Mittens and More!

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Didn't get as much work done on the second mitten as I'd hoped. Spent a good part of the afternoon running errands (mailed out the last of our out of town gifts) and getting in some last minute shopping for stuff to finish making stuff for Christmas. However with a bit of planning on my part today, I should be able to get it finished. Maybe even dyed!I discovered a new way of doing an increase. And it really is very close to being invisible. On the mitten on the right I made my gusset increases by lifting the bar between the sts to M1. On the left I knit into the front loop of the st below going in from left to right. You can see the M1 is a bit "bigger" as it appears and there is a definite change in the sts. With knitting into the st below, there is just a tiny distortion of the st but you really have to know what you're looking for to find it. Try it next time!Every Friday, Kathleen has some paper dolls on her site that can be printed out. Yesterday, one of the things I went to buy was card stock to print some of the dolls out. I haven't decided if the clothes should be on card stock or not.... What do you think? Anyway, this is part of the Christmas presents for my granddaughters. I figure it should keep them busy cutting for a good part of Christmas vacation! And playing for the rest of it!

Sweet Paul's idea was to cut up a thrift store sweater to make this candle glass cozy. But...being knitters, we could figure out a way to make it ourselves, yes?
Ice candles. Did you ever make these? My dad was a church candle salesman, so we always had candle stubs laying around. My dad and I used to make these every few years for teacher gifts. They are so easy they are kind of anti-climactic.

Cute sheepy stuff!

Okay, this is a great idea! Why didn't I think of this? And it doesn't have to just be for socks. Imagine dyeing a thrift shop sweater pieces this way, unraveling and reknitting. Too much fun!

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Keeping the "We" in "Yes, We Can!"

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Eleven things to know about food! Food is an issue in this world. Oh, we have plenty of it here in the US of A, but most of it has little to no nutritional value and much of it is harmful.
kmkat talks about a Secretary of (Sustainable) Foods. And then read about (and sign) the Declaration of Healthy Food and Agriculture. Then check out and candidates for the Secretary of Agriculture petition.

One perk of the shrinking economy - everything else is shrinking, too.

Simplify the holidays. EZ says it all: “Is an exciting new improved Christmas every year really necessary? Is it in the spirit of the Solstice? The human heart hankers after stability and tradition. The feel and atmosphere of Christmases past, the anticipation of those to come, and the magic presence of Christmas now should all blend and blur, to give the distraught soul something to hang on to in a year bedeviled by new improved machines, soaps, music, spectator sports and recipes, many of which will prove to be dull, destructive, and sometimes downright damnable.”

Did you know that over 80% of the water Americans use deals with flushing the toilet? I'm jus' sayin'....

AWOL

Sorry I haven't been around. Grandson showed symptoms of flu on our drive home from Gatlinburg on Thursday. His mother showed symptoms about 8 hours later and I started in about 12 hours after grandson started. I was down for the count from about 1 am on Friday through Saturday. Feel fine today, though, although a bit dehydrated.

This is one of the 70 some pics I took on our trip. I'll share more once I get home and can crop some of them. This computer is so limited it can only do one thing at a time and is slow about that. I think it's about as fast as my first computer which, at the time, I thought was a miracle! How soon we adjust to speed, eh?

We had a wonderful time and I enjoyed every moment of it. Gatlinburg is unique. I don't think I've ever been anywhere like it in my life.

I didn't get any knitting done yesterday, but quite a bit on my vacation within my vacation. 3rd Son needed more wool work socks, so we made a trip to Knotty Knits in Murfreesboro on Monday to pick up some yarn. I got the two socks done for him. I think they turned out really nice! I'll get a pic of them later today. Now I'm rushing to finish DILs socks. I just have about 3/4 in of foot and then toes on each of them. Shouldn't take long.

Will get pics of grandson's socks, as well as the hat and mittens I've made since I got here!

Mittens Done!

They are all finished! I wove the final ends in last night! Today when I drop Eldest Granddaughter off at school, I'll wait around and give the other three kids their mittens, too!

The Fire Mittens turned out really nice. For all the bad talk MicroSpun gets, it sure makes a nice finished product! These mittens are so soft!

In the never ending saga of my car and all it's little broken parts, the inside driver's door handle snapped off yesterday. Went to pull it to open the car and it snapped right off. I was stuck in the car at the Post Office. Well, that's not too bad, so I grab the phone as I'm pulling out and find out that our service had been terminated. Youngest Daughter forgot to pay the bill.... So, now I'm stuck in my car with no phone...oh, and Youngest Granddaughter is in the back seat.

I get home. I'm sitting in front of my house, stuck in my car, with my Youngest Son asleep upstairs and no way to wake him up. After a couple failed attempts, I manage to crawl over the center console into the passenger seat, open the door and get out.

Eventually the phone bill got paid and I called my Honey Do, F. We spent about five hours driving to different import car shops to no avail. No one had or could get a door handle. F took the door off the car, tried to fix the lock so we could get the lock linkage out of the way so the window could be opened again. No luck. So, eventually we fashioned a loop of wire out of a coat hanger that loops around the quarter inch bend in the handle mechanism. I can now use it open the door. Hey, at least it wasn't baling wire!

However the car still runs perfectly...it's just on it's way to be held together will bubble gum and band aids.

I need to get back to 2nd Sons replacement socks. I had knitted the foot too long so need to frog about an inch of that and start the toe. That sock should be finished today and well on the way to the second one by this time tomorrow.

More Mittens

I finished up the green mittens yesterday. I like they way they ended up


looking. And I started the last (I hope) pair. They are made from MicroSpun. The colors are so bright! They are for a little girl (friend of my grandsons) and look like they'll work out perfect for her.

And there was more housework yesterday. I "forced" Youngest Daughter and Son into helping clean are rearrange the living room. It looks a whole lot better than it did! The six, okay five, months of dust has been eliminated (and has started to re-accumulate already). We created more room by stacking the two end units of the entertainment center. TV was put an an angle which ends the "furniture lined up around the walls" look in one corner. My desk got moved closer to the TV which is nice and YS gave me a small clip lamp for my desk so I'm no longer knitting and computing in the dark!
My keyboard fits on top of the printer when not in use which leaves space for knitting stuff. The TV is to my right about 4 feet so I can swivel in my chair, prop my feet up and watch TV while I knit in my chair! Love it! Once I get my upstairs knitting nook all cleaned up, I'll let you see that, too!

Mittens and socks and procrastination

I finished up the mittens. They are intended for my Eldest Granddaughter. While working on them she kept saying,
"Who are these for?"
"I don't know yet."
"I think they should be for me."
"Oh?"
"Yes, see they fit."
"Hmmm, we'll see...."

So, once I finished those, I thought I'd go back to my regularly scheduled knitting. Wrong. Third Son called to say he has a job interview for becoming a truck driver. He has worked for a chicken processing place in TN for years now as a chicken catcher. First he caught chickens in big barns by hand...yeah, that's right, chasing them around and catching them. Then the bought this big machine that does it. (Trust me, you really don't want to know any of the details of this.) Let it suffice to say, the pay was good and he could support his little family.

Big processing company decided to contract out the chicken catching. Rather than give up his time at the company he took another job there. Again, trust me. This job required standing still on cold concrete floors with rubber boots on. I told you to trust me. And a significant cut in pay. He tried it out for a couple of months and decided he really needed less yuk and more money. Hence the job interview. However, he'd really like to keep the chicken job till after the first of the year when he can get a two week vacation check.

So, I grabbed 2nd Son's birthday present of wool socks and shipped them off to 3rd Son to help keep his feet warm. I'm now knitting 2nd son a birthday present.
These are made with Patons Shetland Chunky (a wool acrylic blend) in Charcoal. Which will probably be more acceptable to 2nd Son than the WoolEase oatmeal ones I gave to his brother. (Thank goodness none of my children read my blog!) However, I tell you this, I'm a convert from WoolEase (20% wool, 80% acrylic) to Patons Shetland (25% wool and 75% acrylic). It's soft, smooth, silky and what pleasure to knit with. The WoolEase is scratchy although it does soften a bit with washing, but nothing near the Shetland. It's a bit more expensive, but really makes a difference. It's better than Plymouth Encore, too, IMHO.

I decided on an afterthought heel as the two skeins I bought is not going to make two socks, and I'm not sure there is another skein of charcoal at JoAnn's.... Will check today. Anyway, that puts all my other Christmas knitting on hold till I get these socks done. Fortunately socks don't take long, especially with big yarn!

So, a few days ago, I found this somewhere in someone's blog or forum post.
I sent the link from Dragonfly Yarn Shop to F and asked, "How hard can it be?" His reply was for $20 and a some time, not hard at all. So, it'd cost about the same to make as to buy. But more fun to make it yourself!

Then today at PennyKnits I saw this:
Now this one is a whole lot cheaper and the only draw back I can see is that it does dictate the size of the ball of yarn you can put on there. Will discuss this with F today and see what he thinks.

Not that I really need either of them, but hey, neat knitting stuff is what it's all about, yes?

I hope all of you that celebrate had a good Thanksgiving. We had a good one, good food, good company and I even won the game of TV Scene It we played!

Turkey Day!

I spent all day trying, yet again, to make fingerless gloves for my 2nd Son. And ya know, it doesn't take very long to frog those puppies when you realize it just ain't gonna happen! I got all the way to having the first finger finished when I realized it was just too primitive of a pattern and they weren't gonna fit him right anyway. Not to mention the needles were to small for the yarn and I was fighting to make them. And it was BLACK yarn!!!!!! Not gonna happen.

So I started another pair of mittens for one of the grands! Like socks, there is something so gratifying about making mittens. And they are a really fast knit, too. Once I figured out how to do the thumb gusset....piece of cake!

Eldest Son is coming over today for Turkey.... So that makes Eldest Son, Youngest Daughter (cook), Youngest Son and two Granddaughters for dinner. Other two kids have plans. It'll be a nice meal--turkey, dressing, fresh steamed green beans, smashed potatoes, and cheesecake!
Thanks to Apocaknits for this pic!

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright....

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,

In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
--William Blake

The mittens are done! I think the striping and colors kinda make them look like tiger stripes!

The laundry all got done, I cleaned up my knitting nests, and managed to finish the mittens. A good day's work!

I bought an Ethernet hub for my son so we could both be on line at the same time. Except it doesn't work yet. So he'll have to work on it some more today to see if he can figure out what the issue is. He thinks it might some kind of firewall issue.

I have no idea what's on today's knitting menu. I have the felted Mary Janes and the hooded scarf still languishing on the needles. Not to mention the second pair of Mickey Mouse socks....

There is something about knitting small items in the round that is special, even more special than just knitting. We all know how addicting socks can be, and one has to wonder why? Yeah, there's the regular things like portability and nearly instant gratification, but hey, dish cloths fit that bill, too, and somehow they just aren't the same thing. But mittens, socks....something about knitting small things in the round....

Really????

I'm really surprised so many people would use cup cozies! I got five replies on my other blog ( identical to this one) which were a resounding "Yes!" How very funny.... Guess that puts you and I, Ray, into the minority! :)

I got tired of making stuff I was supposed to, and made something else I am supposed to make. (My logic lacks, even on good days!) Eldest Grandson asked for a pair of mittens. So I started a pair of mittens. Simple, Red Heart yarn
which is plenty warm for here. I used The Needlenook's pattern..very simple with a thumb gusset. I thought about doing EZ's thumb trick but decided to just add the gusset. They aren't hard to do, just require a bit more counting than the thumb trick. Just got the tip of the thumb to do on this one and can start the mate.

Eldest Granddaughter's first day of school in the new school went very well. The teacher had nothing but great things to say about her and knowing Ann, if there was less than great things to say, she'd say them.

I spent much of my day in the car. Thirty minutes to and from the school (and I forgot her admission paperwork so it was "to school, home, to school again and home again". Two hours later I gave F's husband, B, a ride to the airport. He's going home for Thanksgiving. First holiday since his dad died, so the kids all decided to go home and see Mom. Then a couple hours later, to school, the library, and home again. But, I did get knitting time in between, so it wasn't a totally fiber free day!

Today is laundry. And I have several knitting nests throughout the house I really need to clean up!

If you're looking for the perfect gift for a sock knitting friend, I've found it. Ray, at Knitivity is offering gift certificates for custom dyed sock yarn, at no extra cost! If your recipient doesn't find a colorway that appeals, a custom one can be dyed up! I may leave this hint laying around for my family!