a 'snowed in' day

This time it's really bad (apologies for the blurry pic, it was still dark out. Click on the picture so that you can actually read the numbers).


There's one car stuck on our street and one neighbour got stuck at the bottom of his driveway because he was too lazy to shovel and decided to just go for it. Some people aren't so smart. I'm hanging out at home and cuddling up to my knitting.

Speaking of knitting, I seem to have taken a slight detour from finishing FOs to casting on new projects. While surfing for a duck pattern for the baby blanket, I came across a Pooh washcloth pattern. Ya know I'm a sucker for Pooh bear.


Pattern: Happy Hunny Bear
Yarn: Lily Sugar'n Cream in Robin Egg
Needles: 4.5mm addis

And thanks to P-La, I cast on a felted clog.


Darn you and your cute clogs! These blue ones are for hubby. I've got some purple Lopi for mine.

Many Thanks
I have been remiss about thanking a few folks. Firstly, I'd like to thank Nikki. I won her blog contest last week. I can't wait to see what my prize is!

And Ricky and Phoebe won in the "cutest" category in the Central Park Footie contest hosted by Phyl. They would like to thank Phyl for recognizing their supreme cuteness. Sadly (for them), the prize is for me but maybe I'll give them extra treats today.

And a reminder that there's still time to enter our contest. You have until midnight PST Jan 31st.

Well, I'm off to do a little online shopping. It's Gladys' bday soon and I need to find an appropriate gift. Gladys - got any hints for me?

definitely a snow day

The weather folks have been predicting snow for this weekend but not a lot of snow. When we got up this morning, there was just a light dusting on the ground so we headed out to do our regular food shopping. Imagine our surprise when we got home - 2-3" of snow had fallen in the hour we were gone.



Don't my beauty berries look cold? I called my sister to whine about the snow and she just laughed at me. Apparently, they're getting a severe cold front. Lows will hover around -27C/-17F (-41C/-42F with windchill; cold enough for frostbite) tonite. She told me that their new car doesn't have a block heater so they have to park it in the garage to prevent it from freezing solid. And their low tonite is their high for tomorrow so it's only going to get worse. I don't know how she can stand living there. Since she's stuck indoors, she is consoling herself by shopping for jewellry on eBay. At last count, she bought 2 rings and spent $400.

My fabric shopping trip was semi-successful - I did buy fabric but the construction took a bit more thought that I had anticipated. I found a quilt panel that I liked but it was a little too narrow so I bought some co-ordinating stripes for a border. I chose a backing fabric but there wasn't enough on the bolt for the panel plus borders (there was enough for just the panel). I bought it anyways. I'm good at fudging improvising. When I got it all home, I chopped off the top of the panel to make it a little shorter so that the overall dimensions would fit the size of the backing fabric. I machine quilted it and I just have to sew the opening shut and do a little hand quilting and it'll be ready for the baby. My friend is in labour and we're predicting that she'll deliver today. All of us are joking that since their first child was born during one of the worst snow storms in Boston, their second child will be born during today's snowstorm.


And as Turtle mentioned in yesterday's comments, fabric has a tendency to jump into your shopping cart. A little of this came home with me. I bought it cuz it's pretty (and purple).

Speaking of babies... A fellow knitter is pregnant and we're knitting a baby blanket for her. On Wed, I was given some yellowy yarn and some instructions. I rummaged around Ravelry and found a duckie dishcloth pattern and adapted it for the baby blanket. I whipped this up while watching some ST Enterprise yesterday night.


Too cute! I might make a few of these for wash cloths and give them to the nieces.

And what do you do when it's cold and snowy outside? You make some yummy congee (Chinese version of chicken soup) for lunch.


I cheated a little (don't tell Mom that I used store-bought stock) but I don't care. If you're wondering - the stuff on top of the soup is a combo of seasoned dried pork fluff, sesame seeds, and seaweed. Yum!

Looks like the snow has stopped. Guess I should help hubby shovel.

speed quilting

I haven't knitted a single stitch in almost 48 hours. Last time you heard from me, I needed to make something for an imminent birth. Well, that plan got sidetracked on Thurs. Some signature quilts that we'd been working on were due Friday night and as of Thurs morning, one quilt still needed a bit of work. Yikes! So I spent Thurs afternoon/evening and Friday morning hand quilting the remaining 11 ft. It doesn't sound like much but the quilting design had loops and stars in it. I finally got it done around 1pm, sewed the label to the back, and spritzed the blue pen marks with water to make them disappear. Then I laid the quilt on the bed so that it could dry. All 3 were finally finished - phew!

The party was a blast. The ladies were quite happy to finally have their quilts. All of us ate way too much food. One of the highlights of the evening was our host's dog, Tucker. Pauline was petting him and every time she stopped, he would kinda growl at her and she would start petting him again. He was really enjoying the attention, see:


And still no knitting for me today. I rummaged around in my fabric stash and I don't have any boy-themed fabric. I found a few baby bits but I think they're too girly. So I'm off to the fabric store to find something appropriate.

can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em

(warning - rant ahead)
Hubby can be such a PITA. Yesterday morning, I was woken up by the opening and closing of several doors. Fine, roll over and go back to sleep. And just as I was falling asleep, I hear his noisy bicycle pump - yay, he's riding his bike to work and I'll get another hour of shut-eye before I have to feed the cats. Roll over some more and pull the blankets up. More doors opening/closing and some muffled noises directly under our bedroom - he's leaving, double yay. And then I hear this strange noise like lots of running water and it doesn't seem to stop. Ugh! I squint at the clock and it says 6:20am. Phoebe is crawling all over me and Ricky's meowing for breakfast in his loudest Siamese voice. Hubby's up and making a lot of noise. He hasn't left so the cats expect me to be up. I dragged myself out of bed and stomp downstairs. Hubby set up his bicycle trainer in the room under our bedroom and he's happily riding away. I let him know (using not nice words) that I'm extremely grumpy and will be that way all day and he'd better not wake me up ever again. And if he doesn't come home with a peace offering, he's dead meat. He brought me a box of cherry cordial chocolates from Purdys :)

And to further perk me up, a little package arrived from Gabrielle.


Thanks, Gabrielle! The card is just hilarious and I can't wait to use the hand cream. It's hard to tell from the picture but the legs on the sheep buttons move when you wiggle them.

There was a lot of knitting while I grumped around. The Peapod cardi is almost finished.


I have to be careful where I leave it. After the last photo shoot, I caught Ricky lying on the cardi and using the ball of yarn as a pillow while I was uploading the pictures onto the laptop. Don't worry, I wash all my gift knits before they're handed over.

I cast on a Valentine's present for hubby and I did some work on one of my WIPs - the second sock for Pauline. And my co-blogger just reminded me that there's a baby due soon and I need to make something for him. Yikes! So I should stop blogging and get back to knitting :)

Holy Sheep

This headline was too good not to blog it: "Wharram Percy: The Town the Sheep Devoured".

There's a town in England which was abandoned around the 15th century, and current research is finding that it was because of the sheep: "By the 15th century, sheep farming had become far more profitable than arable farming, so the lord of the manor turned more of his land into pasture land, leaving less for the farming of crops. This in turn led to less work and less food for the villagers of Wharram Percy, so that they were forced to leave the village to find work and food elsewhere."

So unfortunately, the story isn't as good as the headline, but it's still an interesting look into history.

recycling yarn

I was at a thrift store last week hunting for the usual treasures - linen tea towels, old quilts, etc. when I ran my hands across a sweater. OMG - it was so soft. I looked at the tag and it said 100% cashmere, made in Scotland. It is a mens XL and in fabulous shape. The sweater is a green heather colour - a colour I can't wear but I know a few people who would look fabulous in it so it came home with me. I've recycled sweaters (for yarn) before and I was a little worried that I would accidentally cut into the sweater while picking apart the seams. But this sweater was sewn together with sewing thread so ripping it was really easy. I had it apart in no time. I started by winding the yarn on the ball winder but the strands aren't spun very tightly and the yarn kept snapping. I ended up winding it by hand.

I've got about half of the back undone. I'm trying to gauge how much yarn I'll have. Colourmart claims 2300 yds of 2:28NM cashmere per 150g. The sweater weighed around 425g before frogging. I think the sweater yarn is slightly heavier than the Colourmart cashmere so I estimate that I have at least 2300 yds. I'll be skeining up the yarn and washing it to get out the kinks so there'll be an opportunity to calculate yardage.

I'm keeping an eye on all those stole suggestions because I'll be looking for a pattern for this yarn. My current favourite is the Woodland shawl. Mmmm, mossy green leaves...

The Peapod baby sweater didn't get much attention this weekend. I did reach the bottom of the armholes. I've got 3 counters going - one for the leaf chart repeats, a count of the button hole rows, and row count (from the beg of the armhole opening) so that I can match the fronts to the backs. I need more kacha counters!


This is the cutest thing I've ever knit!

random Friday

I have a bunch of little bits that I'm just going to dump into this post.

Since I can't enter my own contest, I thought I'd list the stoles that I think Gladys should make.
1. Print O' the Wave Stole by Eunny Jang - I've got a cone of cobweb wool/silk from Scotland for this project
2. Juno Regina by Miriam Felton - currently, otn so it's easy for me to recommend it
3. Hanami by Melanie Gibbons - I've got some creamy shetland lace from a small farm in Saskatchewan that would be perfect for this stole.

I've had a look at your suggestions and they are all amazing. I can see my Ravelry queue growing...

At this time of year, the malls have their big post-Christmas sales. I'm lucky that I live fairly close to 3 large ones so I've been shopping this week (walking is good for my back) and I've picked up some great bargains.

I'm allergic to all costume jewellry. I can only wear gold, titanium, and usually silver so I don't have a lot of fun jewellry to wear - just serious stuff. Imagine my surprise when I saw a silver ring sale - 6 for $3. How could I resist?


And I've been buying lots of sale books. I even got a knitting one - Luxury Knits by Amanda Griffiths. I think a more accurate title would be "Knits using Luxury Yarns". Would you buy 15 balls of Rowan Kidsilk Haze (or 3435 yds of a similar yarn) to knit a stockinette cardigan? Yep, definitely luxurious. There are some very nice patterns in it. Here are some of my favourites:




We watched the Transformers movie yesterday night and it was hilarious. There was a lot of action, too but some great one-liners as well. Just too funny. I'm going to watch the movie again tonite.

Thanks for the get well wishes. I got the house moderately clean without making my back feel worse. Between the Advil and my heating pad, I think I'm definitely feeling better today. We'll see how it goes after I tackle the mountain of laundry (the next house I buy will have the washer/dryer upstairs).

Happy Bloggiversary to us!

It's our first ever bloggiversary! One year of knit blogging down and many more to go ;)

So as a thank you to our readers, we're having a contest. To enter, leave a comment (one per person please) before midnight PST Jan 31st. And in your comment, please include a link to a knitted rectangular stole that you think Gladys should make (she's got a lot of lace yarn and she's looking for the right pattern).

Gladys says: This was inspired by Vicki's contest last year at Simple Knits. She was looking for triangle shawl ideas and ended up with 336 patterns, sorted by amount of yarn required. I love triangle shawls, but I'd like to do a rectangular stole, and I've got a lot of laceweight yarn, thanks to a few sales this month! (Dotty enabled me into the Ram Wools sale, where I also picked up some sea silk.) I'll sort all of our entries by amount of yarn too, so that at the end of this contest, we'll also have a useful list for everyone's reference!

We will be drawing for at least 2 prizes (we reserve the right to add more if there are lots of entries! :)

Gladys is giving away 2 balls of Jojoland Quartette in Blue Rose Sprucestone. It's a very soft merino-cashmere blend fingering-weight yarn.

Dotty will make a fabric project bag (winner chooses fabric) and it will include some hand dyed bamboo yarn plus a few more goodies. Don't these sound great?

Go leave a comment and good luck to everyone!

FOs 4; WIPs 12

Pattern: Wyvern socks by Marnie MacLean
Yarn: some vintage stuff called Schaffhauser Wolle Soiree (wool/silk/nylon); originally yellow and dyed with lime Kool Aid
Needles: 2.25mm dpns
Mods: I increased 8 sts after the heel turn because I couldn't pull them on. The yarn doesn't have much stretch (due to the silk?).
Notes: 29th pair of finished socks; otn since Nov 2006 - it feels so good to get these finally done!

And here's Ricky providing some quality control.


They passed the Ricky sniff test.

So that makes 4 FOs for 2008 and only 12 13 WIPs left to go (assuming that I don't cast on for anything else).

What's this then?


I did cast on for a new project. A quilting friend is eagerly anticipating the arrival of her first grandbaby and she commissioned me to knit some baby items. I started the Pea Pod baby set by Kate Gilbert yesterday night. I'm even using some yarn from my stash! As you can see, the sleeves are done (sleeve #1 was my gauge swatch) and I've started the body. The instructions for the ribbed border is poorly written. I had to go look at a few finished pictures before I could figure out what was going on. And I think there's a few errors for the size that I'm knitting. I wouldn't recommend this project for a newbie knitter.

So why am blogging on a Wed night when I should clearly be at knit nite? I hurt my back and it's really ache-y. And the quilting ladies are meeting at my house tomorrow morning so all the cleaning that I've been meaning to do when my back got better is being done tonite. Ugh!

PS. Gladys blogged again! Those scarves look great - A's got some lucky pre-school teachers!

Blogging the Christmas FOs

I did a LOT of Christmas knitting this year, and absolutely no Christmas blogging at all -- sorry about that!

The projects were a lot of fun, so I figured I'd go back in time a little just to show them off.

First off, a pair of Endpaper Mitts in an alpaca silk yarn. I was over in Victoria, and dropped into the Beehive Wool shop, and they had the yarn on for $5/ball -- what a bargain! I also reversed the colours on the second mitt because I thought it would look funky, and it did! They were given to one of the graphic designers at work, and they totally suit her.


I couldn't figure out what to give to my infant nephew this Christmas — he's a younger brother, so he's got TONS of toys and clothes. So at the last minute, I whipped up a Baby Surprise Jacket for him, and it was perfect on him. This was a hit at Knit Nite, too — I know I got at least one other knitter to start one after she saw this one.


And then there were the four preschool teachers at Andrew's school. Last year, I made them all Fetchings, and this year, they each received a Branching Out scarf.


This was such a fun pattern to knit that I'm working on another Branching Out, either for me or for one of the birthday gifts that I've got coming up in the next couple of weeks.

felting flop

Look - I'm blogging from the laptop!


Yesterday's software installation was mostly painless. I spent an hour figuring out why the laptop wouldn't go into hibernate mode when you closed the lid. It turns out that Windows Installer (needed to install Windows updates) prevents the laptop from snoozing. I still need to install the 3000 fonts that I got for Christmas. And there's one more problem that I need to look into - IE crashes when I try to view a blog that has a poll. Hmph. On the upside, I have iTunes back so I can listen to the 900+ songs in our library.

Remember that I was going to use the leftover yarn from the tea cozy to make a matching potholder? Well, I did and I felted it.


Interesting looking shape, eh? It was originally 12" x 13.5". It now measures 11.5" at the ends and 9" in the middle. The length varies depending on which part of the wavy bit you push down. Yes, it does not lie flat despite my efforts to pull it into shape before drying. It's the yarn's fault. I was running out of the multicoloured so I added in a few stripes of solid green. Of course, the two yarns (from the same manufacturer) decided to felt differently. Any suggestions for salvaging it?

It's our first bloggiversary on the 17th and we'll be holding a contest. I don't have all the details yet so you'll have to come back on Thurs to check it out.

spring cleaning

There's been a flurry of activity the last few days. I finally got around to sorting through the 2 boxes of stuff that got turfed out of the dining room during the big re-org 2 weeks ago. I also combed through the living room (adjacent to the dining room) and cleaned it up. I think it's the first time that I've been able to see the top of the coffee table. I have a car load of items to donate to charity.

On the coffee table were several single skeins of yarn that I pulled out of my stash with the hopes of making something quick. One of them caught my eye while I was cleaning up. I bought a new, larger teapot during my Boxing Day shopping and a single skein of yarn is perfect for a tea cozy!



Pattern: Autumn Tea Cozy
Yarn: Patons Classic Merino Wool in Harvest and Leaf Green (yarn from the Irish Hiking Scarf that I frog'd)
Needles: 4.5mm addi circs and dpns
Mods: Cast on 100 sts because the teapot is huge and I used smaller needles than the pattern suggests. A few other changes to accomodate the spout and handle.

I have some leftover yarn so I'm knitting a felted pot holder to match. And I have the urge to knit my other teapot a cozy. Maybe an elephant one like this.

Our broken laptop is finally being resurrected. Hubby went out yesterday morning and came back with a new hard drive, a shiny blue thing, and a huge hard drive (500GB!) that goes into the shiny blue thing. He also ordered a new laptop battery but that's a special order item so I'll probably need to pick it up next week. Hubby spent most of yesterday installing the OS, patches, and Norton. He still needs to get the wireless stuff working and then it's my turn. I get to install the rest of the software and load all the files onto it. I installed the new hard drive into the shiny blue thing (proper name is external hard drive enclosure) and formatted it (took 2 hours). It will be used for backups which is my other computer task for this week.

Today, we got up early and headed out to a farmers market. It's not exactly farmers market season but this one moves indoors at this time of year. It was our first time and we bought quite a bit of stuff - lots of bread and baked goods, russian blue potatoes (they're purple inside!), and yarn! Yummy Yarn was there and I bought a skein of Ianto.


While I was photographing my new yarn, the lighting in the room where Ricky was sleeping was just right to take some pictures of him. Ricky is a cat version of a human redhead - orangey fur, blue-grey eyes, and freckles. It is so hard to take pictures of his lovely eyes and out of the bajillion Ricky pictures that I've taken, I don't have one of his freckle (yes, he only has one that I know of). But I was lucky today and I got pictures of both.



He is one handsome kitty cat!

The things I do to win yarn

KitKatKnit is having a contest and here's my entry.

Phoebe:


And Ricky:

"mph - yummy measuring tape" - Ricky

losing my mind and my purse

Can you believe that I walked out of knit nite without my purse? Yep, made it to within 2 blocks of my house, pulled into a gas station to get gas (daily gas wars - gas is cheapest after 8pm), and no wallet/purse. I drove the rest of the way home, rousted hubby from his Xbox gaming with my BIL, and made him drive me back to the yarn store. Luckily, F was still there and she let me in and my purse was on the sofa in the back. I have absolutely no idea how I walked out of there without it. Clearly, there is something wrong with me.

On to more exciting (and blog-relevant) news - did you see that my co-blogger actually blogged? She's got a lot of catching up to do - 3 months worth of knitting. Gladys has a lot of great things to show off so keep your eyes peeled.

Hubby's socks are fixed. I took off just over an inch in foot length and they fit much better. That means that he'll actually wear them now!


And in a moment of weakness, I, ummmm, cast on a new project. I started with the Austrian socks but the yarn I chose is a single ply and doesn't have enough stretch to execute all those twisted stitches and cabling. So I ripped it out and cast on the Friday Harbour socks. But the cuff isn't stretchy enough to fit over my *ahem* shapely calves so I might rip that out, too. If you've got some Briggs & Little sport, it's got some limitations. Otherwise, it's a great old-fashioned-rustic-eastern-Canada-scratchy kinda yarn.

If you don't count the just-cast-on sock, I now have 14 WIPs (down from 22 last week). I feel sooo much better.

Ricky sez: "I'd feel better if you rubbed my belly"

Working backwards

Yes, Dotty, I'm still here!

I'm home sick today, and wearing the acrylic sweater that my mommy knit for me 25+ years ago because it makes me feel good when I'm not feeling well.

It's been so long since I've posted that I'm just going to start from my recent FOs, and work backwards to Christmas, over the next few weeks.


First up, and finished this week: Coriolis socks in Noro Silk Garden Lite. I used the online pattern because I didn't want to be flipping pages all over the place when I was on the SkyTrain. With this thick yarn, it knit up super-quickly. I cast on last Friday, and finished them on Monday.

And did you notice that they're on the super-funky sock blockers that you gave me for Christmas? I also used the super-cool sock bags that you gave me, as well, for carting this project around. Man, I was spoiled this Christmas -- thanks!


Next up: I bought some delicious Lucy Neatby yarn out of the Three Bags Full 30% off orphan basket last November. They went beautifully with the Roundabout sock pattern. I just flipped the pattern around for the second sock, so that it rotated the other way. (See my ravelry page for the project notes and pattern mod.)


And finally, a Christmas knit -- the Online Linie Solo scarf that I made for my sister-in-law. This was annoying to knit -- I'm not sure I'd even call it knitting as much as it was picking -- but it went quickly and looks gorgeous. Just two balls for a really funky scarf.

I'm on a roll

You can't stop me now! May I present FO #3 of 2008:


Yarn: Louet Gems Pearl/fingering in colour Baby Neptune (one ply white and one ply blue); 28th pair of socks knitted in my entire life
Needles: 2.25mm dpns
Pattern: generic toe-up
Notes: These have been otn since April 2007!!! I don't like the way the yarn knitted up. It was definitely prettier in the skein. No more marled yarn for me. I found 2 huge slubs and one poorly plied section in one of the skeins. I actually had to rip back the sock to discard a bunch of yarn rather than have 2 joins 1" apart right in the heel. Blech! The yarn is soft and nice to knit with.

So I picked the repair job as my next WIP project thinking that it would be quick to do. These were the first pair of socks for hubby and only the 4th pair I'd ever knit so I messed up somewhere and ended up with a super long foot.

Just unpick the toes and about 1" of the foot and reknit the toes. Sounds simple, no?


I'll just say that frogging a short row wrapped toe is a real PITA. It took me over an hour to get one toe frog'd and probably another half hour to untangle the whole mess. I soaked the yarn to relax it and now it's ready to go.

You'd think that after the weekend yarn binge that I'd be all out of money. Not quite... Some yarn that I ordered in Dec finally arrived and when I was at Michaels buying ornaments for next Christmas, they had Patons Kroy at 50% off.


Clockwise from top left: Regia 6ply in navy blue/oatmeal/dk grey (375m per 150g skein; one skein is enough for a pair of hubby sox), Patons Kroy in muslin & flax (for Anemoi mittens - yep, already planning my Christmas knitting) and country jacquard (more hubby sox)

My supply of sportweight superwash yarn for hubby sox (I used my very last skein for his Christmas socks) is replenished which means I can knit him anniversary socks for our 10th wedding anniversary plus he'll get socks for his birthday and Christmas. Yipee!

FO #2

So far, so good. I am finishing things.


Pattern: Wendy's generic toe up
Yarn: Trekking XXL in colour 109 (it's all P-La's fault)
Needles: 2.5mm (foot & leg) and 2.75mm (cuffs) dpns
Notes: I tried to use my new Harmony dpns but I found them too 'sticky' with this yarn

That's 1 down and 14 more to go. I should have another FO tomorrow (only half an inch left).

I frogged the Feather and fan shawl, Odessa hat, and the partially knit spiral tube sock. I still need to frog the finished spiral tube sock, the Irish Hiking scarf, and the novelty yarn scarf. At least, I've pulled the needles out of the projects so that I can't even claim they're OTN.

My lys had a belated Boxing Day sale this weekend. I went first thing Sat morning. What a zoo! I showed up 15 mins before the door opened and there were already people inside (???) and a line-up of about 10 people outside. By the time the doors opened, there were at least another 20 people behind me. Now, this store isn't too small but with tables taking up most of the floor space, there's only 2 narrow aisles to walk down so 30+ people means that it's very hard to move around. But it was sooo worth it.

When I got home, I hauled my loot into the office and dumped it in the chair. After I entered the yarn specs (into Ravelry) for one yarn, I reached over for another skein and there was Phoebe making herself comfortable amongst my new yarns.


From left to right: my Xbox game controller (we were playing Halo), Phoebe-girl, Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in Old Rose, Nature's Palette in an Odd Duck colour, Green Mountain Spinnery Sylvan Spirit (wool & tencel) in Amethyst, hubby's Xbox controller, and Dream in Color Smooshy in Ruby River.

The Smooshy has some great yardage - 450yds per skein. That's a lot for a hand-dyed yarn. It's made of Australian merino so it'll be interesting to see how it wears. I want to cast on so badly but I must finish a few more socks before I'm allowed. Pout!

my first 2008 FO

I have my first FO for 2008. I picked up a free leaflet yesterday and I had some Bernat Bamboo in the stash so I whipped this up yesterday night.


Pattern: One Skein Scarf by Denise Cozzitorto from Stitch'n Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker
Yarn: Bernat Bamboo; 3 skeins in colour rosehip
Hook: 6.5mm (K)
Notes: The yarn is ok. I think it's going to fuzz up quite a bit. But it's very soft, glossy, and drapey.

Take a deep breath before you look at the next picture:


Compare it to my WIP picture from this post. I'm obviously getting worse. Eleven of the projects in that post are still WIPs. Yikes! The Bonita shirt doesn't count cuz I did finish it and it turned out too big so I had to frog it.

So here's my list of WIPs and my plans for them:

1. Trekking socks - Finish
2. Louet Gems socks - Finish
3. socks for Pauline (commission) - must Finish
4. Wyvern sock - Finish
5. hubby's CTH socks - not so much a Finish but more of an alteration
6. spiral tube socks - worsted weight socks with no heel?!?!?! What was I thinking? Frog!
7. Canal du Midi socks - Finish
8. Juno Regina - Finish
9. not-a-cable cable scarf - Finish
10. Irish Hiking scarf - not my colour; not needed as a gift; Frog
11. Birch-like shawl of my own design - would like to Frog but it's an ugly mohair blend yarn; Finish since I'm so close to the end
12. Feather and fan shawl - only a few inches knitted; Frog
13. Icarus shawl - ya can't frog mohair so it's a Finish
14. novelty yarn scarf - Frog
15. Lacy Entrelacs scarf - Finish
16. Odessa hat - Frog
17. Endpaper mittens - Finish
18. Brea bag - Finish
19. Bonita shirt - was finished, then frogged because it was too big; Finish
20. Arwen cardigan - Finish
21. Silk Lace Nightie - Finish
22. Afghan - too hard to frog (it's a fuzzy yarn) so maybe Finish? Maybe get my Mom to finish it? She's between projects, right?

So that's 5 frog's, 15 to finish, one alteration, and maybe pass the afghan to my Mom. That's a lot of projects to finish - wish me luck.

on a diet

And I'm not just talking about a yarn one either but that is the main one around here these days. I've decided that I really don't knit sweaters. I wear them a lot and I like knitting them for others but I don't seem to have much interest in knitting them for myself. So no more sweater yarn buying.

And my mantra for the year is "frog or finish". I'm either going to frog an existing project or I'm going to finish it. Seriously, I'm running out of knitting needles. There are some lovely things in progress that should really see the light of day. I hope to dig out all my WIPs after we de-Christmas this weekend.

Speaking of finishing things... I was at my co-blogger's for New Year's Eve and I started the second purple Trekking sock while waiting to ring in the new year. I got to work on it a little more while we were at my parents' house for dinner yesterday night (I blame the sock for my mahjong losing streak; hubby kicked ass). It's just past the heel and maybe I'll finish it before next Wed so that I can wear it with my clear clogs to knit nite.

Juno Regina is taking a wee break.


I've used about 30g (out of 100g) of yarn. It's just over 24" so I think that even with less yardage and using smaller needles, I'll end up with something pretty big.

There has been no knitting today. Our dining room is in the middle of a big purge. I have emptied and dismantled a kitchen island that really was too big and ugly for the dining room. It ended up being a repository for all sorts of junk. So the junk is being sorted into keep, recycle, and garbage. We will move the nice china cabinet (currently in the alcove beside another storage unit) to where the island used to be and a new unit will replace the china cabinet. To hide all the stuff in the alcove, I am proposing a curtain (hubby wants red velvet which I think will be a giant cat hair magnet). Right now, there is china and crystal all over the house - in the guest bedroom, all over the kitchen counter/stove, under the dining table... I am hoping to assemble the new storage unit before hubby gets home from work. He'll help me move the furniture around and then I want to get all the breakables back into the china cabinet before a cat (or human) knocks something over.