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.

SnB Nation: Paper Moon delivers the goods

Hi knitters! I had a great weekend trip Nov 13 - 16 to Wisconsin to visit granny, now back in her apartment 9 weeks after her heart attack & surgery. She's recovering quite well for 88 and is living on her own again. We are so proud of her and just overjoyed to see her getting along so well. Go, granny, go!

The trip also meant a very busy week at work, testing some improvements to our search server before launching them next week (cross your fingers!), so knitting progess was slow.

I did take Meadow Flowers with me to Wisconsin - finished all the knitting for the body of the shawl and am now ready to start edging. Also Fuzzy Stripey #2 is now seamed and awaiting buttons. Since my return, I've worked on A Step Above sock #2 -- I've finished the ribbing, base triangles and 2 rows of boxes. And under some delivery presssure, I crocheted all the little flower doodads for Narcisse. Everything's moving, but not a single thing has actually been finished.

I didn't have a chance to pick up Stitch n Bitch Nation before leaving town. Without much hope, I looked for the book in 5 airport bookstores, a craft store, and evil Walmart with no luck. On the 15th, I finally found a copy at Paper Moon, a lovely idosyncratic bookstore in McGregor, Iowa. I love Paper Moon - very cool gifty things and well chosen books arranged by subject more than author. Displays last weekend included travel (novels and non-fiction), trains, knitting, local authors, politics.. in each little area they had pulled together books you might not have thought of as related and made great connections.

I danced gleefullly around the store when I found the picture of the SnB SJSU on page 191 and my own review of Knitting Arts on page 271. And Gunilla's reviews in the San Jose section. I really feel in with the In Crowd now. Actually, I was telling my spouse-o this weekend that I am really feeling blessed by my connection through the SnB group and Knitting Meetup. I have not had many women friends since moving to California ten years ago. These groups have put me in touch with so many cool, crafty, supportive women. I'm really loving it. So thanks, gals, and congrats on your appearance in SnB Nation. I'm bringing my book Sunday to get it signed by my famous knitbuds.

Everything trundling along

Made pretty good progress this week on Xmas knitting and reclaimed 2 "no-think" projects so I can keep knitting as I finish my little Xmas bits up. I completely finished Baby Clara's crocus cardigan (washed, ironed, buttons on) and took one last picture before I send it off in the mail:

The sleeves are not quite as vestigial as they look in this photo - that's just the camera angle amplifying my worry over the not-so-roomy sleeves.

In "no-think" projects, Janice helped me get back on track with the Meadow Flowers on Sunday. My little flower motifs were "off by one" in relationship to one another. We found the mistake and decided where to inc 1 so the remaining rows will be correct. I'm up to 17 flower motifs per row now, heading for a total of 21 before Xmas.

Also this week, I completed the first A Step Above sock (Knitters 75, Summer 2004), conquering the evil afterthought heel pickup and cast on #2. I think of this as "no think" knitting, aside from the blasted heel.

What was the deal with the heel? I'm glad you asked. I'm hoping these notes might help future knitters of this project.

The heel was picked up from waste yarn knit in between two sets of triangles (most of the sock, as you can see, is squares, not triangles). The triangle edge you pick up from is formed by the ends of multiple shortrows along the base of the triangle. So what you are picking up from is not really recognizable stitches or rows. They are halfway in-between.

So you knit the first triangle, leaving 1 stitch behind on the needle every row for the shortrows. Then a straight row of waste yarn. Then after the waste yarn, you continue shortrowing, this time with a few decreases to get back to the 24 stitches needed for these two triangles. Picking up from shortrows is the part that threw me.

When the waste yarn came out, the sole stitches were no problem, despite the decreases in the very next row. On the other side, when the waste yarn came out, the last stitch of each shortrow got confused and tended to pick up as 2 stitches rather than 1. I got so pissed off trying to get actual stitches on the needle that I dropped this project for for nearly a month.

When I came back, I decided if those shortrow ends wanted to be two stitches each, I'd just let them be 2 stitches each. I just picked up extra loops until I truly had 2x the stitch count and decreased all the way across the first heel row, knitting the "extra loop" from each shortrow stitch together with the stitch before it (not its row-mate.. the stitch one row "above" the goofy loop). After that, it was just another toe-shaped heel.

Last on the project parade, some seams for Fuzzy Stripey #2 and some stuffing & seams for the Snowman shelf/computer doll. I'm holding back photos of that one until it's delivered, since the gal who is going to recieve it looks at my photo page sometimes.

I'll be travelling this weekend to visit my grandma Grace (remember she had a heart attack and bypass surgery in September? Well, she moved back into her own very own apartment on November 5th and I'm going to get to see her there on Saturday!) in Wisconsin, so I'll have lots of time for no-think knitting on planes. Meadow Flowers and ASA socks are going to rock for travelling. Be back Wednesday! Happy knitting til then.

Depression, doggie sweater, and orange progress

Well, the election was a big bummer for me. I think the county-by-county map from www.electoral-vote.com pretty effectively demonstrates why lefty pinkos like myself feel isolated in the US right now. Hang in there, progressives!

Meanwhile, my sister-in-law sent me a photo of her Chaucer in the Icelandic Beauty doggy sweater:

I think the fit around the upper body is good, but the drangling under the belly will have to be adjusted. Tucks, maybe.. or reknit the back end.. not sure. But the sweater will have to come to Calinfornia for a visit for adjustments. I'm a little peeved about this, cause I sorta suspected the belly was too big, but I made a paper dog cutout and he looked pretty good in the sweater, so I figured I was just nuts. Next time, I'll have to find a local victim to model the sweater before shipping it to Philadelphia!

In orange news, I've finished all the pieces of Fuzzy Stripey #2 and am ready for assembly. I also (finally!) tackled the heel of my Step Above sock and will be ready to cast on #2 shortly. In the Xmas present countdown, socks for me do not count, but Fuzzy Stripey does. So far, number of presents planned is, oh, say 6: Fuzzy Stripey, Meadow Flowers, Narcisse, Tie, Snowman, and Linen Stitch Hat. 4 are started, zero are finished. 5 weeks to go before the Xmas shipping deadline! I think this is finally going to push me over the edge to install a project thermometer thingy. The pressure, the pressure!

Have a good weekend, everybody!