My Odometer Rolled Over

March turned out to be an extremely exciting month.

Jameson (or rather his T-shirt) told us that he is going to be a big brother later this year.  Grandbaby #2 is coming in October.  Trisha and Craig are going to wait until the birth to find out the sex.  I wouldn't mind a girl, but either way I'm going to love that little one to the moon and back.

The Saturday before my birthday, Ed and the kids threw a surprise birthday party for me.  Ed told me on Thursday evening that he made dinner reservations for the two of us, but couldn't get in any earlier than 8:45.  I didn't think anything of it because Ed tends to wait to the last minute for things and the time sounded reasonable.  I decided I'd go to Mass before dinner so that I could sleep in on Sunday.  I usually try to make the Saturday Mass anyway.  Friday evening, Trisha called to ask if we wanted to meet her and Craig at a local brewery for a beer in between Mass and dinner.  When we showed up at the brewery, we found them in the back room along with Blake, Kristin, Kristin's boyfriend Michael, and several of my friends.  I was totally surprised!!  I did not expect Kristin and Blake to be in town, let alone see my friends at the brewery.  It was a great way to celebrate my 60th birthday that was coming up on Tuesday.

The following Friday Ed and I went to see Mamma Mia!  It was wonderful.  I tried not to sing along too loudly.  I loved it and am still singing some of the songs in my head.

Our back pond has had a few visitors that are new sightings for me.  This snipe spent an evening hunting in the mud.

A couple days later a pair of Mergansers paddled around the pond.

Ed started his fishing season on March 24.  While I had the house to myself, I tried tincture dyeing on my own.  The skeins turned out pretty well.  The dark blue didn't totally exhaust so I tossed in a skein of something I dyed years ago that was just too tropical for my taste.  The resulting yarn is more muted/moody and more to my liking.

After about 3 1/2 years of crocheting, I finally completed the 324 flowers for the Astri blanket I started in the flal of 2020.  These were made out of Knit Picks Pallette that I've had in the stash for over 10 years.  I pulled out a couple shades of green to use for connecting the flowers.  I have the first of 23 rows done.  By my estimates this blanket will be 6 feet wide by 8 feet long.  Not sure if or how I'm going to block it.  Stay tuned.

My knitting enabler friend (one of the ladies in the picture above) told me how she spent the day with some friends and made many loaves of babka.  That reminded me that I've made babka in the past but not in over 10 years.  I decided Ed and I needed a loaf for our Easter breakfast.  This turned out nice, but I should have doubled or maybe tripled the cinnamon filling recipe.

Trisha, Craig, and Jameson came over for Easter dinner.  Before dinner we had a little egg hunt for Jameson in the front yard.  He loved finding the eggs.  Fortunately he didn't realize that it was candy inside the eggs.

I've been slowly progressing on my Wildflower Tee.  I have the body almost done.  I opted to not do the colorwork on the body but I will at the hem.  The next decision is the sleeves.  I think once I get the body done, I'll do the collar and try it on.  Then I'll decide how much of my arms I want exposed.  I'm planning on wearing this to my niece's bridal shower in a few weeks so I have to get it done.  

I have this weekend to myself.  Ed and Blake are going to visit Kristin in North Carolina to have some dental work done. We'll see how much knitting and sewing I get done.

 

Slow Knitting Mojo

 Been in a bit of a funk lately.  From what I've been able to determine, there are several reasons.  (Work is a bit crazy.  Some nagging health issues.  Significant birthday coming very soon.)  None of which I can really control so I'm having to learn to offer it up to God and trust things will work out.

My knitting mojo is a bit lacking. Not sure if it is a result of the aforementioned funk, or contributing to it.  There's been several days lately that I just haven't felt up to knitting, which is very unlike me.  Progress on projects has been slow.

On New Year's Eve I cast on Material Girl. I used La Bien Aimee Merino DK in the Peerie Tokki colorway. The intent was to get this finished in January.  It finally came off the needles on March 2.  Part of the delay was due to my decision to make the body and sleeves longer, resulting in the need to buy another skein of yarn.  I think part of why this ended up being a bit of a slog was that I did helical knitting for the body.  It was just a bit too much yarn management which didn't make this as enjoyable as it could be.

Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  I should have cast on more stitches for the sleeves, but they don't feel tight.  I made the body longer and did some short rows for the back. I also made the sleeves longer.  The sleeves and body grew a bit with blocking, but not too much.  The resulting yarn is soft.  My only complaint about the yarn is that the black dye came off on my hands as I knit and still left the rinse water grey after 5 rinses when I blocked the sweater.  I will have to be careful and not wear this with anything light colored.  Glad to have this done and in the sweater rotation for the rest of the cool weather.

I've had a long-term project going since 2020.  It is the Arne and Carlos Astri Floral Throw.  I've probably talked about this before, but I'll recap.  This throw is a crochet pattern made up of 324 flowers.  18 flowers each of 18 color combinations.  I'm using a stash of Knit Picks Pallette in a variety of colors that I purchased about 10 years ago.  I have 16 sets of flowers done.  Just have to crochet up the remaining 2 sets of 18 and then I can start joining them.  I have some green Pallette in my stash to use for the connecting bits.  It should give the illusion of leaves.  I've been using this project as one of my 'take a break' projects at my desk.

With Material Girl off the needles, I'm now working on the Wildflower Tee by Wise Owl Knits.  I orginally thought I would make my flowers out of reds, pinks, and purples, but decided at the last minute to go with more muted contrast colors.  It'll be a soft, Spring sweater that I will hopefully have done by Easter.

The first set of flowers remind me of pansies with the yellow petals and purple centers.  Last night I knit the second set of flowers but didn't snap a picture of them yet.  They look like pink tulips.

When we moved I became painfully aware of how much of a yarn horder I have been.  I have many, many single skeins of variegated fingering weight yarn.  I've asked my enabler to not let me buy any more random skeins when we go to yarn shops or events together.  I've often wondered what am I going to do with all the skeins.  I'm not a big sock knitter, so using them up that way is not going to happen.  I'm also not a big fan of fading.  I tried that on a sweater and don't love the result.  Several weeks ago Stephen West reposted on Instagram a picture of someone's version of one of his designs, the Hvammsvik Blanket.  I thought it looked wonderful and realized it is the answer to my stash issue.  The person used two different fingering weight yarns held together for each parallelogram.  A total of 23 different yarns.

I went down to the basement and pulled out the bin of fingering weight and grabbed a pile skeins.  Here is what I came up with.

This is not going to be a quick project, and really won't use up all of this yarn, but at least I'll make a dent in the stash.  The pattern says that each parallelogram uses about 15 yards of each yarn.  My thought is that once I get through this I'll use the remainder for some other scrappy blanket.  I just need to keep this on the sidelines until I finish Astri.

There is another long-standing WIP that I want to finish.  It is my Yume sweater that I started last July.  I haven't kept good notes on this so I don't have a lot to say about it.  I grab it when I want some mindless stockinette to do.  Once I get the body done I'll have to decide if I want this to be long or short sleeves.  I'm sure the weather will play a factor in that decision.

Bits and Pieces

It is hard to believe, but we are midway through February already.  Time certainly does fly.

I made a second pair of double slippers.  This time in a smaller size so that they would fit Trisha.

The original pair were gifted to Blake this past weekend.  He seemed to like them.  I gave him careful washing instructions so that they don't shrink too much.

Ed and I took a cruise in January.  We were visiting islands that we had been to before, so we didn't plan any excursions.  I took along some knitting and a book.  The Sophie Scarf is the perfect travel knit.  Easy pattern to remember and portable.

On our cruise we just took walks whenever we were in port.  The weather was fantastic.

After we got home I pulled a long hibernating project up from the basement.  This is Waverly by Berroco.  I wasn't sure why this got abandoned, but then I realized it was because my gauge between the colorwork and plain knitting was quite different.

My atttitude toward knitting has changed over the past few years.  I'm learning that if the fit isn't right, I'm not going to wear a sweater.  So I learned it is better to take the time to make something right than just get it done.  I ripped back to the colorwork and am now reknitting the plain stockinette with a smaller needle.  This sweater won't be done to wear this winter, but I should enjoy it next year.

One of my local yarn shops had a class on tincture dyeing. My friend, Cindy, and I took the class.  I cam home with these 2 beautiful skeins of BFL fingering weight yarn.  Not sure what I'm going to make with them, but I'm thinking about a pair of mittens.

Winter hasn't fully given up it's grip.  The days have been mostly grey, but yesterday was sunny and warm.  Squeaks spent the afternoon trying to find the perfect position for taking a nap in the sun.

A winter storm is predicted to graze our area tonight.  Some predictions are calling for 3-6 inches of snow.  Not sure how much we will really get, but I don't mind a little snow.  We missed the one snowfall the area had while we were on our cruise.

 

Happy 2024!!

 Wow!  Where did the past 2+ months go?  Life has been busy.

Ed has been slowly recovering from his surgery.  His range of motion is about as good as it's going to get.  He can reach overhead and forward without the zingers he was experiencing pre-surgery if he moves slowly.  He isn't comfortable driving on the highway yet because he's not sure a quick motion with his arm will be comfortable. I'm still his chauffer for any trip involving highway driving.  His next follow-up with the surgeon is at the end of January.  I'll probably tell him that he'll have to do that one alone because I have my own doctor appointments to deal with.  He's a big boy; I'm sure he'll manage.

Sometime at the end of the summer while out taking a walk, I starting having pain in my right heel.  I've had chronic issues with plantar faciitis and bone spurs in both feet so I just started my usual self-treatment.  For our anniversay, Ed gave me a pair of slippers that have arch supports in them which have helped.  But the pain never completely went away. In September I decided to give it more time since Ed had his surgery scheduled.  Couldn't have both of us out of commision. Unfortunately, in November I noticed the back of my heel had a big bump on it and the pain was starting to migrate up my achilles tendon.  I finally made an appointment with my doctor and she said it was an issue with the tendon insertion into the heel. She prescribed prednisone and referred me to a specialist.  I have an appointment with a foot and ankle doctor scheduled for next week.  We'll see what he has to say.  Stay tuned.

The holidays were very, very busy.  We had 2 Thanksgiving celebrations, a couple gatherings with neighbors, and Christmas spread out over 3 days.  And, of course, my work which has been very slow for most of 2023 got very busy in December.

My son-in-law's sister got married on November 11.  Our whole family was invited and I kept my grandson over the weekend so that Trisha and Craig could enjoy all of the wedding activities.  Blake, Kristin, and Kristin's boyfriend Michael came into town for the wedding.  It was a very full house.

Blake and Jameson took a little pre-wedding nap to rest up for the big evening.

Jameson was one of the ringbearers.  He looked so handsome in his suit.

Speaking of handsome, I'd say Ed and I weren't too shabby.

On Sunday, we had Ed's entire family minus 3 nieces over for an early Thanksgiving celebration.  I would not have survived if it wasn't for Michael's assistance.  He helped cook the meal.  And he cleaned as he cooked!!  It made the day much less stressful.  Sure hoping Kristin and he are in it for the long haul.  I think they are, but we'll see what 2024 brings.

Trisha and Craig joined us after the final wedding activity was over.  Jameson was so glad to be back with mom and dad.

Since we has this pre-Thanksgiving dinner, our actual Thanksgiving was quite small.  It was just Ed, Blake, my brother Joe, and me.  It was low-key, which I actually appreciated quite a bit.  I did pull out the fine china and my mom's crystal to make the dinner special.  Here are the handsome men I spent the day with.

I finished the Audrey sweater in time for Thanksgiving.  I'm very, very happy with how it turned out.  There'll be another one someday.

I made a few modifications.  I knit size 4 in Berroco Vintage.  I didn't want the neck opening so large so I cast on 4 fewer stitches and did an extra repeat of the yoke ribbing.  The body is an inch or so longer than called for in the pattern.  I also made this long sleeves.  It ended up being bracelet length, which perfect.  This has become one of my favorite sweaters to wear.

I made a batch of autumn leaves a la Blue Sky.  I meant to string them together for a garland or add to a wreath, but I never got around to it.  Instead, Jameson had fun throwing them around the house.  A little practice for when he can play in a real leaf pile.

In November I made a stocking for myself because I had never had one of my own as an adult.  I made Dompap by Arne and Carlos.  I loved how it turned out!  Since Arne and Carlos were having a stocking KAL during Advent, I decided to make Ed a stocking that would go with mine even though he already has a stocking.  I'm happy with the colorwork on his, but I'm not thrilled with the heel.  The heel on mine was an afterthought heel, whereas his was knit as the stocking grew.  I might rip out his heel and redo as an afterthought to see if I can get them to look more alike.  NOTE: the picture below is not a good representation of the heals.

A year or two ago I bought a snowman kit from Barrett Wool Co.  The kit made two snowmen, one with red accessories and one with grey.  Below is the first one.  The second one got shipped off to a dear friend.  After making the second, I redid the nose on this guy to make it look more carrot-like and less duckbill. This picture is pre-nosejob surgery.  I might make a few more of these to give as gifts next year.

The only family recipient of a knitted gift this year was Jameson.  I made him Debbie Bliss's Baseball Jacket.  I loved how this knit up.  He should be able to wear it through next winter.

For the snaps, I first sewed ribbon inside the button bands.  I then attached plastic snaps.  To be honest, I wasn't entirely happy with the plastic snaps.  Several of them wouldn't stay, probably because the fabric was so thick.  Next time I'll see about using metal snaps.

With Christmas falling on a Monday, Advent was the shortest it can be.  Even with it being short, I got my decorating done.  Baking is what fell short, but that's okay because I ate too many cookies with what I did make.  Even the failed snickerdoodles.  I learned you have to read recipes at least twice to make sure you are adding the right amount of ingredients.  Snickerdoodles that are missing a cup of flour spread like crazy and are very thin and crispy.

Decorating this year was a bit of a challenge given that this was the first year in this house.  I knew I wanted a wreath above the fireplace, but figuring out how to hang it without drilling in to the mortar around the stone was an issue.  I bought several clips from Amazon that were supposed to work, but they were really designed for brick which have a flush surface.  The stone was too irregular and the clips wouldn't hold.  While playing around with one, I was able to get it to stay between 2 stones by pushing it in sideways.  I hung my wreath and crossed my fingers that it would hold.  It's been almost 3 weeks and no disasters, so I think that is the permanent solution.  Now to buy other wreathes to use during different holiday seasons.

Jameson did a little decorating of his own.  He decided the 3 Wise Men needed a VW Bug to drive to the Nativity.  As one of my sisters pointed out, it did have a hump like the camels.

Having children with significant others means Christmas plans need to be fluid.  We had a family Christmas dinner on December 23 and opened gifts.  Trisha and Kristin spent Christmas Eve with their guy's families.  Blake, Ed, and I went to church and then had a lovely salmon dinner cooked by Blake.  Christmas morning I made a couple breakfast casseroles.  All of the kids were here for brunch before we all headed to Cincinnati for the celebration with my side of the family.

In my usual over-commit fashion, I had hoped to get a Christmas sweater finished by Christmas Day to wear to dinner with my siblings.  I was a sleeve short and finished it up on December 27.  This is Benedicta by Knitty McPurly using Cascade 220 I had in my basement stash.  As it turned out, Christmas Day was quite warm and I wouldn't have been able to wear this without overheating.

 As I knit this I was worried that it was going to be too small.  Trisha kindly volunteered to take it if it was.  After blocking it, I tried it one and found it to be acceptable given my current physique.  It fits with almost 0 ease.  My plan/hope is to be down a few pounds this year so that by next Christmas it will look great on.

Blake and Kristin stayed in town until December 30.  Ed and I met Trisha, Craig, and Jameson for an early dinner on New Year's Eve and then spent a quiet evening in front of the fireplace.  I was knitting and Ed was binge watching his latest batch of shows.

In all it was a very nice holiday season.  I usually get very blue. I'm have a bit of Clark Griswold in my in that reality doesn't live up to the expectations in my brain.  This year wasn't that way, though.  I got to have my family dinner, even though it wasn't on Christmas Day.  I got to see most of my siblings.  One sister wasn't able to make it for personal reasons.  Not sure if it was how the schedules all worked out or if I have developed a better frame of mind.  Or both.  I'm just very grateful for how things played out.

The decorations are still up.  I like keeping them up until the Epiphany, which is Sunday.  We have neighbors coming over Saturday evening, so it'll be nice to have them see how I decorated the house.  I'll work on taking everything down next week.

One of my goals for 2024 is to finish some long-hibernating WIPs and knit from my stash.

Back in 2022, I bought bulky yarn to make slippers for Kristin and Trisha.  The yarn is Sadnes Garn Fritids Garn in colorway 1055.  The Sadnes Garn Double Slippers pattern came free with the yarn. With the house move, new grandbaby, and other life events, I didn't get even one pair finished.  After finishing the Benedicta, I pulled out the slippers and finished the first pair.  The instructions call for felting the slippers. Even though I knit the size which should have worked for my girls, the slippers didn't felt much, even after 2 trips through the washer.  I decided this pair will now go to my son Blake and I'll make another pair in a smaller size for Trisha.  Kristin might not get a pair since she now lives in a warmer climate and she bought herself some Bombas slippers.

Three projects are in my active WIP queue.  The slippers mentioned above for Trisha, a Material Girl top for me, and a Sophie Scarf for a TBD recipient.  Ed and I have a trip coming up.  I need to decide what will be my vacation project.  More on these next time.

This post has gone on long enough.  I'll sign off now and wish everyone a wonderful 2024.  Hoping you have many blessings and that 2024 brings more peace, justice, love, compassion, and hope.

May the light of His love shine on us all.