A Bitter Knitter

Well, another winter gifting season has come and gone, which means I have hand-knits to show you.  I'm trying something new this year with the blog, as I was such a terrible blogger last year, only typing up four very photo-full entries.  I'm going to aim to (maybe... we'll see how far I actually get) post at least twice a week on Wednesdays and Fridays for WIP (Work in Progress) Wednesdays and FO (Finished Object) Fridays. Today, though, lots of photos again because of all the stealth projects I gifted. First, a pair of gifts for Redhead Sister's baby, due sometime this month, Team Yellow (they decided not to find out whether the baby is a boy or a girl): Pompom Hat : (I love how these look on itsy bitsy people) Knit in a soft green colour (actually in the green left over from the frog hat I knit for Elder Sister's son). Little Red Sweater : This one actually shares yarn with Jo's Little Red Riding Hood cape I also knit another GA...

Well, maybe not for everyone , but I have been spreading the hand-knit love... and now that all those stealth projects have been gifted, I can share them. Last blog post (four and a half months ago!), I complained that I had too many WIP s (14) and vowed to finish a whole bunch of them before starting another, aiming to have no more than six WIPs at a time.  Let's see how that went, shall we? Mid-May, I had two pair of socks on the needles.  I finished one pair: and then cast on for another.  Having a pair of "vanilla" socks in progress at all times is a must... they are the best "on-the-go" knitting.  I may not have as much time with my hands free while I'm waiting around that I used to before I had a baby, but I still need my plain socks.  Since I did not finish the other pair of socks, I still have two pair in progress. I also had two pair of mitts in progress.  I finished these: but did not finish the other pair.  They are made from uns...

At the end of the year, it seems that there is always a race to finish those WIPs...  Christmas deadlines and New Year's resolutions and other goals always seem to create a knitting rush.  There were some WIPs that I wanted to finish before Christmas and year's end and some that I had planned on finishing sometime in the next year. This WIP was one that I thought was going to wait until January... But ended up being a December surprise! My baby girl, whose moniker for this blog shall be "Jo," was born December 21st.  I had gone into the hospital for a non-stress test to monitor my blood pressure on the 20th and it was discovered that I had severe pre-eclampsia, so they decided to induce me early (37 weeks) for both our safety.  Jo weighed 5 lbs 5 oz at birth and is 19 inches long.  As you can see, she's got a head full of dark hair (except for a blonde patch in the back).  She's also got long fingers like her mommy. I'm loving being a mom. ...

I've been keeping secrets... Secrets about a "stealth project" and I've been keeping them for months now... That's the reason that I've gotten nothing done and haven't written any posts... I might've spilled the beans... But now it's bean-spilling time.  Oh, it's still a work-in-progress, but I've reached the point where I'm willing for it to not be so stealthy anymore... This WIP is about two-thirds done and should be finished in January: (The photo is a few weeks old; it's time for a new one.  My bump has gotten much bigger since!)  Oh, and for those of you who will ask, it's a GIRL! As such, I have reexamined my knitting goals ...  (I was off knitting for a few months when everything  made me nauseous and caused motion sickness, including watching TV, being on the computer, or knitting.  I read a lot...)  I set a goal in January to complete at least 24 knit projects.  I have thus far completed fou...

I last blogged two months ago, and in that two months I have accomplished a big whoppin' NOTHIN'.  I have no new finished projects to show, much less any photo-worthy progress on any other works in progress. Instead I have started and frogged multiple things repeatedly.  In this process I have learned: That reading the directions is important.  All the directions.  While this sounds really obvious, it's amazing how many times I keep learning this lesson.  Guess it's not sticking... Before casting on some ridiculous 600+ stitches using Judy's Magic Cast-on, it is useful to read the direction that says to switch the positions of the tail and working yarn.  Uh-huh.  Because otherwise your working yarn is on the wrong side to start the project, and then you have to pull it all out and do it again. I actually ended up saying "forget it" to that cast on and doing a different provisional cast on, only to discover that the pattern and I don't g...

It's looking sweaterish!  After 18 pattern repeats, I finally finished the horseshoe lace pattern.  I have successfully divided for the back and fronts and managed not to flub the shaping!  Today I begin the sleeves... all 50 inches of sleeve... but with how fast the back and fronts went, I actually don't think that it will be too bad.  (Of course, I'm saying that now.  Ask me how I feel about it later, when I'm done with one sleeve and realize that had I normal length arms I would be a third of the way through the second sleeve.) My niecelette (3yo) has discovered Fraggle Rock.  She called me the other day because she was watching an episode and the Doozers take up knitting because they can't build, which is what they usually do (for whatever reason.  I missed that part).  But they sing a song about knitting.  And I know you want to see it too, so I've embedded it below.  (If you find it hard to understand the lyrics, you can read th...

If you do not care to read religious blog posts, feel free to close this one now.  I don't mind.  Have a pleasant day. For those of you still here, I wish you a Happy Christmas.  I recently finished rereading Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."  My favourite line in the book is when Bob Cratchit is speaking to his wife about Tiny Tim.  He says, "Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard.  He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk and bind men see." Tiny Tim put it well.  This Christmas season has given my family good cause to think of the Saviour.  We think of my tiny nephew, Tommy, who passed away this month and we remember on this Christmas Day He who suffered for our sins that we may be forgiven and then died and rose again that we ...

I've decorated my window for Christmas.  My policy is that, since we're suspending Christmas we may as well suspend all the decorations, too.  I'm not putting any decorations on flat surfaces.  (Except the tree, which others insisted on putting on the ground and which I've already protested.)  They're hung or they're not displayed.  (Call me Grinchy, call me Scrooge.  Maybe I am as you say.  Some days I think that I should have skipped directly from the end of November to the beginning of January... today is one of those days.) Every time I turn around our holiday plans have changed.  I suppose they're as set as they're going to be now, as they're already in progress.  Husband and my sister-in-law left early this morning to drive up to see my in-laws.  This is a change because Husband and I were supposed to drive up next week, and sister-in-law had no plans of going.  After blogging Monday we received some very sad news.  Hu...

For a while there was some hubbub in the house as to the critical question of the season: Where are we gonna put the tree?! Last year this wasn't a problem.  But last year this room didn't exist and the Christmas tree was right here .  Where I'm sitting, right now, on my bed, writing this blog post.  Yeah.   SO  not going to work this year.  My sister-in-law's family (hence forth dubbed the S family for simplicity's sake) has a HUGE Christmas tree.  I suppose that when the average member of their family is over 6-feet-tall an 8-or-9-or-10-foot Christmas tree looks proportionate.  But now that Husband and I have moved in, there's no floor space for it. We ended up using our little 5-foot tree.  It stands in the entryway and looks so vulnerable petite in this household of giants.  But for a while, we contemplated a far more interesting solution: Take the 8-or-9-or-10 foot tree and hang it from the ceiling. Yup.  The idea was ...

I now have completed three pair hand knit socks!  Here are my completed Joy in the Journey Socks : I loved knitting these... I finished them on Sunday, so I suppose you could say that I am now "joyful."  They are mirror images of each other, which is fun.  They are my thirteenth completed project;  I have been a knitster for almost seven months now.  Alas, with these finished, the only projects I have OTN now are stealth projects and hibernating projects... so I suppose that means that I need to start another project just for the sake of blogging, right?  Hmmm... maybe something using the yarn I picked up at my LYS during Knitter's Anonymous last month ?  I still need ideas, by the way... if anyone has any... In the interim, however, how about more pictures of the puppy?  He had to wear the "Cone of Shame" for two weeks--he finally got it off today! This one is my favourite.  I love how he's using the cone to shade his eyes:

I haven't blogged recently.  There's not much to blog about knitting when one is knitting multiple stealth projects.  I've added a new one... so in addition to   and  I have added: Isn't that just so exciting for you?  Yeah... that's all you get.  Sorry.  (Ravelry friends, however, can go see real pictures on my Rav page .  Everyone else has to wait.  Perks of being a knitter...  Family: please do not go making fake Ravelry profiles just to see the projects.  It defeats the purpose of them being stealth.) I've turned the heel on my second Joy in the Journey sock and am meandering my way down the foot.  (It's just not exciting to knit the same thing a second time.  Not that it's exactly the same thing--I did flip the pattern so it will be the reverse of the first one, but the concept is the same.)  And as it looks remarkably similar to the first one, I have no pictures for you at this present time.  Once I ...

It's been an absolutely crazy couple of weeks.  I finished all my classes & turned in papers (including one I especially loved writing which I titled "Knit Two Conceptual Domains Together" and which was about the use of metaphor in knitting) and then I GRADUATED!  That's right.  I now (or rather will, once final grades are posted,) have a B.A.! Here are pics from graduation.  These were taken by my sister & friends.  I'm shiny!  (You know what the reason is for having tassels that hang down the sides of your face?  Distraction!  Something to play with during graduation (such as while the student speaker sites "dictionary.com" as a reference *serious eye rolling*)!  The cords were fun to play with, too...  but I digress... What can I say?  I'm distracted by shiny objects...) Sorry, photo vanished. Sorry, photo vanished. I graduated "cum laude" but I'm hoping that my final grades will nudge up my GPA so that my dip...