Christmas Socks

These socks are coming along nicely if a bit slowly. I finished the leg last night so there's just the foot part left. I think next year might be dedicated to smaller projects and hopefully I can spread some gift making out throughout the year. (I say this as I still have the back for Blueberry waiting to be reknit and I have yarn for a sweater for the huzby waiting in the closet.) At least I'm almost done with these and the cowl and then I'll be through the knitting portion of my Christmas list.

*Pattern is by Lion Brand Yarn and yarn is Knit Picks Felici (They brought the yarn back last month and only have a small amount of one color left. Hopefully this means it will come back permanently soon.)

Sioux Prairie Quilt Guild Christmas 2013

This week my quilt guild had our annual Christmas party. It's always one of my favorite parts of the holidays. We have a big potluck, play a few games, and exchange quilt related presents. 

When we arrived there were donuts sitting on our plates. All of us were a little confused and asking if we really wanted to eat a donut at 6:00 at night when we had a potluck of yummy salads and desserts awaiting us. Then we got closer to the tables and discovered that the donuts were really these super cute felt pincushions. Each of us also got a template for a 5" half hexagon! I've been wanting to play with this shape but haven't gotten a template or one of moda's precut hexie packs yet. The best part is that the half hexagon works with charm packs and jelly rolls which is one of the few things I actually have in my stash.

The games were very creative this year. We're a large group and fill several tables so that's how our teams were decided. Everyone had to take a needle and each team was given a spool of thread. We then raced to see which team could get all of their needles on the thread first. The ladies at my table have lightening fast threading abilities and I'm pleased to report we won!  Our prize was a fat quarter and I chose the blue fat quarter in the picture below. For the second game we had to bring a fat quarter to exchange. We got to choose a fat quarter from the basket and had to toss it into a tub a few feet away. You'd think it would be easy, but those fat quarters really catch air when you throw them. Thankfully everyone who missed (including me) got to choose a fat quarter from the basket at the end of the night and I got to bring home the lovely little black and white print.

The evening ended with our gift exchange. Since we're all quilters we wrap our gifts in fabric which is how I got the green fat quarter in the picture above. We drew numbers to decide the order we chose gifts in. From there we could either take a gift from the table or steal one of the gifts that had already been unwrapped. The stealing part is always nerve wracking because if you draw something good you don't want anyone else to take it, and you want your gift to be concerned good enough to be stolen. (I'm pleased to report that the table runner I made was stolen once!) I was nice and picked one of the wrapped gifts and got a great little box bag for carrying all of my tools to workshops/retreats/work nights and a charm pack of Bobbin and Bits. I'm loving this fabric line and I think it might be destined for some play time with my new hexagon template. 

One final note not related to the Christmas party, but still exciting. I recently found OttLite bulbs at JoAnns that fit in a regular lamp! I've wanted an OttLite for a while, but the ones that I can afford if I spend a year's worth of birthday and Christmas money are the "cheap" ugly plastic ones. They'd work okay in a craft room, but I do most of my hand work in our living room where I want something a little more stylish. The light bulbs are a bit pricey at ten dollars a bulb, but that's significantly cheaper than the lamps. It's been really nice having a great light for knitting (haven't done much quilting this week.) This morning while taking pictures for the blog I realized the true value of this light bulb. I'll admit I was feeling lazy today and decided to use my point and shoot camera for pictures instead of setting up my DSLR. I occasionally do this and then use photoshop to make the pictures look good. (I know it's not the best practice, but it's the lazy one.) Because of my awesome new light bulb I didn't need to do any editing on my pictures! If you're trying to figure out how to take good photos in the winter with the crummy light the northern hemisphere gets this time of year (or next June for those in the south) I'd definitely recommend investing in one of these bulbs.

*This post has not been sponsored by anyone. I find it challenging at times to find quality items and when I do I want to share my finds.

Into the Woods

I can't believe that I'm on the Moda Bake Shop today! One of the driving influences that convinced me I could quilt was reading their tutorials. This quilt was originally intended to be part of the Christmas in July series, but due to some internet gremlins eating e-mails it became one of the Quilts with Stories. I've always thought of this as a winter quilt rather than Christmas, so I'm rather pleased with the changed theme. For directions on how to make this quilt top please hop over to the bakeshop. (If you're here from Moda's website WELCOME!!!)

One of my favorite drinks is hot cocoa with marshmallows. When I saw this fabric I was bouncing for joy the rest of the day. There are a lot of aspects of this quilt that fight to be my favorite part, but the steaming mugs of hot cocoa and marshmallows covering the back of this quilt just might win that fight. I had about 6" left from each of my jellyroll strips, plus the strips that used my tree fabrics. I cut my backing fabric the length of my top (plus a little extra to allow for quilting) and then cut the remaining section in half lengthwise to keep my cocoa cups all facing upright. 

This picture shows you a close up of the cocoa mugs and my label. I had a left over block from the front that I cut on point to 6.5." I then used one of the jellyroll strip of my tree fabric to sash the block and hand appliqued onto the quilt. This block works perfectly for a quilt label.

I know that traditionally quilters choose small prints for the binding. This collection has several small prints that would work nicely, but I love how a large busy print looks as a binding. Rather than finding one color that works with everything in the quilt, I find a print with most of the colors of the quilt in it. Because the binding shows such a small section of the print it gets broken up and provides a really fun, unexpected twist.

Christmas Sweater Finish

It occurred to me recently that I did an excellent job of showing the progress of the Northshore Cardigan and then never revealed the finished sweater. (Part of it is that I was feeling miserable the night of my family's Christmas party, part of it is not visiting my family very often, and most of it is just poor planning.) My dad absolutely loves this sweater. It's similar to one that he wore past the point of rattiness so he's thrilled to have a nice, comfy, warm sweater. He's also started hinting at what I can do for next year, as has my husband, so it looks like July will be another good month for sweater knitting.

The button band doesn't lie as flat as I wish it would, but at least both sides are now the same length.

I had a lot of fun knitting this sweater. It was my first attempt at cables and I think it went pretty well. Since it's been a while since I've posted on the sweater the pattern is Northshore Cardigan and it's knit in Lion Brand Wool-ease in natural heather.

Christmas Sweater update

I'm starting to wonder if there should be this many bad thoughts knit into a sweater. I thought that I'd finished this sweater in September and all I had left was the seams and finding the perfect buttons. Since I didn't have the perfect buttons, hate seaming, and had a new sweater waiting I put the pieces in the stash and decided to deal with it later. At the beginning of November I was in a knit shop and found the perfect buttons.

Once I got home I put in the shoulder seams for the sweater and started working the button band. I carefully figured out the placement of the buttons and sewed them on. Then I worked the collar and came down the other side and began making holes. Things were working out great until I approached the bottom of the sweater and noticed my sweater looked like this.

Having watched Pooh when I was younger I knew that Piglets sweater unraveled from the bottom in the Blustery Day scene. I also remembered last year the Yarn Harlot made a similar mistake and unraveled the piece from the bottom rather than undoing the button band, collar, shoulder seam, and 10+inches of knitting. I have enough yarn left over and enough time that if I messed up horribly I could just redo it so I poured a drink and unknotted the end. I waited for the whole thing to unravel like Piglet's sweater. It didn't.

There was a ray of hope in a loose yarn tail that I could pull out stitch by stitch. It was very slow going, but was faster than having to reknit the entire piece. After I got past the ribbing the yarn unraveled like a normal piece of knitting does. When I had frogged to the point where the ribbing stopped on the other side I put the stitches back on my needle, knit the ribbing, and cast off. 

The way this sweater is going I was terrified that there would be some horrible mistake with the sleeves, but those went in smoothly and the sweater is now finished. After Christmas I'll share pictures of the completed sweater. 

(In my research of this technique I learned that the stitches will all be moved half a stitch over so if you're doing something like ribbing you need to undo to the beginning of the ribbing or work a row of decorative stitches to hide the wonkiness.)

Imperfection

There is a legend that Persian rug makers will intentionally put a mistake into their rug as a reminder that only Allah is perfect. As I've been working on my sweater this phrase has come into my head. This sweater is the first time that I've done cables. Over all I think I'm doing pretty good. (We're just going to ignore the fact that every repeat of the cables on the back, the first piece I did, is a different length.)

Then I got cocky. I started thinking that I knew the pattern. I started thinking that I didn't need the stitch counter and stopped counting every row. This worked great until I stopped for the night, picked it up the next morning and realized that I'd forgotten to include eight rows in the counter the night before. I didn't panic too much, just added in the rows that I'd forgotten to add and started knitting. Two inches later I discovered when I started work my row counter was actually right.

As a knitter I should probably know how to frog and then start knitting again once I've pulled out enough stitches to have pulled out the mistake. (I should point out that I'm fully capable of pulling out my stitches and putting them back on the needle, they just end up twisted the wrong way half the time.) Since I struggle to undo inches of knitting when it's flat knitting I'm terrified of frogging cabled stitches. I asked my husband what he thought I should do. He looked at it for a minute and then said the beautiful words, "What mistake?" I trusted him and continued happily knitting. After all, only God is perfect so little mistakes aren't so bad. Then I got to the end of the sleeve and my dear husband says, "Oh, that mistake. Yeah, it's pretty noticeable."

So let me put the question out there to all of you. Do I knit the sleeve over again or do I give it to the recipient saying the sleeve is that way as a reminder that only God is perfect?

Updates

This week has been very unproductive. Not sure how I managed to get a respiratory infection in August, but the fact that I'm still alive is a pretty great accomplishment in my book. (No, it's really not that bad, but it feels like it should be.) I have made a lot of progress on things before this week, but I haven't had a chance to get pictures. I'm pleased report that the top is finished for Coffee Lover's Delight. (Hopefully I'll get some good pictures sometime this week and can share with you next Saturday.) I've also made a lot of progress on the first Christmas present. I have the back, left side of the front, and a sleeve finished. All I have pictures of though is the back.

If you're wondering what I'm making I'm using the Northshore Cardigan pattern from Lion Brand Yarn.

Christmas in July???

I've heard of Christmas in July, but I don't think that they meant starting on the Christmas presents you want to make. I've had a list growing of people I want to knit for. Right now my list only has two presents that are definite (read that as I've bought the yarn for the items.) Last Christmas I woke up early Christmas morning so I could finish sewing the seams on my husband's sweater. I can't promise I won't put myself in the same bind, but I'm going to try to do it with a bit more sanity this year. One reason I've decided to start for a holiday that is still 6 months away is I'm challenging myself to learn new techniques. I started knitting a year and a half ago and haven't moved very far beyond the knit and purl stitches. In the six months since Christmas I've learned how to make socks and now I'm challenging myself to cable. So far I have seven inches on the back of my first cardigan done.

Those lucky enough to be on the knitting list know that I can't keep gifts a secret so I'll publish the items as I make progress on them. I will however keep it a secret who's getting what and recipients will just have to hope the item they like best is for them. (Or that the things they hate aren't headed their way!)