Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Knitting for Christmas... Or not.

Well, Christmas is approaching and I've been doing a lot of knitting lately. I think I'm almost over my startitis (thankfully) and I'm trying to finish first-priority knits first.



First in line is my Dad's Henry. It's coming along beautifully. I'm almost halfway done knitting it and when I did the math, I discovered that if I knit 6 rows a day (2 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon and 2 before bed) I should have this bad boy all done in two weeks, and before you scoff at my six rows a day, I'd just like to mention that each row is over 450 tiny fingering-weight stitches, and takes me about 20 minutes to knit.

I am also happy to report that the spinning for the Henry is almost complete, though I did end up ordering more of the Ashland Bay Merino in Forest (I'm never going to want to see this color again. In fact, I anticipate that any future sightings of it will bring on fits of violent, projectile retching.) because the last bit that I ordered, and assumed was 4 oz (that's what I paid for) ended up being only 3oz when I weighed it. It's odd, I would never normally weigh fiber bought from a big online store but it looked a little on the small side when I retrieved it from the stash and I had this feeling that maybe I should just weigh it, which proved to be a very good thing, as I would have ended up being a whole 100 yards short of my needed 800 yards total.

Then there are the Selbuvotter mittens (NHM #5). These mittens are from the tail-end of my startitis. I wasn't planning on knitting these right away, but my munchkin started nagging at me about them a week ago, and as I was still in startitis mode, I cast on immediately.



Sadly, these aren't exactly beautiful, but as I'm not ordering any more yarn right now and I don't have time to spin for anymore personal projects at the moment, she's getting a blend of some rainbow BFL handspun that I had on hand and some leftover commercial sock yarn. Even with the mis-matched yarns they're not all bad. She seems to be pleased with them at the moment and if she's happy, then I'm happy. (Please note: I'm still working on the whole fair isle thing. I haven't done fair isle in a long time, but it's improving as I go. I'm hoping that some of the unevenness will come out when I block them -cross fingers-.)

And here is a project that I love more and more every time I look at it.



It's my munchkin's eyelet heart scarf from my own handspun and it's getting prettier and prettier all the time. This yarn is so soft (if I do say so myself) and the colors look so great on her with her little pale-redheaded complexion. I love knitting things for my little girl, but this is definitely the kind of hand knit gift that should be loved and treasured.

I'm pleased that I haven't let myself fall prey to the delusion that I could knit gifts for my whole family this Christmas. I'm just finishing my Dad's scarf, because (though he doesn't know it) it was supposed to be his Christmas presents last year and my spinning/knitting endurance was, obviously, not as awesome as I hoped it would be. If I didn't get it done on time this year I would have to hang my head in shame. Instead, I started several projects and decided that if some of them happened to get done in time, and could work as gifts, then that would be cool...

Turns out it's a good thing I expected so little of myself, because I do not see myself getting anything but the Henry done. To those who are facing the Christmas challenge, I wish you luck. =)

1 comment:

Maureen said...

I really like the gloves you are knitting for Paige. I think they are really cute and I love how the color fades through the design. Very neat.