The Forgetful Knitter

I completely forgot about my knitting!  Well, no.  I couldn't forget all about my knitting.  With all this moving turmoil, I forgot to mention the knitting that was completed prior to the frenzy of house-cleaning.  My younger children had their mid-winter break during the 3rd week of February and I was able to finish Alyson's apres-surf hoodie!

Doesn't she look great?

I also started and finished a Christmas stocking an acquaintance asked me to knit for her.  Laurie and I have a lot of friends in common.  Her son, Jack, and my Emily are the same age and attended the same elementary school.  Anyway, she facebook messaged me asking whether I'd be interested in replicating a stocking.  Her daughter is getting married this year.  Wouldn't nice if son-in-law had the same stocking as the rest of the family on their first Christmas together?  I said yes.  Knitting for money?  Gotta love it!

I was very excited when Laurie told me she'd drop off one of her original stockings in my mailbox.  I was imagining a multi-colored fair isle stocking, maybe with a couple of prancing reindeer (we have a couple of those), a gingerbread house or snowflakes?

I was a little disappointed when I received the stocking.  The stocking is acrylic and knit in really wide stripes.  The foot is knit in the round but the leg is knit flat.  I don't understand why because the design is attached with duplicate stitches.  Another odd thing is that the design is on the front of the leg, so you can't really see it when it's hung over the fireplace.

You can't see the designs!

I had a hard time finding the exact colors.  I couldn't find a yarn line that had the right red, green and off-white.  If one line had a close red, it didn't have any appropriate green.  Another line had a good green but the only red was more like fuchsia.

Hopefully, Laurie will like the end result.  I drop it off tomorrow.

I also started Alyson's Andean Chullo hat on the last weekend of the kids' break.  This is the kit the I got from Knit Picks.  Personally, I like the blue version better, but the red one will go better with Alyson's winter jacket, the jacket she's hardly worn this winter because of the mild season.  Hopefully she'll get more mileage on that jacket next year.  And, she'll look really spiffy with her new hat

right earflap

Swim Happy

Saturday, I woke up early to take Madelyn to a swim meet.  She was hundredths of a second from qualifying for the state championship meet in March and was putting a lot of pressure on herself every time she raced.  She took .03 seconds from her butterfly which was, unfortunately, not enough to qualify her for the big meet.  She put on a happy face (three more meets until March) and raced the lead-off leg for her team's relay.  Not only did she win the race for her team, her time was fast enough to win a spot on the championship team!  Yay!  We were so excited for her.  So much pressure for a ten year old!

Ok, I know that bit of swim team info doesn't have anything to do with knitting, or sewing or any of my other projects.  It does, however, explain why no one in the family remembered to check the mail.  We were so euphoric when we got home.  We called family, checked hotel rates, went out for dinner... nobody remembered the mailbox until after our trip home from the International House of Pancakes.

As I settled myself for a nice relaxing evening of TV watching, Hubby decided to check the mail and came back inside with a box.  "Crafts Americana?  What the heck is that?"  That's when I jumped off the couch, and yelled, "My yarn!"  Alyson's boyfriend was there to witness my madness as I tore open the box and squealed in delight.  Poor guy.

My yarn!

Alyson requested the Andean Chullo hat on one of her recent perusal of my ravelry page.  The hat is a kit from Knit Picks and since it was only $23 and change for the pattern and all the yarn (9 skeins of palette), I made the order last Monday.  Of course I also had to add a few more items to my shopping cart to get to the $50 minimum for free shipping.  So, I got two skeins of Felici sock yarn in blue/turquoise/purple stripes, some needles and Interweave's Jane Austen Knits, 2011.

The cover scarf, which was originally published in Spin-off magazine last spring as the Helix Scarf, is so adorable and I'd love to knit it for one of my girls or nieces.  So far, my favorite is the  Georgiana shawlette.  Maybe that will also make it in my queue.  I particularly liked the article, "Jane and knitting".  It describes knitting during Jane's lifetime and how women knit to supplement the family income.  "A pair of worsted stockings sold for two to two and half shillings in the shop..."

Speaking of socks, I finished Hubby's boring gray socks and barely got them off the needles before he put them on his feet.  He's getting another pair, but it'll have to wait.  I have to finish the apres-surf hoodie. (I'm still working on the first sleeve.)  Then, I have to start a baby surprise jacket and start thinking about a couple of sweater requests from my nieces.

Gytha

gytha

The first time I saw the pattern "Gytha" in the Winter '08 issue of Twist Collective, I wanted to knit it right away.  The problem was:  I just didn't have anyone to knit it for.  Neither of my two older daughters likes to wear bright or multiple colors and my little one was too small.  Fast forward two years, my baby is now wearing her the same size as her eighteen-year-old sister, despite the fact that she's only nine. 

Usually, I don't like to knit (or quilt) my projects in the exact same color as the original pattern.  This time, however, I picked my colors to match the pattern as close as I could get.  I love turquoise! The pattern called for Green Mountain Spinnery Mohair.  It's a lovely yarn, but I couldn't justify spending that much on a nine-year-old's sweater.  Knit Picks came to the rescue!  Their Wool of the Andes yarn come in a rainbow assortment of colors.  Buying yarn online is always a little nerve-wracking for me.  I read good reviews, I read bad reviews.  In the end, plunged ahead and ordered the yarn.  For about two bucks a 50 gram skein, how can I go wrong?  The yarn arrived 6 days after I placed the order.  No knots, no blue fingers. Wool of the Andes is a hit with me  I will buy it again.  Maybe Knit Picks fixed the problems that some reviewers were complaining about.




M's gytha



It only took me three weeks to knit the sweater.  It would have only been two weeks if it weren't for some changes.  I didn't want the sleeves too wide, so I decreased every few rows.  I thought I made the sleeves short enough, but when M tried it on for the first time, it looked ridiculous.  My goal was to make a sweater big enough so my cutie-pie can still wear in the fall (she's growing like a weed), but not so big that she's swimming in it.  There was only one thing to do.  I snipped the stripes off of each sleeve, unravelled the ribbing at the elbows and grafted the stripes back on.  Voila!  Shorter sleeves!

The picture we took doesn't show the toggle buttons at front opening, because I hadn't sewn them on yet.  M wore the sweater to school as soon as the toggles were secure and was happy as a clam.  I pictured her teacher and classmates ooing and aahing.  I didn't picture her falling into a mud puddle, which of course is exactly what she did.