These lists

This is the list left over from January 2014. 

1. second mitten (Can take this off now!)
2. Malabrigo scarf
3. Botticelli
4. Sunday Best
5. that beautiful golden shawl you might not have seen but I have knitted about an inch on it

And this is what I added in January 2015. 

1. Temperature scarf. This is ongoing and won't be finished till Dec 20, 2015.
2. I started Samen over the holidays. (Done!)
3. Those Kaffe Fassett squares. A finite project, one would think, but you know what happens when my attention is diverted.
4. I have one sock done for Elaine and one done for Arthur and they both need to be pairs. (Elaine's done)
5. I have a number of bits of a blanket that have to be dealt with. I was going along just fine, and then some breeze blew me off course. 

So our new and improved list:

1. Malabrigo scarf
2. Botticelli
3. Sunday Best
4. that beautiful golden shawl you might not have seen but I have knitted about an inch on it
5. Temperature scarf. This is ongoing and won't be finished till Dec 20, 2015.
6. Those Kaffe Fassett squares. A finite project, one would think, but you know what happens when my attention is diverted.
7. I have one sock done for Arthur and it needs a mate.
8. I have a number of bits of a blanket that have to be dealt with. I was going along just fine, and then some breeze blew me off course. 
9. And we have to add in a new project: Tailspin. I'm loving it, but I need to carry the instructions around and markers, so it's not knit on constantly. 

Now really, #4 up there is never going to get knit. I have a lovely lot of yarn, and a fancy-schmancy pattern, but no patience for such things. And you know that such a shawl just gets scrunched up around your neck and no one can see the delicate loveliness. I will do something nice with the yarn, but it's hard to say that that shawl is a WIP.

Sunday Best, #3 and the bits involved in #8 are, in my mind, going to be joined up to become a nice blanket, and some other yarn will be used to make me a cotton sweater of some sort. I was making Sunday Best with 3 dyelots of Denim and lost track over the years which was what, I might have used some for other projects, and it's just too hard to recover. I had a baby in mind at one point for a wonderful cabley blankie, but he is almost a year old now and ended up with another blanket! Up in the air. 

So, we will see what I take up now that my mitten is finished. I suspect it will be Arthur's sock, but wait and see!

Another off the list

The lovely golden mittens are done! Really, it doesn't take much time to make a mitten, even one on little needles, with cables, and trying to match the first one. So, a year of waiting and a few days of knitting, and here are my pretty mitts. Unfortunately, it is still too cold for nice, light, wool mitts. (I have a pair of these.)

How cold is it, you ask?

There is one little stripe of "hovering around zero" green in the last week. I think we got up to -3º or so. Mostly the darkest, purplest blue, signifying less than -15º. I never did get a colder colour, but it has been below -20 some nights.

The last two months. They say the cold will last for weeks more; I am sad we didn't book a week in the Caribbean for March break!

A small accomplishment and big passings

First of all, let's look at a pair of socks I finished!

These are the cute little anklets for Elaine, in school uniform burgundy. (They really are darker, but it's a wretched flash picture...) It's not really ankle sock season, though, since it's been -15ºC or so for some days! But it's something off my master list, so that's nice to get them done.

I don't actually have pictures of most of the other knitting I've been doing, but I'll work on that. At least with the cold, it's been pretty sunny.

Last fall I was sort of out of sorts and didn't feel like explaining here, but now I will say my sister-in-law was diagnosed with cancer in May and passed away in October. She died a week before her 56th birthday, way too young, and it all happened so fast. So, that explains why my brother got a whole big sweater for Christmas! And why he and his sons spent Christmas here. And so on...

But, one continues on. Then early this month my sister phoned to say my mom had been taken to emergency, her heart wasn't working very well, they'd taken her back home and she wasn't expected to live through the night.

It's slightly churlish to complain about a 94-year-old dying in their own bed with their family around them, without pain and peacefully, but still, it's a shock and the end of something. Her obituary is here.

My brother, his son and I flew out to BC the next day, with the usual winter weather-related catastrophes: cancelled flights, closed highways, long drives...

Lots of relatives arrived over that weekend and we had a get-together to talk about her, we learned some stories about my dad's attempts at courtship and got caught up with people we don't often visit with. It's curious to me how many of the men in the family are really good at playing pool, for example.

We lived on a pig farm in the Cotswolds in 1965

It was really good to meet up with everyone; I'm sorry we didn't pack up the kids and all go, but I hope we can go to a future gathering.

I am looking forward to a calm and non-stressful few months, now, please.

Just popping in

This morning I looked at the temperatures to knit into my scarf, and I have to use 2 strands of my -15ºC yarn at once. The high yesterday was -19!

Pictures and a bit of catch-up to come.