Christmas Stocking #1 and goals update

One more finished item for this week:

I finished the first Christmas stocking for 2013 earlier this week.  Nephew HH2, your Christmas present is the first one done!  I love the crossed candy canes pattern.  Probably the one I've made the most of, and one of the easiest of these intarsia patterns.  I have made so very many stockings at this point.  I churned this one out in just over a week.

So far I am on track for my 2013 goals.  Four washcloths and one stocking done in the first quarter of the year.  There is only one baby who has already been born and doesn't yet have his sweater, and that one is on the needles (BSJ number eight since August).  I need to get a move on on the blankets, for those babies who will get one by their first birthdays.  I think that will be just four of the fifteen.  Maybe five.

I've changed the controls on the comments section here.  Now anyone can post comments even if you don't have an account in google or blogspot or what-have-you.  I hope that'll be easier on everyone.  Thanks for reading!

Yarn Along - First 2013 Stocking

Joining Ginny's Yarn Along again.  Check out lots of knitting and reading at her blog.

I'm getting started on the first of the Christmas Stockings for 2013.  I'll have three or four to do, so I'd like to have the first one done by the end of March.  Deep in the tangle of intarsia, but moving along well.

I've finished the March washcloth, but can't find it now.  When Niece K was over for an afternoon this week, she played with some of the knitted things that had been living on the coffee table.  I have no idea where they got to in the course of that.  They are around somewhere, but I haven't been able to find them yet.

For reading, I'm still on Turn of the Screw via Craftlit.  It's a very interesting story.  I'm not at all accustomed to having a narrator quite this unreliable.

New Year, New Knitting

One thing I try to avoid with this blog is apologizing for not blogging.  But after such a long lapse, I want to make an exception:  Yikes that was a long time without blogging.
Late fall seems to be a difficult time of year for me.  I haven't figured it out yet, but at least now I've noticed the pattern.

2012 Recap and 2013 Goals:
I met my washcloth goals for the year - one each month plus one more each quarter, total of 16.  November's was late, but other than that I did well, and I had enough for all my gifting needs.  I will renew this goal for 2013.

There were only four Christmas stockings to make this year, all done on time.  Two of them were a for-pay job.   So far I know of four needed in 2013.  My stocking goal is to do one per quarter.

In the second half of 2012 I was quite into the Harry Potter Knitting & Crochet House Cup group on Ravelry.  It was lots of fun, but somehow seemed to sap my blogging mojo and then my knitting mojo (although it may have simply been whatever-it-was in November that sapped most of that).  I completely missed the sign-ups for winter term (January through March), so I'm sitting out a semester and will see if I want to re-join starting in May.  I don't seem to have the mental energy to categorize my knitting so I can do all I want to in that game.

My main Christmas knitting projects were hats for one of the nieces-and-nephews groups:

(Swirled Ski Caps from the book Knitting for Peace.  Fun and appreciated, but a bit down to the wire, and my homemade cardboard pom-pom maker is now completely worn out)

and a hot water bottle cozy for my mom.

I'm pretty proud of this one.  I used a basic cozy pattern and a snowflake chart pattern and adapted them to fit both each other and the water bottle I bought.

Also coming up in 2013:
I know many people expecting babies in the first part of this year.  So many that I have had to write a list to keep track of them all. So there will be lots of baby-sweater knitting in my immediate future.

I will be going to Rhinebeck!  In October I'll be having a knitting weekend away!  A group of us have rented a house for the weekend of the New York Sheep & Wool Festival.  My goal is to finish the sweater I started for myself on New Year's 2010 in time to wear it to Rhinebeck.

Other big projects include at least three baby blankets for late 2013/early 2014, so I better get an early start on those.

One final note to close out 2012:  My brother knows how to shop for a knitter.  He gave me "socks; some assembly required" (yarn, pattern book, and needles), yarn for socks for him, a yarn bowl (!), another set of needles, a yarn travel book, and a "Keep Calm and Carry Yarn" tote bag.

I'm looking forward to a new year of knitting, and of sharing it with this blog!

2011 Christmas Stocking Round-up Part 2

The fourth Christmas stocking I made this year (Dec. 12-18) was for new Nephew HH.

On this branch of our family, all the grandkids get stockings to match Grammy's, so it was another candy cane pattern. This is one of the Mary Maxim patterns that isn't in a booklet. This is the pattern all my immediate family has, and I think of it as the original. I've also probably made more of this pattern than any other, although the Rudolph head might be tied.

Then I realized that I had one more stocking to make. I got a new step-father-in-law this September and I forgot to adjust my mental list of Stockings Needed to include him. So, a little late, but within the "12 Days of Christmas," I finished the fifth and final stocking for the year.

This one doesn't match my mother-in-law's stocking. She has a dove, and that just didn't seem to fit her new beau, a lifetime member of the NRA. I picked another pattern with a blue background and a white-with-green picture -- this is called Mr. Snowman and is in the first Mary Maxim Christmas stocking booklet.

There we have it, the 2011 set of Christmas stockings. I don't yet know of any that will be needed in 2012, but I don't really expect to have a no-stocking year. That would be too weird.

2011 Christmas Stocking Round-up Part 1

Three of the five stockings I knit in 2011 were for my step-sister's family. I made stockings for her immediate family some time ago, but her mother and in-laws always spend Christmas with them and she asked me to make some stockings for them too. I had all year to do it, but of course I ended up knitting two of them in December. But I now know that I can make one of these stockings in a week. I'm not too sure how, but it all worked out.

The first one was all but done in August. These are all Mary Maxim stocking patterns. This one is a mash-up of the Gingerbread Girl and Gingerbread Boy patterns. I took the main image from the Girl stocking and used the coloring and candy cane border from the Boy pattern. These are in the "Christmas Stockings 2" booklet. I believe I have their full collection of Christmas stocking booklets plus a few single patterns.

Knit during December 1-6 is the Snowflake pattern, and then December 7-12 I made the co-ordinating Wreath pattern, both from "Christmas Stockings 3." This was my first time making all three of these patterns, and I quite liked them. I used stranded knitting for the Wreath and Snowflake patterns because that made so much more sense to me than strictly intarsia.

I use Red Heart or a similar yarn for all the Christmas stockings I make. I know a lot of people will cringe at that, but to me it seems like a good use for the yarn. As I see it, the main requirements of a stocking are that it be durable and colorful, which are really Red Heart's strong suits. I don't mind the knitting experience, and with the number of these stockings I've made over the years, affordability plays a sizable role, too.

I had thought I was going easy on the Christmas knitting this year, but as I look at it now, I did quite a bit. I intend to do the rest of the updates soon. Happy New Year!

Yarn Along - Stocking 2/4

I am almost finished with the second of four Christmas stockings for this year. All it needs is a name, to be added in duplicate stitch.

I churned this out between December 1st and 6th, so I remain optimistic about my chances of finishing two more stockings and two more projects I have yet to start but am planning for Christmas presents. I even have the yarn and pattern picked out for one of those two projects.

I was trying to decide which book to photograph for this week's Yarn Along, and feeling like I haven't been doing any reading. In all of "my" books I'm not any further along than last week. But then I realized that I read a lot every day. My kiddo loves to have me read to her. She'll bring me book after book, plop down in my lap and help me turn the pages.

This week's picture is a small sampling of the books Lil One had me read before 9:00am this morning.

Visit Ginny's blog for more Yarn Along fun.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm being summoned to read "Tiny Turtles." Again.

Yarn Along

I have almost finished the first Christmas stocking for this year. It's seamed and the ends are woven in, I only need to duplicate stitch the name. Three more stockings to make this year: My step-sister requested three for the grandparents who are at their house every year, and one for the new nephew.

I'm reading The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution by Keith Devlin. Turns out that Leonardo Pisano (Fibonacci) popularized the use of Hindo-Arabic numerals in Europe. It's a very interesting book, and is my current nursing reading.

So, I've been away from the blog for awhile, but I've still been knitting. I'm going to try to Yarn Along with Ginny every week to help me get back in the blogging habit.

New Year, new dedication

Wow, it's been way too long. I've had this blog for two full years, now, and I'm going to be more dedicated to making better use of it this year. First of all, I think I have a pretty good excuse for being away from this for most of last year:

My lil one born the day after Labor Day, 2010. My universe has re-arranged itself more than a little bit, as I'm sure other parents know well and other people can imagine.

Secondly, some catching up on the knitting:
During my June vacation at the Lake, I worked on a cabled cardigan for me. I have finished the fronts, back, and sleeves. The next step is to block them all, connect them to each other, and work on the huge shawl collar.

What a nice place to sit and knit all day.
I'd really like to finish this soon, because I think it'd be a great sweater to wear this winter while I'm breastfeeding so much. It turns out that nearly all the sweaters I own right now are pullovers.

Then I made two more baby sweaters - a six month and a twelve month size of a lace sweater for a new first-cousin-once-removed and for a new niece.

Then I made my baby a blanket. This is the "Baby Shane Blanket" from Tanis Fiber Arts. I made it with four colors of Baby Boutique, two solids and two variegated. The colors remind me of a sunset at the Lake.

After a bit of a break (see baby picture above), I made a hat and sweater for a new nephew. Here's Strong Bear modeling the hat.

No pictures of the sweater. It wasn't quite done for the baby shower, and then the little guy came early so I had to hurry up and finish it. Christmas green Encore worsted weight in a simple pattern with some cabling. I had to size down what the pattern called newborn size because it was coming out huge. It's still more like a 3-6 month size. I also modified it to add buttons. The pattern called for a drawstring around the neck, and that just seemed like a really, really bad plan.

I also made two pairs of baby mittens, one for Lil One and for Nephew O, out of leftovers from the baby blanket. Those little hands just will not stay in swaddling and get so chilly during the night.
The only Christmas knitting consisted of four stockings. Here are two of them:

There was one more Snowman Head and a Rudolf. These are Mary Maxim stocking patterns of which I have about 60, I think.
I also gave my grandmother a nice pair of fetchings in blue alpaca, but I had that gift idea right after Christmas last year, so those were knit almost one year ago. I'm just glad I found them!

So ends 2010, The Year of Babies.

Spring Sorting

It's been a beautiful warm spring day today. When I got home from a lovely picnic with the husband, I decided it was time for my stash and I to have Words. Now I did not have Words with the entire stash - just the canopy of the stash. This is the more active part of the stash, which lives in the living room; the rest lives in a trunk on the sun porch. The Words I intended to have were words like "organize" and "what the hell happened to my size 6 double points?"

Between Olympic knitting and marathon baby blanket knitting, I've fallen behind on the orders I took for fingerless mitts back in January. Babies, it turns out, are not very accommodating about moving their birthdays around for knitting purposes. Now that it's time to get back at the mitts orders, I couldn't find the size 6 dpns I had been using for these projects. I knew that they were stuck in the beginnings of a mitt, I just didn't know where that was. So I pulled all the "active" stash and project bags out onto the sun porch for a good spring sorting. Here is where I started:

Here is what I found and organized out of all that. First, some fairly self-contained projects.
Some miscellaneous finished projects - including hats to give away and my Olympic totem person.

The cabled cardigan I'm making for myself. This is the second of the two front pieces, and my goal is to have this done by fall.

My Dad's Christmas sweater vest. It's too big. I think I'll try blocking it again, but I think in the end I'm going to just have to do it over. Working on coming to terms with that, and hoping to do it in late spring/early summer.

This little mess is on its way to becoming an amigurumi jackalope. I actually really like this project, but had to abscond with the size 5 and 6 dpns for the fingerless mitts. Due date June.

Then there's my Olympic Knitting project. A Dale of Norway baby sweater for my cousin's first baby. Liam Knight was born on March 20, and as soon as the sleeves are sewn in, the nose and whiskers of the seal are sewn on, and it gets a final, thorough blocking, this will be in the mail.

The Hempathy guitar strap for my brother that has been on the needles seemingly forever, but actually only since July. I promised him this would be the first thing that got my attention after the Christmas knitting was over. It was, too. Just not for very long. There are one or two more feet left to go. On size 1 dpns, cabling every 4th row. Also a summer project.

After I pulled out and re-bagged these projects, I had a bunch of yarn to sort into categories. First, my sock yarn and a few other yarns that were Christmas gifts:

Then the stash of Plymouth Encore that is mostly designated to become amigurumi:

The drawer full of yarn for baby sweaters, toys and blankets:

The dishcloth cotton stash, including a few completed dishcloths:

The small portion of the Christmas Stocking Stash that was at the bottom of the living room stash. This has since gotten packed away into the trunk with its brethren.

Finally, the small stash of alpaca and merino that I'm using to make the fingerless mitts and few other things that people have ordered from me. See the navy blue on the bottom right? Its partner skein is the one that has begun to turn into a mitt and contains the elusive size 6dpns.

So at this point, I'd sorted most everything and gotten quite organized, but still hadn't found the needles that were the reason for this exercise. After racking my brain for awhile about all the bags I've touched since New Year's, I went to a purse that I haven't carried in a month and half, and in which I'd completely forgotten that I put knitting:

And of course that's where they were. Along with the little scissors I've been wondering about, too. So now my Spring Stash Sort is complete, my living room is tidier, and I have a nice basket full of the supplies to finish the orders from January, as well as a few little gifts, and something (someday) for me.

Christmas Reprise or the Return of the Camera

My goodness, but I've been having a hard time blogging without my camera. It's been returned now and appears to be working.

Review of Christmas knitting:

The major secret project for this year was a vest for my dad. Diamonds for Him, Plymouth Encore Worsted in 0668, a great heathered green. He loves the vest, was totally surprised, and it is in exactly his style. I took measurements for it from a vest he already has, so there was some estimation, and the yarn stretched more than I expected in the blocking - so it did turn out a bit too big. I'm going to sew the seams again so it is a bit smaller around. Pictures to come when it fits just right.

For my mom (who got her sweater last year), I made Fetching in Misty Alpaca, a rusty red color. (This picture is in her camera and will be added later)

For my two new nieces I made Mary Maxim Candy Cane Christmas stockings - here's one:

I also made toys for the other nieces and nephews, and one for my little brother. Those pictures are also in Mom's camera and will be added soon.

For nearly everyone else I know, I made washcloths:

I believe the final tally was about 27. Pictures of each will be uploaded to my Ravelry account soon.

My first finished object of the New Year was a pair of Fetching for myself, already done except for weaving in the ends. I am now embarking on a sweater for myself - a large cabled coat-type cardigan being done as a class at my LYS. I do love gift knitting, but I'm also greatly loving knitting for myself for awhile.

Christmas in July

Toward the end of last year, a customer came into my LYS asking if there was anyone who could do some duplicate stitch for them. She had some beautiful old Christmas stockings which needed new names on them. I gather that these stockings are on their next generation of users. No one who works at the store had both the time and inclination to do a bunch of duplicate stitching, but the next time I was in for Knit Night, I was doing the finishing work for my 2008 Stockings, which included duplicate stitching names, and they passed the job along to me. I made arrangements to do this job after this spring's blanket knitting was done, and I left them for her when I went to Knit Night on Monday.

I'm pretty good at duplicate stitching - having made over 25 Christmas Stockings so far - and feel pretty good about how this turned out. Here is a shot of part of the lettering.

I didn't have anything in the stash that exactly matched the red used in these stockings in both color and weight, so I had to do a little bit of hunting. Caron Wintuk worsted weight in "Christmas Red 3005" fit the bill. It was a smidge too thick (perhaps just because it's new), but I think it worked out well. There were four stockings and this project took two Knit Night sessions to complete.

These stockings resemble the Mary Maxim intarsia-based stockings I usually do, but are a pattern I've never seen before and have different detailing, including the size and spacing of letters. Sample stockings were included so that I had a model for the lettering, but I largely had to work that bit out on my own. It took a little longer that way, but I thought it was a fun challenge. My favorite detail:

jingle bells on the toes.

I've worked a little bit on some more washcloths during lunch hours this week, but all my evening time has been devoted to the secret cross stitch project. I hope to post pictures of this next week. Then I'll need to buy some yarn for this year's big Christmas project as well as some socks for me. I'm going to a conference week after next --- six and a half days of presentations, work groups and discussion. I'll need to stock up on yarn and prepare some good-sized projects!

Piecing, Piecing, Piecing...

I have been SICK since the end of Tuesday. A very yucky sore throat bug that Pat brought home from work. I'm not all the way better, but I've finally started feeling human again.

So far today I've been piecing together the squares of Nephew Rylee's blanket, and starting to feel that the piecing will never end. I've just started the last of six strips of seven squares each. Then the strips will go together and I'll be ready to weave in more than 500 ends. I'm looking forward to knitting the boarders, so those will have to be my reward after all the ends are in.

I've also had PBS on non-stop today. Starting Tuesday we'll no longer have TV. We got one of those digital converter boxes, but because we're in between two markets, and digital signals are weaker than analog, we aren't able to get any TV to speak of. I am strongly anti-cable and am pretty upset by this whole switch. I guess I'm trying to overdose today in hopes that it won't be so bad.

But back to knitting news, I started the skull beanie Polar Knit hat for my brother on Tuesday and finished it last night. That was the only bit of knitting I was able to do while sick this week. So that hat and Pat's Polar Knit hat have been washed and are likely dry by now.

At Knit Night on Monday I picked up a job and I'm pretty excited about it. I'll be putting names on some Christmas stockings using duplicate stitch. Christmas stockings are what I've made the most, and I've never seen any with quite this design. I'm waiting until I'm completely better to work on that, though (I suppose the logic there is that the blanket will get washed and stockings don't really).

And back to sewing up.... starting to think that I really won't take up quilting.