Done! Finally done!

Of the three sweaters that were on my needles, this is the one that I started most recently. The knowledge of those older sweaters, however, shall not dampen my sense of triumph over finally finishing! Sam's! Cobblestone!

I love this sweater. More importantly, Sam loves this sweater. It's pilling a little already, from him wearing it. Can pilling make me happy? Yes it can.

The details:

pattern: Cobblestone by Jared Flood (aka brooklyn tweed)

yarn: Di.Ve Zenith, 7 skeins

needles: US size 7 Knitpicks

mods: Quite a few. I used my gauge, Sam's measurements, and my mad math skillz to size it for him. I also (obviously) made it a "zip-up," as he requested. I omitted the short-rows, because Sam is a stick person and I was running out of yarn. Actually, I did run out of yarn. That's why there's the gray striping in the shoulders. When it became obvious that I wasn't going to make it, I looked for more yarn, but it was a Webs closeout so no dice. I had some of the same yarn in a light chartreuse so I overdyed it with black and used that. It didn't come out black, but I did two-row stripes with the dyed yarn and the last skein of the black and it came out pretty cool. Gotta love knitting's potential for flexibility and ingenuity.

The zipper was not nearly as scary as I thought it would be.

I have issues with sewing in a straight line on the machine, so I decided to hand-sew the zipper in, using backstitch. I also decided to use embroidery floss, for extra strength and because, well, I have a lot of it. The black floss matched the sweater really well; on the front of the sweater, you can't see the stitches at all.


It was actually impossible to see the stitches even as I was sewing in the zipper, so they meander a little. Ah well.

The last details Sam wanted were these holes for his thumbs:

I don't know that I really see the appeal, but he's been known to, um, add these holes to his other shirts. And I didn't want to have to harm him in some fit of knitterly rage (kidding! Just kidding!).

I'm so happy with how this turned out. And I have cast on Reese's sweater already - a top-down raglan in the same yarn in green. It will also be really boring knitting (damn these kids and their plain-sweater tastes), but hopefully it won't take me five months like Sam's did. Yikes.

Oh, and there are more pictures on Ravelry!

on the needles in 2009

Hmm. Looks pretty similar to what was on the needles in 2008.

In Bag #1:

Big Brother's Cobblestone, which was supposed to be the first of three sweaters I would make the kids for Christmas. Whoops. It's nearly four inches into the yoke, practically done, for Pete's sake. As the holiday drew closer and I knew there was no way the kids' sweaters were getting done, I put it down in favor of the smaller projects I had to finish. This will be the first thing I pick back up.

In Bag #2:

The Bubble Pullover. I've got just one more pentagon to go, then the sleeves, collar, and the ribbed section at the bottom. Man, those pentagons were getting boring. I remember writing when I first started this sweater that it wouldn't ever get boring. I've been betrayed by the Bubble. Or my own attention span. Whatever.

In Bag #3:

Oh, man, the seamless hybrid. I cast this on in - wait, let me check - holy crap, last January! That's just sad. If I remember correctly, I'm somewhere on the second sleeve. So I need to finish that, join everything together, and hopefully remember what the hell I had planned for the yoke.

And speaking of my short attention span, I've got a couple of new projects going too. The first is, well, another cowl. They're like a disease, I swear.

Pretty, though, isn't it? It's Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande I got for Christmas (thanks, Nancy!). The pattern is this Spiral Cowl, with a couple of mods. Besides changing the gauge, I also substituted a regular hem for the picot hem, and kfb increases for the yarnovers. Both changes make it a little simpler and less lacy (though it is beautiful and not at all fussy as is), which I like better with the bulky yarn.

Lastly, I've also got a mystery project going:

I can't share this one just yet, but I'm putting it in for the sake of completing this public shaming project inventory.

And, well, I know I wasn't going to make any New Year's resolutions, but here goes: These will not still be on the needles in 2010!

we're in holiday mode over here

Full-on holiday mode. Decorations are up, gifts are being made/purchased (largely from Etsy - go handmade!), and my daily coffee is coming from a Christmas mug.



I made the mistake (except not really) of adding the Craft magazine blog to my Google Reader, which has resulted in tons of inspiring projects tempting me on a daily basis. I haven't gotten around to trying too many of them yet, but the boys and I did make this advent calendar:







Here are the instructions. It was a lot of fun, and I'm really happy with how it came out, but can you see the issue with it?


Think about it.




Yeah, those little pockets? You have to fill them. I did not want to fill the house with more plastic junk and my kids' heads with present-every-day expectations, so I've been putting in things like small candy canes and puzzles printed off the internet. Next year, though, I think I'll incorporate this advent calendar too. Each pocket will hold one of the little felt lights, and we'll put them on the string each day rather than taking them off. Fun!


Okay, I need to catch up with showing the knitting I have actually been doing, so bear with me. No pun intended:



That's the last Bubby, the one for Jess' baby. The yarn is actually recycled from a store-bought cotton sweater, but it really reminds me of Araucania Nature Cotton. It's very soft and sort of slubby. The gauge on this was a bit bigger than on the other Bubbies, so the bear is too.



I also knit a bag for my brother's guitar picks, at his request. I hope he doesn't mind that I had a little fun with it.

That's the only finished Christmas knit I have to show you - little non-holiday projects keep popping up. First, Baby Sister asked for a cowl (really, she did) after seeing me wearing mine all the time. How could I say no?

I love how happy it makes her. It's a really simple one; just stockinette with ribbing at the top and bottom and the embroidered hearts. The yarn is less than a skein of Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino that's been hanging out in the stash since, well, the very earliest days of the stash. I was happy to let it see the light of day.

Second, Brand-new Niece turned one (!) this weekend, and I realized I hadn't knit anything to mark the occasion. Completely unacceptable! Enter the cupcake!

I made this up as I went along, and not to sound full of myself or anything, but I just about died of cuteness looking at it.

The other non-holiday knitting I've been doing has been related to the new etsy shop I've been playing around with. I didn't want to keep the old one going without Jess, and well, she's a little bit busy. New human being and all. So I started up a new one here. I've been working on it off and on, and trying to learn more about promoting it. I don't, however, plan on doing a lot of promotion here. It drives me a little bit crazy when a blog turns into a repeated sales pitch, so I'm not going to do that. The link over there in the sidebar still works, though. :)

And lest I forget, Big Brother's sweater is still moving along at its glacial pace.

Perhaps this goes without saying (it would certainly be less painful that way), but there's no way the kids will be getting Christmas sweaters. They will, as soon as my slow-knitting ass can possible make it, be getting Just-Because sweaters, but not Christmas sweaters. Raise your hand if you're surprised. Nobody? ETA: I just noticed the sweater looks like it's raising its hand in that picture. Ha! It has too much confidence in me.

AND I haven't forgotten that I've been off-handedly promising a couple of patterns and then not putting them up. They're coming - hopefully next week with the new schedule in place. All hail the new schedule!

Well, that's about it for this dispatch from within the holiday craziness. I'll surface again soon, I hope.

the c-word

No, not that c-word. My goodness.

I’m speaking, of course, of Christmas. And Christmas knitting, which has been underway for some time. I have enthusiastically taken the handmade pledge, and I think it’s going pretty well so far. I originally intended that all the handmade gifts would be handknitted gifts, but that’s not going to happen. Besides friends and family, there are people like the kids’ teachers, all six of them (hello - only three kids), and it’s just going to be too much. I’ll probably do some baking or making things like lip balms or bath balls. The handmade holidays group in Ravelry has tons of good suggestions. And then, not all the gifts can be handmade – though that’s all I’ll say about that here.

So what have I knit so far? Well, there’s the mittens.

The last couple of pairs have been stripey wool exercises in stashbusting. On the first pair, I made the stripes completely random, and then I put a bit more structure in the second pair. I’m also perfecting my jogless join, and using up as much as I can of those annoying little balls of leftovers. Do those drive you crazy, too? Or is it just me?

I’ve also been doing a bunch of stuffed animals, mostly using the Bubby pattern from knitty. I planned to do a cat (for the baby in the family that has cats), a dog (for the baby in the family that has dogs), a bear (the pattern ends there), and a salamander. Obviously I’m not going to do a Bubby salamander, but all the others will use that pattern. The cat and dog, actually, are already done.

They just need faces, but I’d like to get some embroidery floss for that. Also, I’m not sure I like the bow ties/neckties on either of them. I think I might get some ribbon for ties and be sure to stitch it down securely. Or maybe I’ll go all-out and knit them some little clothes. That might be fun.

The toughest Christmas knitting to get through is going to be the kids’ sweaters. I get the sinking feeling I’m going to do all the fun stuff - like, say, stuffed animals and mittens - first, and wind up spending the last couple of weeks before Christmas going crazy with the big projects. Because that is how I roll. At this point Big Brother’s sweater is knit up to the armpits, plus one sleeve and a little bit of a second sleeve. I started the second sleeve last Thursday, then spent the weekend (my prime knitting time) on other, smaller projects. Honestly, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m forcing myself to save Baby Sister’s sweater for last, because it will be by far the most entertaining.

And last but not least, I knit something up for my sister's boyfriend. Which, fellow Secret Santa participants, does not necessarily mean I drew his name! So there! Last year I made him fingerless gloves, so this year I was going to go for a hat. Unfortunately for me, it turned out Nancy had knit him two hats last year (one in black and one in brown, so being a guy, he'd never need another one). So a hat was out.

Hmm, what to knit, what to knit . . . a-ha, a COWL!

Love it when I get to knit a gift and indulge an obsession. I'm going to post the pattern for this (ridiculously simple as it is), but I'll make that a separate post.

So that's it for Christmas so far. I feel like I should put a countdown in the sidebar or something, but I'm not really that organized in my thinking this year. Gone are the color-coded Excel spreadsheets of years past, there's just not enough time. Sigh . . . I've been so busy and doing so much thinking and exploring - soon I'll sit down and share my thoughts. As soon as I can get them to stay in one place long enough.

odds & ends

Man, do I love the inventor of bullets. Well, not, you know, bang-bang bullets; I'm referring to the pseudo-organizational tool I employ way more than I ought to. And here I go again!

• Fall has arrived! Hurrah! This just makes me so happy. The cooler weather is mostly here, and the leaves are starting to turn. It's lovely. Expect to see leaf pictures around here soon; I know I will not be able to help myself.
• The cooler weather has brought with it the return of my morning walk with Baby Sister. We frequent the local bike path, which this year has been christened "Treewater." I was reluctant to use the word bike with Baby Sister, as her biking skills are not really ready for anyplace but the driveway, so I described it to her as, "you know, the place with the trees, and the water," as enticingly as I could. Hence Treewater. I like it, I think I should mention it to whomever runs the park. It's much more poetic and succint than the "Ten Mile River Greenway." Don't you agree?
• Said morning walk has been touch and go. Baby Sister is not always enthusiastic about riding in her stroller. If she would prefer to walk, I'd be pretty much okay with that, but she'd prefer to push the stroller. Or climb and stand in the stroller. These things tend to slow us down, and for a couple of weeks the morning walks were routinely ending in tears. (Hers, I swear.) It's been better for the past few days, and I hope that continues. I'm becoming increasingly aware that this hour of relative quiet and physical activity is a big contributor to my sanity.
• This is largely because work has been pretty crazy. See, my boss and his wife own five Sylvan centers, and the director of one of those centers is no longer working for them. Which means that two or three days a week, my boss is working at the other center and I'm all by myself here for about half the workday, until students start coming in. Most of the time there's some work to be done, but I've got a lot of downtime. It's also just weird to be completely alone for such big chunks of time. Now if I were at home and completely alone for a big chunk of time, I would love it, but it's just not the same here. I've done a lot of blog reading, not so much posting (except for, you know, now), and very very little knitting. I'm paranoid that somebody will walk in looking for help for their child and I'll be sitting there with my sock yarn. I'm thinking that would be somewhat unprofessional. At least the computer makes it look like I'm doing something work-related.
• I've also been doing some online GRE prep, and I'm thinking I'm going to register to take the test soon. What I will do after that is less certain. I like my job a lot, but I don't see my kids nearly enough. Also there are no benefits whatsoever. I don't need healthcare, J's job is actually really good for that, but some sort of retirement something would probably be good. I know very very little about this kind of thing, but the news lately has just freaked me right out. It's very frustrating to regularly hear and read about this stuff that I understand just enough to get that it is Very Bad. Add the lack of any retirement benefits in my job and it gets all the more anxiety-producing.
• I have to add, I hate the fact that I'm considering a career change for monetary reasons. Everybody knows you don't go into teaching for the money; it was never supposed to be about money. I love teaching. I especially love the way I teach now - all sorts of subjects to all sorts of kids, one-on-one where you make such a great connection. It's so gratifying to hear from kids and parents how much we've helped them, and in this job I hear it all the time. It's awesome, with the one exception of that gnawing ache of missing my family. This reality-rearing-its-ugly-head thing sucks.
• And because all that would be a crappy way to end, I'll talk about knitting! I've cranked out a couple of small projects in the past two weeks, but I plan to post the pattern for those, so they'll have to wait. They're cute, though. :) I also cast on a bigger project, a cobblestone for Big Brother. I've got this crazy idea that I'd like all the kids to get sweaters for Christmas. You can look forward to the slow but steady unraveling of that idea (no pun intended) over the next few months; it should be fun. I sized the pattern down to fit his measurements, which wasn't too tough, and I've got just a little of it done at this point. He also requested a "zip-up," which is a little scary, but I've got quite a while before I have to face the zipper part. Amy has steered me toward a tutorial, so hopefully it will all be okay. The other thing that might make this sweater tough is the color - Big Brother picked out solid black. So far it hasn't been as difficult to see as I thought it would, and the yarn - di.Ve Zenith, which is a wonderfully squishy superwash merino - is nice to work with. A bit splitty, but I'm using some very pointy Knitpicks circulars so I haven't had much trouble.

Well, I think that's about it for now. I plan on posting that pattern later this week. No, really. See you then.