It's been a busy time lately. I've just recently got some time to knit, and here's what I made:
The hand-dyed yarn is from Patti, donated to the drawing for the Give a Little campaign for Katrina Relief. The pattern is the Gauntlet pattern from the Not Just Socks book by Sandi Rosner. I changed the pattern a little. I cast on fewer stitches so the pattern would work with my yarn, and made the cuff shorter than the pattern called for, but that's it.
I can't tell you how much I love these things. I suffer from the cold even in our mild Georgia winters. I know from past experience that fingerless mitts do help keep the cold achies out of my hands. The pattern was dead easy. I think it took me two nights of knitting to make them. And Patti's yarn is WONDERFUL! It's soft but also just crisp enough to make the details stand out. And the color combination is Just. Freaking. GORGEOUS. I'd be knitting along and periodically I'd just have to stop and admire the way the colors all went together. So y'all go over to Patti's blog and say Hi!
Last Saturday I got to meet Charlene Schurch, author of Sensational Knitted Socks and other fun books. What a nice lady! She taught a sock workshop at the shop, and we had the pleasure of being able to go out to supper with her and her husband afterwards. We ate at the Blue Willow Inn in Social Circle. (BTW, I think "Social Circle" is a lovely name for a town.) And no, I don't have any pictures because I'm an idiot and left the camera at home. D'oh!
Current knitting project is the Evergreen Gift Bag from Handknit Holidays. (Savannahchik has a scan of the picture here.) Actually, I'm embarrassed that I don't have a picture of a completed bag today. The reason I don't is a lesson in being consistent in your knitting.
I've done just enough stranded colorwork to know what to do without always knowing the best WAY to do it. So I started out fine. I was carrying the dark yarn in my right hand and the light yarn in my left hand. This made weaving in the light color very easy. So I did my first set of motifs that way. It looked pretty good. Some of the stitches were a little tight, though, so I thought "Maybe I should carry the light yarn in my RIGHT hand and see how that goes. Well, it went fine. I didn't have any more tight stitches. But... (and you knew there was a but, right?) the second set of motifs didn't match the first set. The light stitches (the little tree motifs) stood out TOO much. It was Really Obvious. I looked at it for a while and tried to pretend that it didn't matter. But it did, so I frogged it back to the start of the first tree chart. After that I was too discouraged to knit on it any more last night. But it's a pretty quick knit. Once I decide on the best way to knit the piece and work that way consistently, I should be able to get through it pretty quickly. Like, in a day. Or two.
In Other News:
Last weekend was my brother's 25th wedding anniversary. Here he is with wife and daughter:
and here's their anniversary cake:
Awww. I played the organ for their wedding. I have never in my life seen anyone happier than my brother was that day. He positively glowed. His wife is a gem too, and we love her dearly. And his daughter, who'll be getting married herself this December, is wonderful. I'm really pretty blessed in my family. And that's a good thing, ya know?
Speaking of family, my dad's doing well. He says he's hardly sore at all now from his surgery. He's lost a little weight (which he needed to do), but he's doing pretty much anything he wants to now. Yay Dad!
News from the Dog World:
Jasper and Bouncer continue to be healthy. We are having some issues between the two of them, though. Jasper has strong ideas about what Bouncer should and should not do sometimes, and sometimes this results in Jasper deciding to jump on Bouncer. Usually these incidents are loud and scary, but don't result in anything but wet fur on Bouncer. Last night, however, Bouncer suffered a little puncture wound in the top of his head. We're taking care of it, and Jasper goes back on Nothing in Life is Free protocols.
He likes to eat coathangers.
Happy Halloween to all! I think I'm going to be curmudgeonly tonight and sit out the evening in Starbucks or something. We get many MANY trick-or-treaters, and sometimes it's just tiresome to deal with, not to mention expensive! Dear Robert's working tonight, so I'll hang out elsewhere and knit or something.
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