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Mom’s cabled scarf:
   Dad’s cabled scarf:

Wait! There’s more…

Are you down with dpn’s?

Let’s get cozy, rosebud! (Sorry, Craftster.org, no irony.)

 

(give thanks to the gods of hackneyed HTML that the images are visible.)

How can I explain, when there are few words I can choose?

Well, it’s not that there’s few words, just not a lot of time to compose and arrange those words to summarize my knitting since before Xmas. Where to start?

Looking through the images on my camera, it’s been lots of gift knitting. I don’t know if I’ll get around to posting images… one day. I just hope I don’t erase them before. (see? another clever reference to the title.)

I finished the pair of scarves for my parents, with contrasting stripes (red with gray stripes and gray with red stripes). They were my first cabling project, a simple pattern. One was finished and shipped before Xmas, the other the week following.

My sister also got a scarf, a variations on Betsy’s Fizz scarf (just two rows of a dark blue sandwiching the neon green). I do not have images of that unfortunately. Becky will just have to send me a photo.

Chum, my downstairs lesbian, got a delicious chocolate and baby blue hat. It was my first attempt at adapting a pattern, not just in color, but with different gauge yarn as well. Unlike my first hats, this one actually decreased and were my first DPN action. The learning didn’t stop there. My adaptation, although circumferance-wise was on, the length wasn’t there. So I just picked up stitches around the bottom edge and knit in the other direction. Easy peasy, no? No. Upon binding off, I learned that longtail cast-on is much more elastic than traditional binding off. In the spirit of Missy, I had to “flip it and reverse it.” Introducing the suspended bind off. Gosh, I love reference books.

Just this past Monday, one of the sisters who works at the cafe around the corner had her first child. In January, I gave her my first baby hat! (the umbilical cord hat from S’nB in a purple grey. It flew off my needles. Again, I don’t have a photo, but I could try to get one once I meet the little niña. Note to self, get more friends with babies.

My final gift project was inspired by an Xmas gift from my dear friend Carol. She’s the woman who shephered me through the world of ultrarunning. I call her “Old Hen” and she calls me her “Chickadee.” She’s an amazing athlete, approaching 60, who at least annually completes an 100-mile race. (Yes, running.) Since I’m not racing much any more (not that I ever did more than 50 miles in one stretch), we don’t have our hours together to chat. In lieu of time on the trails, we meet for tea dates after work.

She gave me some rose tea (one of her favorites, I’m much more of a green guy), so it’s only natural that I made her a tea cozy intarsia’ed to look like a pink rosebud. That pattern also went quickly; just a week, even while working my usual hectic schedule!

There, I feel much more up-to-date. My cocoon sweater has been completed and assembled as well, but that’s fodder for an entry entirely to itself. It will need surgery to rectify a Rennaissance Faire-like poof on either shoulder. In the meantime, I’ve got these to-be felted clogs to knit.

Verbosely yours,

S