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.

Where to start

Sorry for the protracted absence! I always like to give a complete and accurate update of all the knitting progress I've made, and that makes posting definitely not a five-minute task. Then, of course, as time goes on and I make more knitting progress, posting about it becomes even more of a daunting task, and...well. You get an 18-day blog post lapse, like, well, now.

So the good news is, here's a new blog post (thank you, lunch break). The bad news is...no photos.

There's been lots going on. Firstly, you may have noticed that I have added little pictures in the sidebar for all of my designs. I figured it would probably make them more interesting for people if they could actually see what they looked like, eh? Just click on the pattern names to be taken to more information. (The pictures are hosted by Flickr, so if you click on the actual photos, you will only get taken to the Flickr pages for those photos, and not the pattern information.)

One thing I'm extremely excited about is that an essay I wrote for the Cast On podcast seems to have been accepted! Squee! It will probably be a while yet before you hear it, though, because it doesn't really fit in very well with the theme of the current series. Also, I have to condense it (because I am a wordy, blathering fool who resists self-editing...like you couldn't tell that from reading this blog) and record it. So stay tuned. Maybe next season.

In other news, I've designed a sock pattern! I'm still working on the write-up of the pattern for publication, but the design has basically been all worked out. I like it very, very much and in fact have used it for a number of new sock projects (and am even considering ripping out some of my current sock projects and starting over again with my new pattern). But I can't tell you anything more than that because I am hoping to get it published. Things are tentatively looking good with that, which is awesome, but it's still up in the air so I'm not going to talk about it or show pictures or anything. Again, stay tuned, and hopefully I'll have good news soon.

Thanks for the comments about last month's stash acquisition! The J, I will definitely swatch (and wash the swatch) with the Angora Extra first just to be safe.

Father's Day socks for DH

Speaking of the recent stash acquisition, I have started to use it. I gave DH the opportunity to pick which of the two balls of sock yarn he would like to have for his own knitting use. He misunderstood and picked out the ball that he would most like to have as socks for him, made by me. When I told him that I was actually offering him stash enhancement for his very own, he turned down the offer. (Seriously. Can someone even call themselves a knitter after doing that?) He said he didn't want to make me part with any of my yarn; I said I was happy to do it; he said no, that was okay...I just couldn't get him to take the stuff.

So I took the ball that he said he liked more and am using my new sock pattern to turn it into socks. One sock is already complete, and I'm on the leg (the last part) of the second one. I shouldn't have any problems finishing it in time for Sunday.

Eleanor of Toledo stockings

Lynette stopped by to say hi and ask for advice on the Eleanor of Toledo stockings. Unfortunately, I haven't finished them. I've started them at least two or three times (and frogged back), but finishing? Nuh-uh. There were a few reasons for all the frogging. I had originally bought red fingering weight cotton for this project instead of silk because the cotton was actually vaguely affordable. I got fairly far along in the first sock with the cotton, but lost interest after a while, I think. I was very new to the DPN thing, too, and probably found that rather frustrating.

Then I discovered a batch of recycled red silk yarn on eBay, realised I could at last make the stockings in silk like they were intended to be, and snapped it up. The cotton stocking was abandoned pretty quickly after that. However, the DPN thing was still very awkward for me and the needles were extremely thin and pointy. I also became frustrated with how the knitting started out very loosely right after the cast-on, but then tightened up after I got further along. I frogged everything I'd done and stuffed it away.

Now, however, I am extremely used to DPNs, am a much faster knitter, and have scads more experience with socks, so I think I should probably take the project out again and have another go, I'd probably enjoy it immensely.

Sorry I don't have much more help for you, Lynette! I do want to pop by the board again soon and see your garb - I just haven't visited in such a long while because I simply don't have the time these days. (Fortunately, some of the folks there read this blog, as you can tell from the comments. :) Please say hi to everyone for me.

Fistula armband for bro

After reading the story of my brother's renal health, Emma asked after his transplant status. To be honest, I'm not actually sure whether he's on the transplant list right now. Some years ago, it was determined that my father was an organ match for him (which is an AMAZING thing, since my brother is adopted), and my father gave him one of his kidneys. Unfortunately, about two and a half years later, my brother went into rejection and by the time he got himself into a hospital to see what was going on, it was too late and the kidney was kaput. He's been on dialysis (again) ever since. But he didn't like what the anti-rejection drugs did to him, such as deterioration of bone density (there was a period where he had to walk around with a cane). So I'm not sure exactly what he wants right now, transplant-wise, or whether he's even on the list.

But back to the subject of the armband to cover the fistula...I finally ripped back the first attempt and cast on again with 30 fewer stitches. It seemed ridiculously small to me, girth-wise, but I knit it up anyway and brought it over.

This week he called me with the verdict. He still loves it, but IT'S STILL TOO BIG. Can you believe it?!? So he's going to safety pin it even more tightly and get it back to me so I can see how much smaller to make it. What a pisser, eh? I would certainly agree with Carrie K that the armband thing is neat...except that I CAN'T SEEM TO FINISH IT!!! I feel like freakin' Al Pacino...just when I think I'm out, it pulls me back in...

Comfy Angel's nest

One absolutely lovely thing that's happened since my last blog entry is that my boss's wife had their second baby, and it's a girl! Hooray! So I was able to give them the girly tank top that I designed, leaving this sleepsack project for my cousin's forthcoming grandchild.

And it's coming along very nicely. In fact, it's all finished...except it has no buttons. This is because I have depleted my button stash to the point where I just don't have anything that will work with this garment. So I'm going to see if I can mooch some buttons off my mom. :)

Lliclla for MIL

Thanks so much, LLB, for the compliment! (And congratulations again, BTW. Will you be knitting a veil? :) I am absolutely thrilled with how well it's come out. Yep, the knitting and the making up is completely done and I love it. However, I still have to block it, and I've been procrastinating pretty fiercely on that because I'm still trying to figure out where the heck I can block it so that DD2 won't be able to get at it. This may be an impossible task. I might have to block it at my parents' home instead. It's definitely a project that needs blocking, so I'm not calling it 'finished' yet.

Lace and cables baby blanket

This project is sort of new, and sort of old. It's my own design, and I've made it before. But now I'm trying to finalize the pattern for publication, so I'm swatching. The tricky bit is that I want to try making it with reversible cables this time, which calls for a fair number of changes to the chart. I'm still figuring things out.

Christmas socks for Dad

These are done! And they're the first fully completed pair of socks done up in my new sock pattern (the original prototype for the pattern was just a single sock). I had my mom try them out because she has got to have the most sensitive feet in the world; so if the socks feel good on her feet, they'll feel good on anybody's feet. Since she's already worn them a bit around her home, I'm not sure they'll be going to my dad after all...but we'll see. There's plenty of time before Christmas. Although maybe I'll just give them to him for Father's Day...after a wash, of course!

Like, totally top

I have been putting off this project for so long it's not funny. But finally on the weekend I bit the bullet and started swatching with the Mystik DK yarn. So far it's looking rather nice...but I still have to finish the swatch.

Cotton wool socks for Mom

As you may recall, I needed to acquire an entire new, full ball of Sockotta yarn in colour #5618 in order to have the teensy bit I needed to complete my daughter's Girlfriend Shrug. This of course left me with almost an entire ball unused, so I decided to make socks for my mom out of it...which was actually the original plan for the first ball of the stuff. Once again, I'm using my new sock pattern for it, and it's coming along rather well - I'm on the leg of the first sock.

Phew. You see what I mean about the update being a daunting task? I think I've covered everything. And if I haven't, well, I'll just have to mention it all next time...which will hopefully be much sooner from now than the last time.

Take care!

Total score

So in my last post I mentioned the spectacular online sale I took advantage of at the studio (which is not only an online storefront but also a LYS in Kansas City, Missouri). Well, on Friday the yarn arrived.

Oh.
My.
Gawd.

I'm practically giddy, I don't know what to do first!

Okay, well, firstly, we have the yarn that drew me to the sale in the first place - Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool. This is a gorgeous sportweight yarn that's 65% wool and 35% silk. I'm using it in a couple of projects already and it's terrific to work with. As I mentioned, it was going for $1.75US a skein at this sale, and the regular price is at least $6.99. Now, by the time I hit the sale, there weren't a lot of colours left, and none of them were colours I would wear. Their golden undertones were, however, perfect for my redheaded mother-in-law, so I figured I could snarf a bunch and really save on future Christmas presents for her. Unfortunately, I kept getting 'whoops, sorry, we don't have as many skeins as you want to buy' messages every time I tried to add the amounts I wanted to my cart. Given the incredible price of this yarn, this wasn't surprising, so I just snatched as much as possible of everything I was interested in: 2 of one colour, and 3 of two other colours. However, by the time the store started trying to pack up my order, it turned out that only one colour, this one...

...was left. (In the 3 skeins I'd asked for.) Cindy at the shop was incredibly apologetic in her email, but I wasn't really broken up. I'd obviously discovered the sale late in the game, and I'm sure orders were flying thick and fast. If they didn't have a back-end that was whizz-bang enough to handle it all instantaneously and with 100% accuracy? Totally understandable. 3 skeins of gold were not what I'd hoped for when I'd accessed the site, but for $1.75 a skein I knew I could find something fun to do with them.

So imagine my surprise when four showed up. Yep. Cindy had found an extra skein kicking around the store and tucked it into the box as a bonus. So that was four skeins for $5.25US.

Isn't she WONDERFUL? I tell you, if I'm ever in Kansas City, this store is going to be my first stop. But wait, there's more...

In order to "make it up to me" for not having all the Silky Wool I wanted, Cindy told me I could choose something else to substitute, for the same price. She suggested Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Tweed. This is another sportweight yarn, this one a 40% silk, 30% cotton, 20% extra fine merino and 10% viscose blend. I've never worked with it before, but I'm sure it's awesome. There wasn't a lot of colour availability, but I found something that will suit my mother-in-law really well:

Five skeins to replace the five Silky Wool skeins I couldn't get. For a total of $8.75US.

Of course, having found these marvellous prices, I had to check out what else was on sale. I have no self-control whatsoever.

Cashwool from Baruffa: 100% merino laceweight in a strong orange:

I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with it - my monitor made me think I was actually getting a muted red. But there's enough to make the small version of The Princess Shawl, so maybe this will also be for my mother-in-law? Or maybe I'll overdye it? Anyway, who knows. The point is that I snarfed three skeins for a total of $10.50US.

There was also sock yarn at ridiculously discounted prices. I got enough to make two pairs of socks for a total of $7.50US:

That's Regia Jubilee and ONLine Afrika. I'd actually ordered two of the Jubilees in two different colourways, but again, they ran out of stock so Cindy offered a substitute, and I chose the Afrika (I felt that picking Colinette Jitterbug would be unreasonably greedy and gouging, and unforgivably rude). My husband was very impressed with the sock yarn and indicated enviousness, so I offered him whichever one of the balls he liked more. (Share the wealth, right? Enjoy the generosity with the stash while it lasts, honey!) He's thinking about it.

I also found some Kashmir Aran from Louisa Harding, an aran weight yarn with a 55% merino, 35% microfibre and 10% cashmere blend, six balls for a total of $12US:

And finally, there was the real splurge: the Angora Extra. The gauge on the ball bands suggests it's an aran weight, but from feeling the strands I think it's more like a light worsted. It's 70% angora, 25% wool and 5% nylon, and comes in 25g balls. I went absolutely nuts and ordered 29 skeins: 19 blue and 10 red. That's 725g for $72.50US.

So if you haven't already guessed, I am now a total fan of Cindy and her store. She even sent me a lovely little note tucked in with the receipts and a business card; and a cute nail file, too (always handy) with the shop's logo on it. I think the folks in Kansas City must be very lucky to have her and her shop there. Of course I always try to support my own great LYS, but if I ever need/want to buy yarn online again, this will certainly be one of the first places I go! Great buying experience. Highly recommended.

I know, I know, I'm crazy. I plead a combination of extreme discounting, fever and virtual yarn fumes.

Speaking of my fever, thank you very much Knitika and Carrie K for your well wishes. Unfortunately, the party did not go off as planned. We had to reschedule it a second time. This cold is seriously bad. After taking off work most of the week before, it actually came back last week (more fever) and I had to take another sick day. DD2's nose is still pretty drippy. But DD1 and DH are doing fine, and DD2 and I are over the fever and on the mend, so we're going ahead with the party tomorrow and anyone in the family who doesn't want to risk that we're no longer contagious can stay away and no blame to them.

So, all gloating over the stash enhancement aside, has there actually been any knitting going on around here? Why yes, of course!

Lliclla for MIL

This has been the focus of most of my knitting time lately, and it's in the final stages. The main body is all done, and I'm just starting to pick up all around the outside (772 freakin' stitches) to make the edging.



I adore it.

Christmas socks for Dad

This saw a bit of action this past week. Nothing huge, but progress is progress.

Fistula armbands for bro

My brother called me up at work about a week and a half ago and told me that I needed to knit him something. My hackles were immediately raised, and I figured I would let him tell me all about this 'request', and then at the end tell him where he could shove it. :)

However, once I understood what he wanted, there was no way in hell I could say no.

Background: my brother has zero kidney function. He was born with only one kidney, and the one he did have lost function as he got older. Unfortunately, due to rampaging incompetence on the part of his pediatrician, this wasn't detected until my brother was about fourteen, at which point it was impossible to prevent further deterioration. (This was when the raging incompetent died and my brother's file got transferred to another doctor in the practice. You can imagine our impotent fury.)

So my brother has been on kidney dialysis for years. (You know that scene in Star Trek IV where they go back in time to the 80s, and Bones sees this lady in the hospital who's on dialysis? "Dialysis?" he exclaims in horror. "It's the stone age!" And then he gives her a freakin' pill and she grows a new, functioning kidney? Yeah. That scene always makes me want to cry.)

His dialysis is of the kind that requires a fistula, which is where (I think) they sort of fuse a bunch of the vessels in the arm together to make one big 'rope' that the dialysis machine plugs into. (Do not take my description for it, though, my understanding of it is very limited.) This results in a kind of freaky-looking thing on my brother's arm, it looks like there's a U-shaped snake living under his skin. He doesn't seem to like the way it looks (understandably), because he likes to cover it up with armbands. But they're uncomfortably tight for him, and he recently had to undergo some corrective vascular surgery on the fistula that increased the girth of his arm even more, so now the armbands are really too tight.

So he thought I could knit him some. Of course I could never say no to that. Geez.

So, based on the measurements he gave me and assuming 10% negative ease, I doubled up some laceweight crochet cotton in my stash, and knit up the following tube in 1x1 rib:



He ADORES it. Yay! The only problem is that it is too loose - when he flings his arm forward, the armband slides down to his wrist. So he came over a few nights ago and we figured out that I should only be casting on about 56 stitches. All other aspects of it are perfect, apparently.

I'm planning to make a bunch, in different colours. Navy, white and black to start, and then later maybe red and dark green. All from the stash, so no problems there.

A plague upon my house

Bleargh.

Thursday morning, my husband called me at work. My baby had developed a fever. No big deal, she was obviously teething like crazy, but it did mean that she couldn't go to daycare. And since my husband had to deliver a set of clubs to a client on the weekend, he couldn't both care for her and have the product ready when he said he would. So home I went.

Friday - still feverish. But improving. And the teeth were more and more visible through the gums every time I looked at them. I entertained hopes of going back to work on Monday.

Unfortunately, towards the end of the weekend, my kindergartener developed a fever.

Damn. Not teething.

By Tuesday, I had it too - the congestion settled in, and in the evening, the fever started.

I feel like utter crap. And I still haven't been able to go back to work. I'm sure my co-workers aren't pleased with me. But I have to keep telling myself that it's better that they take up my slack than to come down with this rotten thing. Hopefully I didn't manage to infect anybody before I left.

Betcha anything my husband is next...right when we're supposed to have a birthday party for the girls on Saturday (and it's the reschedule of the original party, which we had to postpone for the colds the girls both got last month).

Joy.

On the plus side, the yarn for my MIL's Christmas present, plus the additional sock yarn I bought as a budgetary excuse to soak up the shipping costs, arrived on Friday.

Lliclla for MIL

Soon after the yarn arrived, I did feel like crying. But not for the reasons you might think.

Were the colours wrong? HELL NO. The colours are gorgeous. I honestly could not have gotten better matches if I'd had them custom-dyed. Wellll, the pumpkin I suppose could ideally be more golden, but it's still great. The other colours are absolutely perfectamundo.

Did I find something at my LYS's Mother's Day Sale that would have worked just as well for a lower price? Nope. They do have some lovely stuff on sale (which ends Saturday, I believe, in case you're interested in heading in), but nothing that was right for this project.

What, is the yarn crap? Oh, goodness no. This is niiice stuff, this is. 100% highland wool, and it feels great. I still can't believe I paid so little for it.

SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?!?

I mixed up two of the colours. I ordered two of the burgundy when I should have ordered four, and I ordered four of the orange-red when I should have ordered two. All my own stupid fault.

There are no words.

So, I've had to switch the colour patterning around a little bit. I did a preview drawing on my computer beforehand just to make sure the new combination wouldn't look like ass, and it doesn't...but it doesn't look the same as the pretty pictures in the book, which really bugs me.

The other problem is that I seem to have completely lost one of the skeins of burgundy.

I am just screwing myself up right, left and centre here!

Fortunately, everything else about the project is absolutely awesome. It's knitting up ridiculously fast - I'm already almost two-thirds of the way done. Yes, you read that right. I mean, I know I've been flaking out on the couch for most of the past week, so I've had more knitting time than usual, but this is really a super-fast knit. Except for the cast-on, which was a complete BITCH. Seriously, folks. 514 stitches in a provisional tubular cast-on? Not even a little fun. Amazingly, I got the count exactly right on only my second attempt. (And the screwup of the first attempt was pretty minor and painless.) I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Oh wait...I guess the way I feel right now is the other shoe. As is the lost burgundy skein. Crap.

Anyway, it looks awesome:

Christmas socks for Dad

Coming along very nicely indeed. Except that DH tried the first one on and it seemed to be a tad short in the foot, so I'll have to lengthen that by two or three rows. But other than that - good stuff.

Jester Booties

Last week, when I was still feeling like a human being, I noticed that our neighbour ten doors up had this huge baby-foot-shaped balloon tied to one of the trees in their front yard congratulating them on their new arrival. Now, I'd met the mom of this family last summer when I was on mat leave and coming home from a nice walk with my baby. At the time, she was a few months away from going back to work after her first child. We exchanged names, I told her a few encouraging things about my experience going back to work and leaving the baby with a caregiver (she was dreading it, even though the caregiver was her mom...she had total confidence in her mother, she just didn't want to leave her child, which I can totally relate to). We told each other to drop round anytime, and haven't seen to each other since.

So I was delighted to hear of her new blessing, and immediately went home and cast on the kee-YOOT-est baby bootie pattern. It's "Jester Booties", from Zoe Mellor's "Double Knits" book.

I got this far before the yarn order arrived on Friday:



After that, as you've already read, life around here went completely to pot and I haven't picked the bootie up since. I think I shall just forget about giving the booties to my neighbour, chalk it up to Life Happening, and simply give her my warmest congratulations whenever I see her again.

Ummm...also, I might have gone a little crazy at the recent online yarn sale at the studio. I mean, they were selling Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool for $1.75 a skein!!! I rationalized it as future present spending - at last, I'd be able to make the projects I want to make for my MIL for future Christmases, with the yarn I want, at the prices I want. Alas, a lot of what I really had my eye on had already been gobbled up and I kept getting 'that's out of stock, sorry' messages, but I still managed an extremely respectable haul. Oh, and did I mention the free shipping because my order was over $75?

No, I don't know what money I'm going to use to pay for this stuff. And if you'd seen the prices, you wouldn't care, either. :)

And now, I shall wait for the painkillers to kick in to give my sinuses some relief so I can actually get some sleep. After I clean a bunch of filthy diapers, that is.

(Waaaahhh!)

I'm not dead

It's just really hard to find the time to blog. Without, y'know, neglecting the children; or leaving everyone with nothing clean to wear; or blogging at work; or cutting into my knitting time; or deciding that my kids don't actually need birthday parties. Stuff like that.

When did life get so TIME CRUNCHED?!? Augh!

(Don't answer that. I know when.)

But I digress.

Knitting has indeed been continuing to happen. Actually, finding knitting time is super-easy, as my work commute is about 85 minutes each way. As much as I detest having to get up really early; not seeing the girls in the morning; and spending so much time in transit, it is still really lovely to have a good hour and a half per day to myself, all for knitting, in a (fairly) comfy commuter train seat, with sun coming in through the windows, listening to knitting podcasts.

And so, here's what I've been up to...

Ragna for bro

This continues to grow. I'm about three or four inches away from the neck shaping, I think. The cables look awesome. (No surprise there, since Elsebeth Lavold designed them.)

Ljod for moi

I don't think I've actually worked on this any more since my last blog post, but I have taken an updated picture:

Prototype sock

Design inspiration struck again. (I love it when that happens.) After various false starts, I made a prototype sock (just one, made from leftover sock yarn that I've now used up, so it will, sadly, never have a mate). I'm really happy with it, but that's all I'm going to say for the moment. Hopefully I'll eventually be able to tell you more about it. :)

Christmas socks for Dad

Fresh from my triumph with the prototype sock of my own design, I decided to use the same design for my dad's Christmas socks this year (to heck with what I'd been working on before), ripped out what I had, and re-cast on. I may continue to try putting some snazzy subtle twist-knit cables on it to change it up a bit...but I'm not sure.

Comfy Angel's Nest for baby ?

I realised that I needed to do some more baby knitting. There are...

Hm. Wait just a second...

Chris, are you reading this? Get the heck off my blog now. You have a baby coming! Stop peeking!

(Not the most respectful way to speak to one's boss, sorry, man, but sometimes one needs to go to strange lengths to preserve the shroud of knitted gift mystery.)

Ahem.

You think he's gone now? (Admittedly, I don't think he ever reads this blog, I'm just being overly cautious and silly.)

Okay. Then, to resume...

I returned to work last month after my mat leave to find that my director was expecting his second child. (Yay!) He told me not to knit anything for him, but I am going to totally ignore that because I am, well, me. What I really would like to give him is the Sweetness prototype - it's recently knitted, already washed, hasn't been worn by my baby daughter except for the photo shoot, and is too small for her now anyway. And I really want that top to go to a nice home, because I think it's deliciously pretty and I really, really love it. The downside of this plan, of course, is that this would be a really useless gift if the baby turns out to be a boy. So I need a backup plan.

I found this sleep sack pattern through Ravelry's awesome pattern search, and I think it's really cute. I'm making it bigger than the pattern calls for, because it's a rather warm item of clothing, completely inappropriate for spring and summer wear. So if I make it about 6-9 months size, that will do well for fall/winter for this baby.

Here is how it's going so far:



Cute, eh? And the good part is that if I don't end up using it for my boss' baby, I'll send it off to Australia where my cousin (once removed) is expecting her first baby, due this fall (her spring). Again, the timing will be perfect, since the size I'm making will fit the baby in Australia's fall/winter. Tadah, I win no matter what, because if this project ends up going to my boss, I'll simply make my cousin something else nice.

Lliclla for MIL

Every year I look for something spectacular to make for my MIL, and every year I have tons of wonderful ideas, and every year I can't afford any of them. Le sigh.

I have deeply wanted to make her Helen Hamann's Llcilla mantle for almost two years, ever since I won the book with the pattern in it. It is truly spectacular, and the colours used in the model for the book would suit my MIL (a redhead) bee-yew-tifully. But I've been stymied by the price of the yarn it would take. Actually, no, not really the price of the yarn. I have actually found two places which offer appropriate yarn in more-or-less the right colours, and the yarn is vaguely within my budget: elann.com's Peruvian Highland Wool and KnitPicks's Wool of the Andes Yarn (hmm, I sense a theme...). Unfortunately, this affordability of both of these hits the crapper when you add the shipping cost.

I felt like weeping. Here was the yarn that would make this gorgeous thing, and my budget could almost handle it...but not quite.

But then...I had an epiphany.

If I ordered something in addition to the Christmas project yarn...something really inexpensive that I could slough off on some other part of our household budget...well then, I could have that part of the budget 'eat' the shipping costs, and I'd only have to assign the cost of the yarn for Lliclla to the Christmas budget! YES!

Almost giddy with glee, I added four balls of Elann's Sock It to Me 4 Ply yarn in black to my cart, and checked the whole thing right on out. I make black socks for DH as gifts and clothing ALL THE TIME. I'm going to account the sock yarn and the shipping charge to the birthday presents budget, or the clothing budget, and all will be taken care of.

Ahhhhhh. I can't wait to get the yarn. I'm going to cast that sucker on so fast it'll make your head swim.

Unless the colours end up being totally different from how they looked on my monitor. Then I shall cry.

Oh, and if it turns out that the yarn sale that my LYS is having this Saturday brings other yarn that would've been good for this project into my price range...well, I'll cry then, too.

Wish me luck!

And finally, I have the photographs for the two KWB/TSF hats I mentioned in my last post:

Child KWB/TSF Hat #2

Baby KWB/TSF Hat