally done, but it still had to be washed and blocked. I did that this week, wrapped it up, and sent it off to her.

You see, earlier this month, my dear MIL had such a bad cold that it turned into pneumonia, and she checked herself into the hospital. While undergoing treatment for that, they did a CT scan of her lungs to make sure there wasn't anything else going on (she'd been a smoker for several decades before quitting cold turkey several years ago once grandchildren were on the way). And they found cancer. Cancer which was doing very nasty and painful things to her system, and at an alarming speed.

On Thursday, DH took DD1 over for a visit. And I insisted he bring along my gift, while there was still time for it to be useful and appreciated. If she's cold - particularly if she needs to go outside in the winter weather in order to be shipped from hospital to hospital for tests or whatever - she should be wrapped in something warm and insulating: wool. Nor did I want to chance her not seeing the last gift I made for her. And if she's feeling scared, or hurt, or down, she should be surrounded by a personalized garment which has the happiness of a totally-thrilled-with-her-project-knitter-who-loves her worked into each and every stitch.

I have been working on other stuff, but I'm not feeling much like writing about it right now. Next post.

P.S. If you are a smoker? Please. Stop. NOW.

Surprise!

So about a week or so ago, I went to an SnB at my LYS, to find that they're now selling the Baby Surprise Jacket [scroll way down] pattern! Now, I have been coveting this for a good long while, and even went to purchase it online at one point, but wimped out when I realised that shipping was almost 80% of the cost of the pattern itself. But suddenly, with the pattern right there at the shop ready to come home with me, I snapped that sucker up so fast that it was in my bag practically before everybody else had a chance to say hello to me. :) I can't tell you how badly I want to start making a jacket with it, but I'm going to have to hold off until I put a bunch of my deadline-driven projects to bed.

And suddenly, I have another deadline-driven project, because one of my extremely dear friends (whom we haven't seen in a while) called me a few weeks ago and revealed that he and his wife are expecting in the new year. SQUEE!!! So I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to make, but as I say, he's a dear friend, and she is a serious knitter, so whatever it is, it's going to be good. I may design something especially.

I was also delightfully surprised by the fact that my LYS is having a sale this week to celebrate the one-year anniversary of moving in to their new location. So I took advantage.

That's one skein of On Your Toes Bamboo sock yarn, a bunch of Fabel sock yarn, and five skeins of Classic 8 Ply from Naturally Magic Garden. The picture shows only three skeins of the Fabel, but I actually bought four, all self-patterning: two of a glorious earthy orange-reddish theme for an adult-size pair of socks (probably for me), one of a really fun blue/green/purple colourway for something for my baby girl (possibly socks, possibly something else), and the last one:

Christmas socks for DD1

This yarn is deliciously cute and fun, it's perfect for my older girl, and I love it like crazy:



I'm using my own sock pattern and am getting close to finishing the first sock already. The yarn is just so much damn fun, I love it.

Ragna sweater for brother

This is what I've really been pulling out all the stops for in the last two weeks. I finished the front:



And I'm very close to finishing the back:



The needle is angled in that shot because I'm already working on the neck shaping on one side.

Of course, it wouldn't be a true large Christmas knitting gift without some serious problems threatening to rear ugly heads. Firstly, I'm almost down to my last four balls of yarn and I haven't even started the sleeves. This makes me extremely nervous. Even more nervous-making is that I'm not sure I've truly finished the front because the length looks a little short. And secondly - I have completely lost the notes I made on how long the sleeves are supposed to be. Sigh.

But the good news is that I'm no longer panicked by how little I've done vs. how soon Christmas is coming - I think that as long as the yarn supply holds out, I'll be fine to make the deadline.

Lauren's blanket

Although I don't really have to worry about this until after Christmas, I really wanted to at least decide on the yarn and general idea of what I was going to do as soon as possible because, well, I'm just obsessive that way, I guess. :) I'd had my eye on some Northern Worsted acrylic in my LYS which is a gorgeous dark yet vibrant blue. Unfortunately, there were only five skeins of it, which was not enough to make a blanket, so I had to combine it with something. After much rummaging throughout the store (seriously, I combed the whole damn store), I found exactly ten 50g balls of Red Heart Comfort in a really nice navy, which - when combined with the Northern Worsted - gives me 1000g in total, which should work very nicely.

So now I just have to figure out what I'm going to do with it. I've got a really nice cable motif that I worked out at some point in the past, but at the moment I'm having a hard time getting the increases I need for the blanket to work with it. I've lost track of how many times I've started it up. This is the latest attempt:



The good news is that the blue of the Northern Worsted doubled with the blue of the Red Heart Comfort creates a dazzlingly beautiful result - a deep, rich, velvety blue which the above photo doesn't do justice to. If only I could get my pattern idea to actually work, all would be well!