works in progress

Reese got a magic kit for Christmas this year, and he's been doing a lot of practicing. He's got some good tricks, too - there's one he does with a pair of dice that's very cool. The part that's really a work in progress is his magician's patter. For example, he has this trick that consists of pulling a yellow rope out of an egg. Not much to it, so it's kind of all in the presentation. His first attempt was to hold up the egg, forcefully declare, "This has no openings in it!" then pull out the rope. Um.



We suggested he might add more drama by saying he has an ordinary egg, and oh my gosh! what's this? etc. etc. So he held up the egg and said, "I have an egg!" Then, pulling out the rope, "WITH A ROPE IN IT!"



Which is our new catchphrase. Even Jane can be heard walking around the house muttering "I have an egg with a rope in it!" to herself.



As for my own works in progress, I finished the February baby sweater:

So fun to knit. pattern: EZ's February baby sweater, from the Knitter's Almanac. yarn: Dream in Color Classy. needles: size 6 Addi Turbos. mods: None really. I screwed up on the first repeat of the lace pattern, and forgot to keep the border in garter stitch. Once I noticed, I was too chicken to drop the border stitches down because I had a buttonhole in there too, so I just kept making the same mistake. It's a design element now.

So now that that's done, I am officially Working On Sam's Cobblestone. But at this point, the rows are still really long, and I've got most of the sweater hanging off the needles as I work, and
I just can't do a lot of it without wanting to either fall asleep or bury the thing under the 5-foot snow pile in the front yard. So I've also . . . cast on a sock. Don't judge.

Besides all the knitting, another reason I've been sort of blog-absent is playing around with shop stuff. I've been spending some time (time when I should probably be sleeping, mostly) working on things like getting my pictures to look better, reading up on stuff in the Etsy forums, and, of course, making things. And I've got a little prototype to show you:

So what the hell is the picture on that? It's a ray diagram. I've been messing around with some embroidery, but I wanted to do something a little different, that would reflect a little more of me. I hit upon this idea of doing glasses cases with pictures on them of the ray diagrams that show how the lenses work. This one is a converging lens, used to correct farsightedness.

I've also done one with a diverging lens, for nearsightedness. What do you think - too geeky? I thought it would be fun to keep my glasses in a case that shows how the lenses work, but then I'm kind of a nerd.

Well. I don't even know anymore what the time stamp on this post will be, but it's actually about 12:30 on Friday night. I keep getting pulled away, pulled in every direction. Both Jane and Sam have had bouts of fever and barfing (that part was just Sam, thank goodness), I've had to pinch-hit and go into work two nights this week, and I have still not found out how to get the laundry to do itself. And life goes on . . .

The gifts, they do not stop. Also, a salamander pattern, sort of.

Remember the on-the-needles stuff I showed you?

Well, I haven't touched any of it, and not (entirely) because I am lazy. Following close on the heels of Christmas is more gift-giving, in the form of birthdays and new babies. Plus there was still some Christmas stuff I hadn't finished yet . . .

First, here's a salamander I made for Jess' Magic Boy.

You know how sometimes the Yarn Harlot talks about projects that make you feel clever? This was one of those projects. I started with a picture of a salamander that's found in this area,

then amused myself trying to figure out how to do each part - How do I get the shape of the head? How do I make a curvy body? How do I do the little legs and toes? I did absolutely no counting while I made this, but in lieu of a pattern I can give you the "pithy" directions:

Start at the head, with the Eastern cast-on (or Judy's Magic Cast-on from knitty). Increase like you would for a sock toe, 2 stitches at each side every other round, stopping when the head looks big enough. Knit a few rounds until the head looks long enough, then do some decreases for the neck and increases to widen it back up for the body. At this point, if you're knitting this via Magic Loop, move the stitches around so that instead of having the top of the salamander on one needle and the bottom on the other, you have each side of the salamander on a needle. That way, as you knit the body, you can do some short-rows on one side, then the other, to get the S-shaped curve. (I also was stuffing it a little at a time as I went, and it was starting to look rather obscene hanging off my needles. I ignored my husband's raised eyebrows and knit on.) Decrease a little at a time for the tail; the last inch or so is I-cord. For each arm, pick up 8 stitches (in two sets of four, across from each other) at appropriate spots and knit a little tube (I didn't bother to stuff these). For the hand, knit back-and-forth on just 4 of the stitches for a couple of rows, increasing to 6 stitches on the first row. Do a little picot hem-turning to make three little toes, then do a couple more rows. Decrease back to 4 stitches and graft these 4 to the other 4 arm-stitches. Embroider some spots and add little seed-bead eyes. Ta-da!

Another gift I made is a Thermis for my sister's birthday. I used this handspun (lots of stuff in that post; keep scrolling), and the only mods I made to the pattern were to use both fewer stitches and fewer repeats of the thermal pattern to accomodate the thicker yarn. It came out a nice size.

I don't want to give it away.

And last but not least, I'm making EZ's February baby sweater for my sister-in-law's baby shower next month. I was very happy to find out she's having a girl so I could do the lace! Not that another BSJ wouldn't have been fun, too . . .

That gorgeous yarn is Dream in Color Classy. It's superwash, and the color is just amazing.

I'm sorry to say J's birthday will be going un-knitted-for this year. But he's really not a knitwear guy, and anything he might wear I've already made for him. I'll replace stuff as it wears out, but for his birthday I'd rather get something he'll use. I guess that's just what happens when you pick your husband before you learn how to knit. :)

The baby sweater is the last immediate gift I'll have to knit for a while, unless there's something I'm forgetting. Knowing me, that is entirely possible, but with any luck I'll be polishing off that Cobblestone soon. Or maybe even spending some time with my poor neglected wheel. Imagine that!