Saturday, November 20, 2010

Christmas knitting

I'm going through the never ending mittens. I only have 1 pair done and most of a second. There are 2 pairs left and 34 days left til Christmas. I can churn out kids mittens quickly, but mittens for mom will the problem. I also thought about making my little sister a scarf, but that's not going to happen this late. Older sis has a hat I made that while I like it, matches nothing that I own. She loves hats, and will wear it.

I have one sock done for hubby and I don't want to knit the other. I want to work on socks, but socks for me not him. It's like my brain needs a break from mittens.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Christmas Crocheting and Knitting

Every year, I say that I will start earlier with Christmas. I like to craft gifts for family since A) a skein of yarn costs $3-8 per skein. and B) it shows that I actually do care. I will say that I did plan out gifts this year earlier than last. I knew for the most part what I was making. Mom asked last Christmas for mittens, and I figured my nieces and nephews would need a pair too. I say a pair and not 3 since I plan on crocheting a chain to keep the mittens together. You make it just long enough to stick out either arm hole (a little longer so the kids can actually put their hands in). One pair is done and has been since early October. But with me dislocating my shoulder at the end of last month, that made me pull back on crafting.

I am crafting again. I got a sock done for my husband's Christmas gift. And a cuff done on some mittens for my other niece, but not much else. I do have a project that I'm crafting for pay which needs to be done by Thanksgiving.

I really do need to think more before Christmas. We've got 43 crafting days left and I don't want to be up Christmas Eve crafting ( as I am every year I've done crafting for Christmas). But at the same time I don't want to be listening to Christmas music in July so I can get into the holiday spirit for crafting.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Giving up

When knitting it seems that giving up on a project is the hardest thing to do. Once I've started a project I like to complete it no matter how much I dislike it. I did this during the summer with my Traveling Woman Shawl. I didn't like the color, but I wanted the shawl so bad. It took me 3 months to realize I would never wear the shawl because the chocolate shawl would make my face look really dark. I have brown hair so I don't wear brown near my face.


Today I had to admit defeat on the mittens that I posted about in mitten surgery. I had to rechart them since it was too small, then I made too much ribbing (without realizing it), the floats were messy as were the decreases. The final straw was the thumb not fitting and having gaps.  I  was getting frustrated knitting them. And knitting shouldn't be frustrating.  So I'm giving up on my OWL for HPKCHC. Next term if I play along (IRL I'll be taking 18 credit hours for classes) I'll be a 4th year without an OWL complete (OWLs are large projects taking 2-3 months to craft as opposed to less than a month).

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Mitten surgery

I've been working on a pair of stranded mittens for just over a month now (6 weeks). I put them away for 2 reasons. I dislocated my shoulder about 3 weeks ago now and really couldn't knit for 2 weeks. I also had a problem with the ribbing being too long. it came to the middle of my forearm. I didn't know when I started that 2.5 inches of ribbing would be too much. I guess I should have guessed since most stranded mittens have tiny cuffs.


Today I finally said to myself "Self, you need to fix that mitten and make the other one. If you don't do it now, you never will and a lonely mitten is a terrible thing." So I undid the cast on edge and wasn't getting anywhere trying to unravel that. So I made a small cut about 2 rows before the length I wanted the mitten and picked up stitches from there. It gave me a manageable length for the mitten.

Unfortunately, I did this spur of the moment, so I don't have a before picture, but there are after pictures.


That's how much was cut off. It's about an inch and a half.

See, much more of a manageable edge.
It still needs a thumb but I'm happy to be working on these again.