Picture of the Week

You may have to enlarge the picture to read the sign on the door.

Card Art

I took a break from knitting so that I could spend time making cards. I was pretty pleased with these, and was wishing I'd made some for myself. Hey - I could do that sometime, couldn't I? These were a set that I gave to Jen, as one of her birthday presents. I can post the picture now, since I gave them to her earlier this evening when we had dinner. I just realized that the brown one is not oriented correctly in the picture - it should be turned a quarter turn to the left, so that the ribbon is on the left side. Ah well. Just turn your head to the right to get the proper effect. You can see details by clicking on the picture, and getting a larger version.

Now it's back to knitting. I'm psyched about finishing the sweater now that the end is in sight. My first sweater!

Because It's Winter

And because this is probably my favorite commercial of all time. Enjoy!

Progress Report

Learning new things is work. Finding my way through some new task, understanding and then becoming competent at it, takes effort, even if it's mostly mental, not the sweaty, dirt-under-the-fingernails type of effort. That's not a bad thing. The truth is it's satisfying to arrive at the point of mastery, or even competency. You'd think I might have realized that sooner in my life, but some of these light bulbs take a while to come on.

Working on this sweater has shown me how much I procrastinate when it comes to learning something new. And that, I realize, has to do with fear of failure, or, to be more accurate, fear of messing it up irretrievably. There's nothing like a deadline to move me past that fear and into action, so I gave myself a deadline in order to get on with this (way overdue anyway) project. Deadline is fast approaching, and I probably won't have the sweater completely done and in Erin's hands by tomorrow. Haha! But it's in the home stretch! There were three new, potential-obstacle points for me in this project - joining a second skein and knitting off both separately in the shoulder/neck area, the three-needle bind-off for the shoulders, and picking up stitches to create the neckband (and later, the sleeves). I am past all three of these, and they've all worked out quite nicely. Hurray and hallelujah! Instead of the real name of this sweater pattern (Skully) I'm calling it Just Do It. Here are some pictures of it when in was essentially in the vest stage - joined at the shoulders, and with neckband in place, but no sleeves, and a closeup of the neckband.

Works in Progress

I thought I'd share a picture of what I've been working on lately. I've been occupying myself with lots of knitting, since it's often been too cold to venture out for very long. At least to me, it is :) We did take a lovely walk on New Year's Day through the nature preserve and ended up at Caribou for some yummy lattes. I'll walk through a great deal of snow if there's the hope of a warm beverage afterwards. This first picture is from that little hike.

After that walk, Kevin decided that my boots were too girly and lame for real outdoor adventures. So today we did some boot shopping for me and I ended up with a rugged and cozy pair that no one would describe as girly. I've been breaking them in by wearing them around the house, and they are quite comfy and toasty! Although I should note that our house is much warmer than the outdoors, so maybe that's not a fair statement.

Anyway - back to my projects. In my usual enthusiasm for starting, but not finishing, I've managed to accumulate 4 good-sized projects in various stages of completion. The oldest is the pale green baby blanket (Big, Bad Baby Blanket from the Stitch & Bitch book). This will be for my first grandchild, whom I presume won't arrive for a year or two at least (unless there's something you kids need to tell me?) The blanket is over halfway done but there's still plenty to do. Almost as old is the lovely brown shawl. I would understand if you don't recognize it as a shawl - it's not very big yet. I'm a little frustrated by the way the edges curl up, and need to take that to my LKS for advice - I may end up ripping it out. Then we have Erin's sweater (also from Stitch & Bitch) which is coming along quite well - my goal is to have it ready by shanty season which is fast approaching...or at least, while shanty season is still going on. I'm ready to work on the neckband if only I can figure it out. The 3 needle bind-off went pretty easily, and it looks so good. And lastly, the purple shawl is a prayer shawl that I started when I worked at SMH, and we all know that I left there over a year ago. That's also coming along well. I should be finishing that up by Feb.

I have a sizable stash of very lovely yarn and I'm itching to get busy with it, but I'm making myself wait until I have finished at least 2 of these projects. And so what have I learned? Make smaller projects!