A thing I found

Yesterday I went to the yardage sale (actually, the More Than Just A Yardage Sale) at the Textile Museum. There was a section with three big bins of "miscellaneous" and you could cram a grocery bag full for $2. Deal!

One of the things I got from that pile was this.

It's cotton-like, woven, quite thin fabric. Maybe there is linen in there? I don't really know how to tell! I'm betting on cotton, though.

And it has a dress pattern printed on it in various sizes! You can see below that some of the white has smudged in the middle of the piece.

I love it, and want to make something like a bag (Oh, Mary, another bag?) that shows the white. But it seems that if you were to make the largest size of this dress, wouldn't you want the white lines to wash away? Now I am scared to wash it, but of course I'll have to bite the bullet and do it sometime!

It's a Women's Emb Dress. Apparently.
With a collar.

It's like a blueprint. And like the big quilt the museum has (which I can't find a picture of... rats). Hey, maybe I could just laboriously trace the white lines with embroidery!

I guess I will try a gentle, cold wash soon.

I'll keep y'all posted! I also got some other great finds and I'll try to show you more of those in the coming days.

My Alabama Chanin amuse-bouche

When I tweeted that I was going to do this, Mason-Dixon Kay replied:

@squaremary It's the @alabamachanin amuse-bouche. So fun!
— Kay Gardiner (@KayGardiner) March 28, 2014

Indeed, my bouche is certainly amused by this!

You get one piece of plain cotton jersey, and one piece with leaves stencilled on.

You can outline the stencil and then cut out the middle.

You get another piece of fabric with the same leaves stencilled on the wrong side, which you can cut out and appliqué to your top piece.

You can rummage around the house and find some beads to sew on in a scatter pattern or in a nice line.

You can even appliqué a leaf and then cut out two layers of fabric.

And outline leaves with beads and little blobs with stem stitch.

Lots of work to do! I can see why a handmade dress from this company costs a small fortune. It's a labour-intensive way to do things, but oh, so fun!

When I finish I will have a nice piece of decorated and embellished fabric. Will it get put on the wall, sewn onto something else, made into a Scrabble tile bag? Only time will tell!

Totally random lightning blog today

I just learned that I was the 26810th person to join Ravelry. Woo hoo!

Spring has finally sprung in earnest. The garden is out of control. I gave away several ferns and chunks of hosta, but it is still over-crowded. Oh, well!

I made a chocolate cake the other day, following a recipe I have used a million times. I used gluten-free flour, which I have done successfully several times, but this time I have lumps of flour throughout the cake, making it virtually uneatable. I even got ice cream to disguise it, but the kids ate the ice cream without the cake. Rotters.

I am making a sample Alabama Chanin thingmabob. I would love to show you a picture, but the whole "find the camera, upload the pictures, where is the cable" thing is holding me back. Sometime soon, though.

I also have two partial baby mats machine-sewn together. I can see how the sewing machine makes life easier, but I am still too rough and ready with it. Straight lines only. Cut things to fit on the fly. Don't mix fabrics.

However, I am also collecting a whole variety of fabrics, some in teeny pieces. My friend used to sew professionally for the theatre, and then she made luxurious cushions, so she saved every scrap to embellish them. Now she is de-cluttering, and I am finding myself with enough material to make about a thousand Scrabble tile bags. (Must find a new thing to make, as well.)

Oh, the camera, I must go find the camera!

Rowan and Martin's knit-in

Rowan has a new yarn called Pure Wool Worsted. It comes in a zillion colours and they are showing it off by having a mystery knitalong, where you get a pattern for a square each week, knit a bunch in many colours and end up with a blanket at the end. The whole thing is designed by Martin Storey, hence the cute name. (Though perhaps the youngsters don't get it...)

Of course, I am not following the rules, but am knitting the squares in Rowan Denim. Sort of.

The first pattern was easy to just knit and knit, and I stopped when I finished a ball of yarn. I also messed with the pattern a bit and added half-triangles at the side because at first I thought that looked better. Now I think the zing of those "empty" sides might have been a good idea after all, but alas, too late now. (I think you can see the squares "as they should be" at that link above.)

Then I had a few days to kill before the second clue was released, so I just looked in my book of squares, attached a new ball of yarn and knit something.

Clue #2 was a star that I somehow didn't take a picture of. I will likely do one on another strip of this blanket, but it was not super fast and one had to think and look to make sure the star came out star-shaped.

Monday was a bank holiday in England, so Rowan released the third clue today. I had a few days with "nothing" to knit, so I started just doing double moss stitch in ecru. That got boring so I made this square in a square.

The lacy triangles are from today's new clue. I'll finish this strip, 3 balls of Denim long, and then start another one using the same patterns until pattern 4 is released next week. If all goes according to plan, by the end of eight weeks, I'll have a blanket.

This has sort of become my one and only project now, but I did knit a hat and a half standing in film festival lines.

The little ring of ribbing on the right has become larger. I used that brown for the ribbing and made the crown green. I also knit part of a sock for Arthur and a teeny bit of a sock for Elaine. It will all get finished sometime...

Ten days, eleven movies

Last year I paid attention to the Hot Docs film festival for the first time. This year I did quite a bit of pre-festival volunteering, which got me seven or eight vouchers for films, and I worked five shifts during the festival, earning more vouchers. Volunteers got to rush the opening night screening for free, and I gave Stephen some tickets, so it worked out that I saw 11 films.

I made lists as soon as I got the screening schedule, picked volunteer shifts based on where I wanted to be when, changed this and that, found that seeing too many movies starting at 9:30 pm was not a good idea, cancelled shifts, saw movies I didn't expect to... I have a better plan for next year already!

There were two movies I really wanted to see that I missed. One is 112 Weddings, which I stopped worrying about when I learned it would be coming to our local cinema in May; the other is Advanced Style, which went rush almost immediately. I was going to try to see it on Saturday but that didn't work, and I have since learned that they turned away 100 people from the rush line. I can just hope it shows up somewhere!

Here's a quick look at the ones I did see.

(And I now realize I should have been writing this as I went ...)

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz: This was the opening film of the fest. Aaron Swartz was a young programmer and internet activist who irked the powers that be. It's a horrible story of how a good person in the wrong place at the wrong time can be "made an example of," and how an individual can get forgotten in the mess of legal showing-off. Really good, but very sad.

Sacro GRA: This film looks at the people who live around the GRA, the ring road around Rome. I kept wanting a map, but that was not the point. The road wasn't really that important. Even Rome wasn't really that important! It was just a few stories of quirky people doing their quirky things.

The Basement Satellite: Another tale of a guy with an idea. Our hero is an artist, not a technical whiz kid, but he wants to build a satellite and get it launched. Individuals usually don't do this!

We see him filling out reams of paperwork and trying to raise money for insurance and fees; finding a machinist who can make his parts quickly and precisely; soldering things together carefully on a strict deadline. He sold T-shirts, which took a lot of time and brought in little money, though it was his main fundraising idea. Really interesting, if a bit slow.

I Love Kuduro: Kuduro is modern dance music from Angola. This film was full of great characters and stories of people who'd lived through civil war, but there were just snippets of the music and dance scene. Not as great as I'd wanted it to be!

Alfred and Jakobine: Ah, an adventure and a love story, with an ancient London taxi!

Really fascinating -- Alfred and Jakobine were "shutterbugs" even back in the day, so the filmmaker had their Super-8 movies and photos from the fifties, when they drove their taxi around Africa and Asia. Lovely story and beautiful film.

Meet the Patels: This was my favourite! The characters were charming and real and funny. The use of animation here and there was brilliant. The story was gripping. (Will Ravi find true love??) I think this will win the audience award, but it's not been announced just yet.

Super Duper Alice Cooper: I was lucky to get tickets to this showing, with the directors and Alice Cooper in attendance. (Often the directors are at the screenings and answer questions afterwards, but on this occasion they actually got to sit in chairs and be interviewed in a more formal manner.) I remember singing School's Out in 1973, but then Alice Cooper faded from my consciousness a bit. This movie talked about his beginnings, his stardom, his excesses. Highly recommended.

(Funniest non-movie moment of the festival: We were waiting for the movie to start, people were coming in to the cinema, and Barack Obama walked in, wearing a suit and tie, waving to the crowd! We gawped, until I remembered that a movie called Bronx Obama, about a lookalike, was also showing at the fest! Photo to prove it.)

Everything Will Be: A beautifully made movie about Vancouver's Chinatown. These few blocks have been home to Chinese Canadians for more than a hundred years. Now, things are changing, with old buildings being knocked down, new businesses coming in, condos whose residents don't want to shop at little green grocers, and the mah-jongg societies still holding on!

ThuleTuvalu: Thule is in northern Greenland; Tuvalu is in the Pacific Ocean. The film follows a few families in each place as they see first-hand how in one place the ice is melting and the hunting season is changing, and in the other, the lagoons are becoming salty, the beach is eroding, the little reef that makes up the country is in danger of being flooded.

Shield and Spear: Very interesting look at artists in South Africa today.

One of the main stories was about this painting called the Spear, by Brett Murray, and how strongly the governing party objected to it. Also featured were photographers, musicians, designers, black and white, who are trying to move forward, to live in a country with real freedom of expression.

An Honest Liar: The Amazing Randi is a magician and escape artist, a professional deceiver of audiences. He objects to people who pretend to be "inspired" or channelling supernatural forces when they are using the tricks of the magician. He and Uri Geller have a long history! Really good movie, delightful story, fascinating interviews.

You can see trailers for gazillions of the festival movies here.

Of course I knit waiting in line. That's up next!

Weekend accomplishments

Oh me, oh my.
I bought a sewing machine.

All in all, I had a pretty good weekend:

1. Shop for a sewing machine! DONE, and I didn't even have to bring it home on the train. They are shipping it to me tomorrow. So I just have to finish up everything here before then... It's a Pfaff. I'll show you when it comes!
2. Read a Jasper Fforde novel. NOT YET DONE. I started, and will finish, but the bouncy train is no good for reading and the chatty family is not, either!
3. Knit. IN PROCESS. I finished clue #1 of the knitalong, just knitting and knitting till I finished a ball of Denim, and then attached a new ball, found a new pattern and carried on. I am always surprised by the Rav chit-chat about this. People are crazy for getting gauge, worrying about half an inch on one of 48 or 64 or whatever squares, and talking about sewing it together when it's a mystery knitalong and we don't know what the designer has in mind. (I am not worried about it, because I know I won't do what the designer says, anyways!)
4. Knit something else. IN PROCESS. Still no verdict on the teeny sock needles. I found it easier to knit the denim, so I have just a few inches, mostly ribbing, but nothing very exciting yet. 
5. Hang out, go shopping, have dinner, play pool, talk about renovation, talk about aches and pains... DONE.

I'll get pictures of all this stuff tomorrow when the friendly UPS guy brings my machine. Pretty exciting!

I won't even have much time to fuss about with it for a little while, since it is Hot Docs time again. I am working 6 volunteer shifts and have a bazillion movies to see. (Those are the ones I already have tickets for. There are plenty more that I am excited about as well!) Fun times ahead.

Away for the weekend

It's Easter, and we are riding the rails down to London to spend a couple of days with my brother and his family. I hope to accomplish several things:

1. Shop for a sewing machine! If I buy one, I'll have to bring it back on the train, but it seems the best idea, because I can shop with my SIL who knows something about sewing machines. The Sew Show is here next weekend, and a girl could get a "deal," but it is not convenient for me to get to and I have other plans for next weekend anyways. 
2. Read a Jasper Fforde novel. I have read the first in this series and I *think* I have read the second. Yeah, pretty sure... So, this is the third, and one I have on my bookshelf.
3. Knit. Now, there's a thing... I have started the Rowan Pure Wool Worsted Knitalong, but of course I did not go out and buy 17 different colours of wool, delightful though that would have been. I am making my squares in Denim. One square pattern has been released, so I will just putter along with that. Not even sure I will make squares, or just keep going and make a strip. Only time will tell. 
4. Knit something else. I bought a 9-inch circular needle, and will attempt to knit a sock, holding teeny tiny needle ends delicately in my fingertips. I like this idea a lot in theory, and I did try the needle out in the shop, but I am somewhat nervous and think I might find it awkward after a bit. No trouble with losing a sock needle on the train, and no opportunity to poke oneself in the face while squinting up close at dropped stitches, so I think it will all be good. Right? 

I have no pictures. Not even pictures of flowers poking into view, although I have seen a crocus and heard rumours of daffodils. Perhaps next week!

What to do, oh, what to do?

I wonder if I have a list somewhere of all the WIPs around the house. Surely I have had this crisis recently.

Ah, yes, from before the Olympics:

1. second mitten (now I don't need it till October)
2. Malabrigo scarf (makes me sneeze, but very pretty)
3. Botticelli (sew the dang thing together!)
4. Sunday Best (or start a whole new denim gansey)
5. that beautiful golden shawl you might not have seen but I have knitted about an inch on it (yeah, whatever)

We can add a few more:

1. Arthur's second green sock
2. a baby blanket (I've knit about 8 inches on a strip)
3. a hat

And then there are the things I see on Ravelry and want to join in on:

1. the Rowan mystery blanket KAL, which might end up being the same thing as the baby blanket
2. A 1940s KAL, which might result in a hat and socks for the baby, forget the blanket. This is my book, from 1941. It seems like every dang hat has ribbon rosettes to tie the hat on. If I am doing a 40s KAL, is it cheating to change the pattern and knit a little button band under the chin? 

Oh, I don't know!

That's that job done

Long, long ago, I knit my eldest sister a present for her 50th birthday. I believe that would be 1992. Since then I've knit 50th birthday presents for another sister, a brother, 3 sisters-in-law. At last, this past week, my youngest sister turned 50, and she got a pair of fingerless mitts. Now, until Arthur turns 50, I figure my job is done!

These Pomona Mitts are from the Unofficial Harry Potter magazine from Interweave and named for Professor Sprout. They are cute; the picot edge is tedious but interesting once it's knit and the short rows are a good way to shape the garter stitch mitt.

But the pattern in the magazine is set out very oddly and edited ... not the way I would have done it. I rewrote it all out so I could keep track of rows, and changed the wording. No one needs the instruction "knit to 6 stitches before the marker" when something like "knit 8" will do, surely!

Anyways, annoying but ultimately good.

My stoopid elbow is upset at all this knitting, though! I want to make a baby blanket for this summer! I want to knit Stephen a new hat for next winter! I want to knit myself a cardigan of black denim!! Not to mention socks, hats, half-knit things all over the house. But my arm is really not up to it.

I think I'm just going to have to take up more reading...

Oh, look, I just found an article that says how good crafting is for your mental health... Maybe I should just get that sewing machine.

Stephen went to New Hampshire

This was apparently on a church fence in Hanover, New Hampshire. He didn't inspect as thoroughly as I would have, but we suspect it is individual strips of garter stitch. Nice, eh?

The cloche is finished

This was the original Ravellenics project, which got a bit neglected during the Games, due to the WIP wrestling that was going on. But now, voilà, finie.

The pattern says to knit the brim 21.5 inches long, but of course, it stretches!

So I made mine 18.5 or so, and it fits around the hat and around my head and all is good. Also, I was running out of yarn! I have about 10 or 12 feet left, so plenty to have knit another inch or two on the brim, but this makes a nice snug fit.

I don't know if I will rush to make this again. I think another time, I might knit the bobbly hat, with a nice rib along the bottom and not bother with the very chic and slightly fiddly brim. This does look nice, though, I think...

Okay, maybe it was all worth it.

I gotta medal

I finished my socks and my shawl, and I get this little .jpeg file for my troubles.

And, moving on, I have a baby blanket to knit before July. (Yeah, don't mention those other things I once said I'd knit. Oh, like that hat... yeah, 21 inches of a garter stitch band... I'll get to it.)

Last of the Olympic knitting

The project that I'd specially chosen for my Olympic/Ravellenic knitting was this hat, the Popcorn Cloche.

Eleven bobbles around the hat, every four rows.

DNF, did not finish.

I'll keep working at it -- as I keep saying, it's only a hat! But I will not say I'll be finished by the end of the week or anything drastic like that, because we know how that sort of thing turns out.

I've already joined a group on Ravelry to knit during the Commonwealth Games in July!

Let's take a moment to check on that list of WIPs I made back in January.

1. second mitten  (no progress)
2. green sock (one could count the second sock in here, I suppose)  (done, and I'm thinking of the second)
3. Elaine's socks (and she for sure gets two) (done like dinner)
4. the cotton shawl with the miserable edging (sigh) (super done)
5. Malabrigo scarf  (no progress)
6. Botticelli  (no progress)
7. Sunday Best  (no progress)
8. that beautiful golden shawl you might not have seen but I have knitted about an inch on it (no progress)

So, the new list looks like this:

second mitten

Malabrigo scarf

Botticelli

Sunday Best

that beautiful golden shawl you might not have seen but I have knitted about an inch on it

Don't you love how you can copy and paste and have numbers change to bullets? How did this happen? Oh well. 

I will knit my Olympic hat, and then I will pick another of these WIPs. Oh, perhaps I should think of that second sock which seems to have fallen off the list. Oops. And I have a birthday gift to make and a baby gift to make. And so on and so on! 

The medals are coming thick and fast now

Canadian women won gold today in curling and hockey, and I finished another WIP!

The out-of-control fringe has been tamed, or at least, finished.

Started before our March holiday in Rome last year, so almost a year on the needles.

The orange marker on the right is where I was before the Olympics. I once again proved my theory that if you work at something it gets done, and if you don't, it doesn't. Astonishing every time. 

An Olympic moment

I finished Elaine's socks.
These were begun in December, in a fit of enthusiasm.

And just by chance (and a tiny bit of looking at the calendar) they were finished in time for her birthday.

Now to figure out all that "finish line" stuff on Ravelry to get my medal. And still two events left to complete. I am less sanguine about this now, but am pretty sure I can get one done! Go Team Canada!

Swapping and snowing and sewing

This January, I did another dishcloth swap. I haven't done one for a while, but thought I'd try it again. I knit a very loud cloth for my swappee, but didn't take a picture! Dummy. And she did not post one, either, so I have no record of my jazzy cloth. Oh well.

I got this little sweater-shaped cloth and a couple of teabags. So cute! So white. I was a bit distressed when it got coffee on it the other day, but figure it is meant to be used and will look grimy soon even if I never spill coffee on it.

It snowed all day today. Allllll dayyyyy. I shovelled twice and Stephen once. The mound of snow in the front yard is enormous.

Here you can see the snow is about 8 or 10 inches deep. Those are nice big plant pots out on the back deck. Usually we get a bit of snow and then a bit of rain or slush or melty days. Now, no thaw in sight.

In other crafty news, I am keen to sew a pair of fingerless mitts from old T-shirt fabric. Like these. Of course, I was able to dig up some old shirts, and all I needed was some good thread. I went off to Michaels, which is miles away and should be kind of special, but although I found my thread, I was disappointed with the whole store. Not the right kind of baking cups, not the right kind of beads, the stencils were expensive... And then! I got home and found that 2 of my spools of thread had leapt out of my bag at some point in the journey! I guess I took my mittens out of the bag and flung the thread away. Darn. I'll try again.

I am also gearing up for the Olympics. The goal with my knitting was to accomplish something but not wreck my arm. Now the goal is to finish a sock, a shawl and a hat. Ridiculous. I still want to not hurt my arm, though, so might have to downsize my ambitions a tad. But heck, I have 2 weeks and more!

Training for the Olympics

Anyone knitting for the Olympics? Although I tend to knit during the Olympics, and especially the winter ones, I've never actually signed up for anything official on Ravelry, but this year I am a member of Team Canada, I've got my project tagged with all sorts of official things and I'm ready to go.

I will be moderate in my knitting. The challenge for me will be to not get carried away! No hurting of the elbow or wrist! No knitting into numbness.

I am making the Popcorn Cloche, a hat which I should certainly be able to finish in 2 weeks without injury.

This old pattern is knit flat, but I will knit it in the round. And I kinda doubt I will finish it with a ribbon around the brim. I got some green Rowan 4 ply wool just before Christmas and I'll use that doubled. I did a very quick and dirty swatch today and that seems like it's going to work.

I'm also entering the WIP event -- I think they should have called it WIP Wrangling, but I believe it is WIP Dancing. And the work in progress that I shall be tackling? My Colonnade shawl... It makes me heave a great sigh just thinking about it, but perhaps the thrill of the Olympic competition and all the chit chat on Ravelry will make me persevere. In moderation, of course.

All this starts next Friday, February 7. Until then I will plug away at Elaine's second sock. It would be great to get that out of the way before the games begin.

Blanket show-off

My denim quilt/blanket is finished. I realised when I was putting the final touches on it that I should have "signed" a piece and sewed it in, but I didn't. I do have little tags I sometimes sew into knitted garments, but they seem so little. So, it is an unsigned piece as yet.

The whole thing. I think of this as "upside down" but it really doesn't matter

You can see where I unfolded the cuff of a pair of capris

Here I need to tell a story: I wanted to put this pocket from that same pair of capris in, but I also wanted the piece to be long(ish) so I cut (thoughtlessly!) from quite far down the leg, and by the time I'd got to the pocket, my straight line had led me perilously close to the edge of the pocket. If I'd started higher up, I could have got more fabric outside the pocket. There was also a rivet in the corner of the pocket, and I didn't want to wreck my friend's machine by getting that under the foot. Anyways, a moment of despair followed. Finally, I just cut the edge and rivet off and sewed right through that dang pocket, fancy embroidered stuff and all.

A nice square corner, with the other pocket 

The whole pocket with rivet

That khaki piece on the edge is one of the major causes of wonkiness and unsquareness

Green geometric bit! Love it

Things look straight in the narrow view, but in fact they are not

I'm very happy with it, and various people have sat with it over their laps in recent days, so we can call it an all-round success, I think. Funny story: I went to our local stationer's/art supply store to get a skein of embroidery cotton for the ties. What do they cost, $2 or so? This shop only had packages. I was offereed 16 skeins for $18 or, for another dollar, 105 skeins. Since 16 is already a lifetime supply, and that was the good stuff, I went against my thrifty nature and passed on the 105, which were identified only with "Made in China."

My sewing is now on hold because I don't have a machine, but I am plotting to get one of those rotary cutters and hit the thrift shops to search out gigantic pairs of faded jeans. I have knit a sock and have planned my project for the Olympics. I'll report in on that this coming week.

New hobby, old idea

Once upon a time, about maybe almost 10 years ago, I found the Gee's Bend quilters. Undoubtedly, via Kay at Mason Dixon Knitting, who translated a quilt into knitting. (This was novel at the time; she's done it a zillion times since then, I think.) My favourites of the quilts were the work-clothes quilts, all faded jeans and overalls, pocket shapes showing where the quilter had laboriously picked them off.

I was smitten with the idea of making one of these, and so I began hoarding old jeans, despite the fact that I don't really sew; and I don't really sew, I think, because I've always had hand-me-down machines that messed with me: funny tension, weird ways of bobbins, just frustration from start to finish.

This Christmas my friend was between houses in Toronto and left her shiny new sewing machine (and her serger, a complete mystery object) with me. I had a teeny frustrating second with it right at the beginning, and abandoned it for a week or ten days till she returned. She decided that a new needle was the answer, and said would I like a regular needle or a denim needle! Oh, indeed, sewing denim, could I really? Would that work??

I unearthed the heap of old jeans and started log-cabinning. My limit, obviously, was the length of a pant-leg, so I ended up making 5 squares and somehow having a gap that was not really square-shaped at all, which I filled with strips, in the bottom left here.

The two rows are not yet sewn together, and I have to figure out some sort of backing. We have 2 pairs of black jeans: really faded and not very faded. At least 2 pairs of blue jeans, probably 3, as well as the teeny bits I cut off a pair of jeans the kids wore when I made 3- or 4-year-old Elaine cut-offs! Brown and khaki and a couple of other bits. I didn't pick the pockets off, so there are 2 in there, fancy lady-jeans pockets with embroidery. The single bit with pink stripes, the gold and blue swirls and the bright green and black and white geometric bits were treasures found at the Textile Museum sale, in the tent where you could fill a bag with scraps for $2. I know some of the jeans have spandex in them, but mostly it's all cotton. I think.

My work space is not ideal, so you get the black and white carpet peeking out under the quilt. The iron is downstairs and the sewing machine is upstairs, plonked on a table where there is not quite enough room. But this whole thing has taken me only a couple of days! I have to sew that big seam and back it and I am done. I will get some embroidery floss, I think, and tie it here and there to hold it together. Then I think it will be a beach blanket? Maybe Arthur will want it on his bed? I thought of making it big enough for our king-size bed, but even I have not hoarded enough jeans for that.

So exciting.

We were talking about me actually getting my own machine, but I'm not sure that, having made this thing I've been thinking about for so long, I would make much else! I would love to be able to make clothes that fit me, but these straight seams and winging it with the cutting might be my limit. Will ponder this. I do have the offer of someone's mom's machine, which maybe I could try, with my new-found confidence and experience.

And I've knit half a dishcloth!

I finished a sock

I finished the dragon-skin Harvest Dew sock.

This looks like a Christmas stocking, all short in the foot. I can assure you, that's a size 13 sock, draped over a rounded chair arm. Really, it's long!

Great detail on the top of the foot. It gives you a bit of fun in that last, long slog to the toe.

The very exciting texture. Because the slipped stitches pull things in a bit, and because Arthur has really big feet, and because I perhaps foolishly used 2.75mm needles instead of the called-for 2.25mm, it really ate up the yarn. Alas, shortly after I turned the heel I weighed the remaining yarn and had just about 50 grams left. Minus most of a foot, now. So the "mate" will be a bit crazy. But, heck, one day, when Arthur starts worrying about matching socks, I might start buying 150 or 200 grams of the same sock yarn.

I also finished and mailed off my sister's scarf:

It's got 2 and a half balls of fuzz in it, so it is quite long. Long enough to fold around a neck, at least.

On to the next task, then!

14 WIPs in 2014?

I saw a New Years blog and was reminded of the cute 21st-century practice of doing 8 things in 2008, 13 in 2013 and now 14 in 2014. We certainly never tried to do 97 things in 1997, I'm telling you.

Do you suppose I have 14 works-in-progress that I could try to finish up in 2014? Let's count, shall we? The links go to previous blog entries about the project... some are quite old!

1. second mitten
2. green sock (one could count the second sock in here, I suppose)
3. Elaine's socks (and she for sure gets two)
4. the cotton shawl with the miserable edging (sigh)
5. Malabrigo scarf
6. Botticelli
7. Sunday Best
8. that beautiful golden shawl you might not have seen but I have knitted about an inch on it

That might actually be all the things actually on needles at the moment. Some are easily doable. Okay, all of them are doable in the next 12 months if I put my mind to it.

Then there are the fantasy knits: I have a sweater's worth of Rowan 4-ply wool. I have many balls of sock yarn, dishcloth cotton, denim, and still more Felted Tweed that now I want to make fingerless mitts with. I belong to a couple of groups on Ravelry that have monthly challenges/knitalongs and would love to join in. I will make no promises about those things, though I have pledged to make a dishrag for a swap in January.

If I finish one or two of those things a month, I'll get them all done by the end of the year. Some will take a week and some could take several months. Perhaps I shall start by putting them all in lovely bags and finding all the bits and patterns and missing balls of yarn.

Or perhaps I should just keep this list handy and soldier on. Yes, probably that would be best. And really, as soon as I find the camera, I'll take pictures.

Here we go with 2014

Happy New Year to you all!

The kids have been off school for more than a week; we've done Christmas and a three-day trip to Montreal. Last night a rollicking party, the highlight of which was finishing a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle we'd found under the tree when we got back from Montreal. The fairies who checked the lights were on and brought our mail in left it for us. No pictures just yet, though.

Today I hope to clean up the house a wee bit and perhaps knit on a sock or something! I resurrected an old project for the train trip, and also have two socks and a mitten I want to finish right this minute. The old project is my Malabrigo scarf thing and is now super old (as are, it seems, most of my WIPs) as I think I last wrote about it in 2011. I'll just, what did I say, "polish it off." Right.

Other super-exciting knitting news: I learned that my sister-in-law was visiting Boston just about the same time I learned about The Unofficial Harry Potter Knits magazine, and I prevailed upon her to pick up a copy for me! So now, of course, I have a dozen other things I want to knit right this minute.

Maybe a New Year's resolution should be, Just cast on everything and it'll all get knitted up in a year or six...

Just give me a moment and I'll get some photos of all this stuff up.