Slog-a-palooza

It.

Is.

DONE!!!

front:

back:

(You obviously can't tell from the shots since there's nothing else in it for scale, but it's friggin' HUGE.)

Ahhhhh.

Time to break out the Kauni!

No, wait, scratch that...time to clean the house. Le sigh.

Slog-o-rama

The following finished object was achieved after weaving in about a hundred ends:

And I am not exaggerating - I counted them.

Then there was the extensive amount of strapping I sewed in so that the hem wouldn't roll up:

It's now wrapped and under the tree, to my great relief.

However, there's still my brother's gargantuan cardigan to finish. I didn't realise it was gargantuan until I sewed all the pieces together, but gargantuan it certainly is. There were a lot of ends to weave in on that, too. Still not done, though. I still have a total of about 100 inches of i-cord to knit, a 24-inch zipper to sew in, and pockets to attach.

Aiee.

Slog

All cardigan.

All extra-large sizing.

All. The. Time.

Consequently, the fronts are done.

I can't tell you how many design ideas and balls of stash yarn are calling out to me at this point. ("Kathleeeeeeeeen! Knit us nooooooooowwww!") But with Christmas morning less than a week away, and Monday knitting time allocated to finishing off DD1's poncho/skirt, and still needing to finish off some of the shopping and wrapping, and getting the house in good enough shape to receive guests (not to mention that I still have delusions of being able to do some baking before Santa shows up)...if I waver in my resolve on this darn hoodie, I'm toast.

There is some good news, though: my mom, who needs to go to Fabricland tomorrow to get red ribbon to trim her door wreath, has offered to pick up a 24-inch navy blue separating zipper for me. Isn't she lovely? Thanks, Mom.

(The term "separating zipper" never fails to crack me up. I will always remember the utter confusion I had the first time I heard that. "Don't they all separate?" I wondered. "Isn't that, y'know, the function of a zipper?)

Triumph!

The three-quarters of a skein of Silky Tweed that I needed to finish off DD1's ballet teacher's gift was FOUND. So I was able to complete it. Here it is blocking, upside-down as I always do so I can sew in the ends:

Here it is all finished, lying flat, with the front showing:

Lying flat with the back showing (I love mattress stitch; I would have knit it in the round, but the only 4.5mm circular I could find was being used for my brother's cardigan, so I had to resort to straights):

Being worn:

Being worn with the back pulled up a bit over my head:

I think she's going to love it. She's a redhead, so the colour will look fabulous on her.

Also found: the tenth ball of yarn I need to have enough for my brother's cardigan. This is the only holiday gift I have left to complete, so, despite the siren call of other projects, I am concentrating exclusively on the cardigan and am forging ahead.

The sleeves are finished:

And I'm making progress on the fronts. Like the sleeves, I'm knitting the fronts at the same time. I did, however, realise that I'm going to have to find a zipper for this thing somewhere.

No wait, I'm wrong - there is one more holiday gift left to finish: DD1's Ruby poncho/skirt. However, all that's left there is the sewing of the last seam and the weaving in of all the ends. Okay, also I need to attach some sort of flat band to the hem to stop it from rolling up. I have no idea how they managed to get the hem in the model garment in the book to not roll up while they were doing the photo shoot, because there just isn't enough garter stitch at the bottom to prevent it.

I also gave DD2's teacher's hat a good steaming so the top would be more smooth. It looks great.

And then in the middle of all this, I went to a charity knit night at my LYS. Thanks to the owner taking DD3 for pretty much the entire evening, I was able to cast on for a beret and get quite a bit done before we all packed up and went home. The next morning I finished it:

Pattern is Linaeus Beret by Jennifer Burke.

Also at the knit night, I discovered they had new sock yarn: "Sock Print", from Nova's Value Collection. 100g balls for just $7.99 each! And the colourways are great. I know it's close to Christmas (heck, how could I not know, what with the rising sense of panic), but I couldn't resist picking these up:

(that one is way more green in real life)

So...how's your holiday knitting coming along?

Prepping for Santa Day

• DD2's teacher's gift is finished! Here it is modelled on DD1, on whom it is obviously too big, but will still give you the idea of how it looks on a human head:
  
  
  side view
  
  
  
  
  top view
  
  
  
  
  front view
  
  
  
  
  I think I'm going to steam it first, though, before tagging it and wrapping it up, just to smooth out the top some.
  
  
  
• DD1's afternoon teacher's gift is finished! It used up all of my two skeins of Zara. And when I say all, I mean all. I had 18 inches left over, which will be used to affix the hang tag. Not a drop left. You can imagine how panicked I was as I approached the end of the second bootie!
  
  
  hat, from top
  
  
  
  
  hat, from side
  
  
  
  
  booties
  
  
  
  
  booties, 'in action'
  
  
  
  
  I made the set to fit when the child is about 9 months old, which is perfect, since that's when the weather will be getting cold again. As you can see, I did switch out the ribbing on the hat from 2x2 to 1x1, but I also added a ruffle. The ruffle is the "belle epoque" stitch pattern from Nicky Epstein's book, "Knitting on the Edge". I increased it only 4 times to 9 stitches per ruffle instead of the called-for 15. I then added the same ruffle to the booties to make it all look like a set. The ruffle on the booties is smaller; I increased only 3 times to 7 stitches per ruffle. I am very, very pleased with the whole thing.
  
  
  
• DD1's "Ruby" poncho/skirt is coming along well, I'm probably about 75% done the second half. The only problem is that I seem to be off in my stitch count. I'm going to have to sit down and see where I went wrong. I have a horrible feeling there will be a lot of frogging and re-knitting in my near future.
  
  
  
• I am also coming along with my brother's hooded cardigan - just about an inch, inch-and-a-half left to do on the sleeves and then I can get going on the front.
  
  
  
• I also realised that I should be giving a holiday gift to DD1's ballet teacher (a.k.a. my old ballet teacher). She has been admiring my ability to churn stuff out for a while now (yes, of course I bring my knitting to my daughter's dance lessons!) and recently lost her scarf when shopping at a mall. She asked if I could knit her a replacement, and of course she would pay me back (I wouldn't have accepted the money, but she offered). However, she ended up going back to the store she thought she lost it in and making a nuisance of herself to the staff until they actually bothered to look for her scarf...and she got it back. (Turns out it's actually a cowl.) She did, however, indicate that she would be interested in me making her another one, perhaps in brown?
  
  
  Since I needed a gift idea for her anyway, and since the holiday knitting is coming along pretty well, I figured I'd go for it. I have just enough brown Silky Tweed left over (about 1.75 skeins) from my midwife's scarf to make Eleanor, which has been in my queue for a while, so that seemed perfect.
  
  
  Until I couldn't find the three-quarters of skein that I'd finished off my midwife's scarf with!
  
  
  Seriously, it's nowhere. DH and I have checked all the logical places and a number of illogical places. I need that yarn, because I used up the full skein that I never ended up touching for the midwife gift, and I'm only this far along:
  
  
  
  
  
  Arrrrrrggggghhhh! Please send "finding" vibes.
  
  
  
• Finally, although it might seem strange to be getting things for myself this close to Christmas, I recently made an order that came in this week. The purpose of this order was to get the rest of the yarn I needed for a sample piece, and in order to reduce the shipping costs, I added a few things to the order that I wanted to get anyway. I got some sock yarn:
  
  
  
  
  
  Also got myself a book - Fairy Tale Knits by Alison Stewart-Guinee - and some knitting gadgetry - two yarn stranding finger guides and a cheapie yardage counter. And then, be still my beating heart, I also got Interweave's special issue, "Jane Austen Knits 2011". This is an unbelievable magazine. There are so many gorgeous things in there that I will actually knit, it's a real steal of a deal. My favourite is, hands-down (no pun intended), the Chawton Mittens. I LOVE THEM THEY MUST BE MINE.
  

So, generally speaking, things are going well. Therefore, if you'll excuse me, I have to go do some more knitting!

Fear me

I've been just zooming through the knitting, to the point where I now have the delusion that I might actually finish all the Christmas and other deadline knitting (including the twin size blanket) in time. This is probably not true, but I'm starting to believe it could be.

Firstly, the sleeeves on my brother's hooded cardigan are, I'm guessing, about half done:

And I've burned through 4 of the 10 balls I'll need for the whole thing.

Secondly, DD1 discovered that her second teacher a) likes pink and b) is expecting a baby girl in late March. So she wants me to make something baby, in pink, for this teacher as her winter holiday present. Fair enough. I have two balls of hot pink Zara in the stash which I think the girls gave to me a few years ago for my birthday or Mother's Day or something like that, and it'll be perfect for baby stuff because it's soft and superwash. In an attempt to use up all all 273 yards of it, I'll be making Ewelina Murach's Baby Flower Hat, Regina Willer's Blue Steps baby booties, and perhaps some mittens, too, since I expect I'll have quite a bit of yarn left over after those two things are done. In order to make them match a bit better, I'm going to switch the ribbing on the hat from 2x2 to 1x1.

(Honestly, I'd rather just make a Seamless Flower T-Shirt - also by Ewelina Murach - but the smallest size requires about 55 yards more yarn than I actually have. :( )

But so far, I'm making very good headway on the hat. I love it:

I also whipped up a new pattern and most of its prototype. It's a double knitted bib:

All that's left is to do the collar and weave in the ends. I like it very much. I'm going to be selling it to benefit Sick Kids, aka the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. This is a hospital very close to my heart - I spent a lot of time there after I was born to get my oemphalocile fixed up; my brother spent a lot of time in there when he was a kid after we discovered he had chronic renal failure; one of my BILs had his cleft palate corrected there; etc. etc. It's a wonderful hospital that does wonderful things, and I'm hoping I can raise money with this pattern to support them.

In other excitements, an order came in from Knit Picks! I haven't taken a picture of the loot, but the box was full of goodies. Firstly, there was Alasdair Post-Quinn's book, Extreme Double Knitting. (Like you're surprised I was interested in this, eh?) And in order to get a reduced shipping cost, I also ordered a few more things: Alice Starmore's Charts for Color Knitting, four balls of black sock yarn (I can always use more black sock yarn), and some more yarn that I can't talk very much about because it's for a design that's been submitted somewhere. I still need to do up the sample piece, and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get yarn support, so I bought enough yarn for it myself just in case. If it gets accepted and I get yarn support, I'll just use this yarn for something else. Really hoping to hear back one way or the other soon, but I suspect I'll cast on really soon anyway with the Knit Picks yarn, just in case.

Still serious

The Starfleet insignia badge was constructed and affixed to DD3's Hallowe'en costume. And here she is, all dooded up on The Big Night:

And here are her sisters, which is actually relevant to knitting because DD1 is simply covered in knitted items: (and my mom crocheted the scarf, too)

I also got more Christmas knitting done. The back of my brother's cardigan is all done:

Next up on the project is supposed to be the right front, but I'm going to do the sleeves first instead, just to get them out of the way. I'll do them two at a time to avoid that awful despondent feeling you get when you finish one sleeve and realise you have to do it all over agaim. (I hate that.)

And speaking of doing something all over again, I finished the first half of DD1's Christmas present:

And if I recall right, I'm about thirty rows into the second half. This is not as horrible a slog to do twice as sleeves would be, because with this garment, the pieces get smaller as you knit up them, not bigger (as the sleeves on my brother's cardigan will).

Finally, in a surprise move, I whipped up a new pattern, made a prototype, and submitted it somewhere. Naturally I can't share pictures with you (although I'd really love to), but if I'm lucky, I'll be able to provide a link for you sometime next year! (There's Murphy for you, isn't it? If I want to share something sooner, I have to be rejected so that I can self-publish immediately; whereas acceptance means I have to wait longer to share. But I'd still prefer the acceptance. :)

Time to get serious

With renewed determination, I hunted for DD3's Hallowe'en costume project. To my relief, I found it. Then I gritted my teeth and finished the sewing-up and weaving-in-of-ends. (It wasn't fun, but I was driven by that looming October 31st deadline.) Unfortunately, it proved difficult to find a long enough black zipper at a shop near my house. So I settled on a 22cm one from the local dollar store. I was really hoping for something more in the neighbourhood of 18-20 inches, but it worked. I still have to put together an insignia badge, but for the moment, we have this:

flat:


'in action':

(Eat your heart out, Sir Patrick.)

I also applied this new-found determination to DD1's teacher's gift - I wove in the ends, we chose buttons, I sewed them on, and then I blocked it:

Here's what it looks like on a human (i.e. me):

I'm really happy with it, and so is DD1. Check another one off the Christmas list!

And speaking of the Christmas list, I gritted my teeth some more and cast on for my brother's (extra-large) hooded cardigan. It's supposed to take 10 balls of the yarn (which, fortunately, I have), and so far I've gone through one-and-a-bit:

I'm feeling pretty kick-ass right now. :)