Thursday, December 20, 2007

Ha! Christmas knitting??

Greetings and Dear Laura:

Wow - I love your Subway mittens! Gorgeous colorway, and they'll be so practical too. I really hope this wool blend works for you. And congratulations on finishing your gift socks!

I'm a rather erratic Christmas knitter. I have had years when I planned ahead what I would knit, and years when it was all very spur of the moment. (Ah, my innocent first year when I learned to knit in November and decided to make mittens for my 6 nieces. Thank heavens a couple of them were still little - and I finished on Christmas Eve in the living room while everyone was eating in the dining room!) This one was one those years when I spent all of November and most of December under the impression that I wasn't going to do any Christmas knitting. (snort) Plenty of baby knitting going on.

(Baby knitting update - I whipped up a quick hat for a girl, in case that is what my niece has in the next few weeks. I had a boy hat in stock.....)
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Anyway. I finished up my Tulip sweater for my youngest niece last week, and even wove in ends and blocked it. (Here's a picture - poor thing is teething and was all drippy that day!)
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Ok, ok, this does relate to Christmas knitting. So, I was left with several wips, but (this is the key) NO PRESSING DEADLINES. Which is a dangerous position to be in during the month of December. I briefly flirted with the idea of making soap sweaters for my co-workers, but counted that up and it was 10, so I put that as a "probably not." I seriously decided to break out the Bond Ultimate Sweater Machine that I bought about 5 years ago and use stash yarn and leftovers to make a toddler blanket for my great-niece, who dearly covets one. Her birthday is..tomorrow, but I thought if I did the body on the machine, I could sew it up and embellish it in time. (Turns out I need to learn more about the machine. After the 5th try that either jumped off the machine or broke the yarn by the 6th row, I gave up on this idea.) Then I had several crazy thoughts of other quick projects for large groups of people....Lauren talked me down from several of those.

Last weekend, I planned to travel to visit my niece in Ohio (the one about to have a baby!) but the snowstorm that was predicted made that unwise. Left with an unexpected free weekend, I decided to spend the time knitting. I decided to see how many of the 10 soap sweaters I could do in 2 days.

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The answer is 11! Isn't that wild? Most of them went pretty quickly, although the fair-isle took about 4 hours! I tried several versions getting that one started, but it was pretty fun.

See??
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I'm going to post the pattern again using the magic loop method, which I've decided I prefer. I've made enough of them now that I know how big a "field" I have to work with for the "body." I really like using the pattern idea from the Tulip sweater where color changes are done with a row of seed stitch, which makes the pretty "lacy" color changes. It was fun to use yarns from previous projects - there is a "sock monkey" one, and the special one using the left over Dream-In-Color from the Tulip sweater. And I finally found something to do with my Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted Rainbow colorway - it doesn't pool in this project!!
So, I may try to whip up more of these before my family Christmas get-together, we'll see. I still have plenty of scrap yarn! Although- I have 3 pairs of socks that are getting holes, and so besides one more baby blanket, I really need to get cracking on socks for myself! And I need to get out the sewing machine to do some receiving blankets. Christmas cookies, shopping, getting ready for the party......
I'm probably done Christmas knitting!
;)
Keep knitting!
Cynthia (aka Designated Knitter!)



1 comment:

Marie N. said...

They make such a colorful medley all together like that -- kind of like Easter eggs.

I have been meaning to make one of these and I still have not gotten to it.