kmkat and her kneedles

I made another thing(s).

Yarn: Knit Picks Andean Silk (worsted weight, 55/22/23 alpaca/silk/merino; discontinued), color Allspice.
Pattern: Vancouver Fog. 
Needles: US#7.

That is Alex's lovely hand above. I made these for her from the same yarn I used for her hat and cowl last winter. Great pattern, fast to knit*, impressive result. I have plans to make myself a pair from the same yarn in my stash but in blue. These are the BEST fingerless mitts I have ever knit -- I loved making them and I will love wearing mine.

* "Fast to knit", assuming the knitters does not miscross cables -- and who among us has NOT miscrossed a cable or three? -- or lose her place in the pattern. I ended up rewriting the pattern to demarcate the cable panel from the stockinette portion, after which I did not lose my place again.

That was Christmas.

We spent Christmas day with Alex and Matthew. It was delightful to see them hosting the gathering of our little family. They had clearly put a lot of thought and effort into the day -- food (tossed salad and pad thai -- yummy! I brought dessert), presents (perfect, every one!), and they even got dressed up. Not Smokey nor I nor Andrew; we were all in jeans, although I did wear a handknit scarflet to dress up my sweater.

There was festive dress.

Smokey always wears his Santa hat when he works on Christmas, and he brought it along. In the photo above, Andrew had just attempted -- unsuccessfully -- to put the hat on an attentive but uncooperative Ser Percival, so he donned St. Nick's chapeau himself.

Matthew had recently shaved his head.

Smokey was delighted to get a calendar from Alex. He has always been a big fan of Xena, Warrior Princess. (He was gobsmacked also to receive an automotive code reader, but that is not a particularly photogenic object, being basically just a black box.)

I got tags for my handknit items (sadly, they had not arrived by Christmas) and an iPod dock and a Mac Magic Mouse.

Andrew also got an iPod dock, but I neglected to get a photo. His looks approximately like this:

I had put together a basket containing a couple of beginner's supply kits for Alex. There was a knitter's kit: US#7 Dreamz needles, a ball of dishcloth cotton to learn on, and two skeins of Cascade 220 in soft yellow for a scarf once she has mastered the knit stitch, plus assorted small tools, and a How to Knit pamplet from the The Knitters' Guild of America for when I am not around to help her. The other half of the basket was a beginner's sewing kit -- shears, seam ripper, pins, needles, thread. I have found myself with three sewing machines, and one will be hers. She wants me to teach her to sew and to knit, yay!

Smokey had put together a similar gift for Matthew with assorted tools and gadgets, including a set of lighted jumper cables. Go ahead and laugh, but Matthew was pleased with them; you will wish you had them yourself next time your car will not start on a cold dark night.

Ser Percy's sweater was finally done and presented to Himself.

It fits him pretty well, considering I had no pattern and had very limited access to the actual dog's body for fitting. The next one will be better. Please note Percy's bow tie and Alex's sparkly shoes. It was a very festive day!

* * * * *

I had hoped to finish a pair of fingerless gloves for Alex by Christmas, but it was not to be.

The pattern is Vancouver Fog on Ravelry, the yarn is Knit Picks Andean Dream (alpaca, silk, merino worsted). I bound off the first one tonight and cast on the second. They go very quickly except for the idiot who crosses cables the wrong way and loses track of where she is in the pattern. That does slow them down a mite.

2009: That was the year that was.

January.

Well, there was this (bad).

And there was this (good) (from left, Wendy, me, Chris, and Susan).

On the knitting front:


 

February.

Good intentions.

 

Snow and cold.

Knitting:

March.

Winter melted away.

Knitting.

April.

Spring arrived in earnest.

Yarnover.

End of tax season.

Taste of St. Croix.
 

Knitting resumed after tax season.

 

May.

I scored big at Macy's sale racks, I helped Norm go away, I celebrated Mother's Day in an eco-friendly way, the bears and the ticks came out of hibernation, I picked up trash, I enjoyed the Memorial Day weekend, I bid farewell to our local librarian, and Hannibal discovered the joys of catnip.

Knitting was primarily of a stealth nature, but did include scientific swatching and the F'ing of a couple of O's that had been OTN for nearly, and over a year, respectively. (I am rather proud of that sentence -- and its punctuation -- awkward though it may be.)

 

June

June was for knitting and vacation and celebrating that brief magical time that is summer in the north woods.

 

 

Lots of knitting.

 

 

July.

July was for more vacation -- the rest of the one in Wyoming and another on the North Shore.

And summer.
 

And injuries.
 

And knitting.

 

August.

It was a very good month. I turned 60, had a contest, and laughed. We went to a concert.
 

I learned the difference between eagles and turkey vultures, and I had surgery to remove some extra/unneeded bits and pieces and repair that torn cartilage in my knee.
 

Knitknitknit.

 

September.

In September I had lots of cats on the blog, it was my turn to give the prayer at the beginning of the monthly county board meeting, the county budget process blew up, and the most gloriously gorgeous month of the year was here.

 

The knitting, she continued.

 

October.

I became a biker by proxy,

more new-to-me music found its way into my iTunes, and we celebrated 35 years together

by not-camping on Lake Superior.

The kneedles continued to fly.
 
 

November.

The van that took us on some wonderful vacations met up with an unfortunate bear on the road and was replaced by an older but bigger and more customized van.

Cold weather arrived, and once more I cooked and baked.

 

Mostly, though, I knitted.




Apparently I can crank out hats like other knitters crank out... sweaters

December.

I continued to be thankful (there is a lot to be thankful for).

With the help of Matthew and Maggie, I decorated for Christmas. This decorating thing is never a given.

I showed you my ornaments, y'all showed me yours.

 

We ate well.
 

A bit more knitting* for others.

I pretty much finished my Christmas knitting. (Shhh, the Calorimetry is a surprise.)


The medical mittens are still OTN -- stay tuned.

*For someone who doesn't like pink, I sure knit a lot of it lately...

Fetchings. Kittehs. Ice. Mutterings.

As soon as I finished the bright red Fetchings featured in yesterday's post, I cast on some for myself. The first one took about 20 seconds. Well, actually, it took one evening. The second took the rest of the week. Since these were knit from Plymouth Boku, a long-color-change yarn, I decided I wanted the stripes of the second one to match the first.

After starting and frogging twice, I gave up on that idea. Apparently the stripe sequence is not consistent. Or is so long that it doesn't necessarily repeat within a skein. My efforts were complicated by the fact that I cannot count rounds nor remember exactly how I screwed up the pattern what I did on the first mitt.

Anyway, here they are in all their non-matchy-matchiness.

The yarn is rather scratchy, but that does not matter because I plan to wear these over my leather gloves for extra warmth when the temperatures once again dip into Cold-Depths-Of-Hell-range. With luck that may not happen again this winter, but I am oh-so-ready for it next year. My gloves are dark brown and my coat is brick red; I think these will look quite *fetching* with them. Yeah, I crack myself up.

Yarn: Plymouth Boku, 38g (~80 yds)
Needles: Knit Picks Options US#5 circ, Magic Loop.
Pattern: Fetching from Knitty.com.
Mods: I cast on 35 st instead of 45 and used a slightly smaller needle.

* * * * *

The kittehs have been staying close to my office window.

 

The birds have re-discovered the feeder that hangs on the deck railing in front of the window, and the felines have re-discovered the birds. Kittehs are looking mighty lazy here, but they are very, very alert when there are birds on the feeder. Hannibal can only stand it for a certain length of time; then he has to attack, forgetting every damned time that he cannot pounce through the window. Although he tries. And every time he tries, a pile of carefully sorted papers flies off the desk -- arrrggghhhh!

* * * * *

We had unseasonably warm weather earlier last week. Lots of melting occurred.

That's the platform in front of the garage. The first day after the melt, I attempted to walk from the front door (off to the left, out of the photo) to my yellow car. I made it around the blue car at the left of the photo. Then I had to cross four feet of slightly sloping driveway with nothing to hold on to.

I could not do it.

Every time I took a step, I would slide downhill. I tried several times, same result. Even when I stood perfectly still I slid downhill. So I gave up and walked -- very, very carefully -- back into the house. If I couldn't walk to the car, there was no way I could drive up the hill.

Such is life in the wild...

* * * * *

1. Be mine :: Valentine
2. Ecstatic :: happy
3. Orderly :: hospital
4. Sebastian :: teddy bear
5. Sore :: back
6. Don’t need :: no stinkin' badges
7. Rockstar :: Cathy-Cate
8. Tinfoil :: hat
9. Addiction :: coffee
10. Where? :: is my head?

The kitteh has taken over. And red.

Sometimes Hannibal *helps* when I want to photograph my knitting in the light box.

 

Sometimes the kitteh is IN.

 

Sometimes the kitteh is OUT.

 

Whenever I see this

outside the window, I see this inside.

Then the kitteh must go OUT again.

But not for long.

* * * * *

In honor of Valentine's Day, I give you these:

 

Yarn: Knit Picks Swish Worsted, redredRED. Red Pepper, actually.
Pattern: Fetching (duh).
Mods: I cast on 35 st instead of 45 and used a smaller needle; apparently both the intended recipient and I have smaller hands than the designer.
Needles: Knit Picks Options, US#5 circ, Magic Loop.

Made for my neighbor, who said she had been looking for fingerless mitts in stores without luck. I told her that was because no one makes them for sale and offered to make her a pair. They are so quick to make -- what an easy way to be a hero and make a friend happy!

Random.

1. Unwanted :: kitten.
2. You’d better :: shop around. (Channeling Smokey Robinson here.)
3. Woman :: man.
4. Weighed :: pound.
5. Upright :: uptight.
6. I feel :: good. (Now I'm channeling James Brown.)
7. Ill :: ness
8. It’s like :: honey to the bee. (...Marvin Gaye.)
9. Poor man :: rich man.
10. Great :: Gatsby.

* * * * *
I finished Maggie's pink Lamb's Pride fingerless mitts but forgot to take a picture. Picture a pair of Fetchings knit from fuzzy Lamb's Pride worsted the color of raspberry sherbet. That's what the photo would be. She seems very pleased with them.

* * * * *

When your cats decide that this bit of exposed Styrofoam insulation makes a dandy scratching post:

 

it leads to kitties who looks like this:

 

"Oh, this white stuff? Shut up."

Warm hands.

I finished Maggie's Christmas present today. If I hadn't had to tink and frog so damned much they would have been done by Christmas. Too many screwups lead to diminished enthusiasm for a project. But they turned out pretty darned good, considering.

 

(I flipped that last photo, taken upside down with my left hand just like the one above it, 180 degrees, but apparently Typepad only caught 90 degrees of the flip.)

Yarn: Chugiak hand dyed sock yarn from Pagewood Farm; color New Horizon.
Needles: Cuff and lower hand, Addi US#1 circ; the rest Addi US#0 circ. Magic loop.
Pattern: Eric's Glovettes from Green Mountain Spinnery.
Mods: Worked over 52 st to account for different gauge.

During the disgustingly cold weather we had last week I started wearing my own worsted weight fingerless gloves over my outdoor leather gloves for extra warmth. They really helped; so much so , in fact, that I have decided to rededicate my blue & black alpaca fingerless gloves -- too itchy to wear over bare skin -- to being worn over gloves.

 

To make up for Maggie's Christmas present being three weeks late, I am making her a quick pair of Fetchings in her favorite color to wear the same way. She has to walk about half a mile to and from the bus every morning and afternoon; wearing these over her gloves will help keep her dainty paws warm.

 

This Lamb's Pride that has been marinating in the stash for a couple years is surprisingly nice stuff -- fuzzy and warm and fairly soft for being wool. It's little too scratchy and too warm for me to wear in a sweater, but nice stuff anyway. If I ever decide to make another afghan, Lamb's Pride may be the yarn of choice.