Kate....

Greetings and Dear Laura:

What's this, you ask? Well, this is the body of Kate! Remember Kate from the Winter 2005 Knitty?? I made one for my great-niece Grace when she turned 2, and now I've been invited to Katelynne's 2nd Birthday Party, so I thought it was time to give this pattern another go. I remembered that it went fairly quickly, and I have leftover scraps from one of my 'graduation blankets.' I cast on last night, and the picture is the entire body.

Lauren and I discussed yesterday whether I would need to knit this at lunch this week (I need it next Sunday.) My initial feeling is that I could get it done by working on it during the evening, but Lauren was skeptical.

I sat down to watch a ballgame last night and picked up my yarn scraps and needles. I started with the purple color, and I suppose my progress was sped along by how quickly my little ball was disappearing. You know what I mean....you start to notice that the ball is getting smaller at a faster rate than your project is growing.... I had pegged the larger ball to do the body stripes and the 2 smaller ones for the limbs. That was optimistic! Despite my knitting faster to make the yarn last longer (??) I soon had to step back and make a decision.

Do I continue knitting, denying the reality that I don't have enough purple or do I rip out and choose a different color from the scraps? Before doing anything rash, I rummaged the stash again. Lo and behold, I have a FULL SKEIN of the purple! So, by time the Brewers finished off the Cardinals 6-3 in 10 innings, I had the body done! This section is more than 1/2 of the main piece and contains most of the shaping, so I'd say I'm just about halfway done. Probably I'll finish up tonight, else tomorrow night.

We had to laugh tho, Lauren and I, when we were trying to figure out how long it might take me. I turned to Ravelry to see how long the first one took me....but it's not in my notebook. I didn't load my entire history into the project section - I decided to do "going forward." I've added some older projects as I run across pictures, but I didn't have any info on this one. So, obviously, I went to our blog....which began a month after I gave Grace her kitty, so no help there. I checked my old "Designated Knitter" blog, but evidently I moved it to blogger just a few weeks before we began, so the bottom line is I've got nothin'.

It is so strange to think of life, especially knitting life, before Ravelry and Blogger!

Anyway.

Keep knitting!

Cynthia (aka Designated Knitter!)