Xmas - one down, 6 to go

So excited, I finished one Xmas item last night. Here he is:

Snowman shelf doll from an online pattern by Aussie Jean. This pattern and yarn was sent to me a year ago as a "keep busy while you recover from surgery" gift. I knit the body in November 2003 and just picked it back up in November 2004. I plan to send the completed snowman back to the very thoughtful colleague who sent me the original gift.

There was a bit of a translation problem in that Aussie Jean says that DK weight in Australia should be equivalent to worsted weight yarn in the US. Maybe with a wool yarn you could get 26 sts/4 inches in worsted weight yarn, but not with Red Heart! I was hard pressed to get the 17 sts/4 inches I got. So my snowman is larger than the one in the pattern. If you knit this pattern - I recommend using sport weight or yarn, knit at a firm gauge. Do not use worsted.

Still in queue to finish for Christmas:

• Fuzzy Stripey #2 just needs buttons
• Meadow Flowers body is done - ready for edging
• Alpaca tie - gauge swatch done. Ready to choose colors
• Toddler cardi - zero progress. No yarn chosen, no pattern. EEEeeee!
• a late addition. Aunt Christina wants a plaid scarf in the colors of her mittens
• Narcisse. Yeah, I know. Was supposed to be a pre-Xmas project. I crocheted the flowers over the weekend, but still haven't done the embroidery. Would like to give this one to the choir director on Nov. 30th, so it's my big focus this week

So much knitting still to go, but it still looks do-able.

Meadow Flowers was giving me fits this weekend. After behaving fine for 7 pattern repeats, discrepancies started creeping in to the simiple lace pattern. I tried to adjust by adding a stitch here or there to make the motifs line up. This worked for the row in progress, but the cummulative effect was increasing numbers of errors to be corrected each row. Eventually I decided to quit knitting the body and call it done. Sadly, I had already gone one repeat too far and had to tink 9 rows of mohair one stitch at a time. Took 2 days. But it's done and I'm back to 180 sts across the top and 90 down each side as the instructions specify. Phew. So I'm moving on to edging. As soon as I finish Narcisse.