The holidays impacted me, in a good way. I love gift giving and I’m always inspired to make most of the gifts on my list. My ambitions out-paced my capabilities and time. Sure there was baking, and sewing, and knitting and punching-needling, and more knitting and yarn-buying and online shopping and actual bricks and mortar shopping and lots of package making (like my machine-stitched envelopes and bags below made with sheets of foamy from kids aisle in Michaels, Joann, etc) and shipping and still finishing gifts. Yikes!
Knitting dominated December and continues still into January. I just gotta knit, because I just gotta buy yarn, due to my limited self-control in the yarn acquisition department. Back in October I discovered that I too could knit in the round when I conceived of a bucket-ish kind of drawstring sack. With familiar circular needles I calculated and knit and calculated and the bag worked out shape wise and I also picked up the I-cord process. If I just hadn’t wanted to explore felting, it would have been fine. But no, I thoughtlessly washed it and dried it with a white towel, thereby destroying it’s rustic handspun qualities but overcoming my fear of seamless knitting!
Anyway… that in-the-round project gave me confidence to join the millions that knit socks and gloves on 3 or more double-pointed needles. I didn’t want to be left out. I selected a basic pattern online for a fingerless glove at and a learning skein of fluff from AC Moore. The biggest hurdle was in that first round, linking the two ends and then keeping the stitches from twisting long enough to see a tubular formation. I was just in too much of a hurry to check my gauge, so after conquering the first round and knitting my way up to the thumb situation and following the thumb formation steps, I had to rip it all out and start over, adjusting the gauge so the glove would actually fit my niece’s hand and not a gorilla’s hand. Though a shot of the fuzzy fuschia fingerless glove on a gorilla’s hand might have been interesting I opted to finish the two gloves for Meagan.
Proof of this pivotal moment is not well documented by an out of focus photo, here again enthusiasm got the best of me.
As it did again when the Koigu yarn array in my lys finally caught my attention and I took home 3 skeins of KPPPM blues and reds, envisioning piles of Koigu fingerless gloves for my Christmas list. After the first few inches of glove number 1, I realized there just wasn’t enough time for me to knit them and ship them to their destinations for Christmas.
Other Christmas preparations overtook me and after a week I had already abandoned the fingerless glove idea in favor of a feather and fan/ chevron Koigu scarf pattern from Joelle Hoverson's book Last minute gifts to knit. I have the book on my list now as well as other knitting books to inspire. Or for that matter, it's easy enough to go to flickr and see all the amazing knitted projects and get inspired!
So as I look back at December there were lots of susanbmade things to record---I just didn't realize it until yesterday. The Noro Sakura fingerless gloves (unfinished),
a brioche stitch scarf in cotton yarn from the Yarn Garden, Portland,OR,
the pile of wool and cotton floss punchneedle buttons destined for my etsy shop,
and more...if I could control the placement of jpgs!
