Preview

Guys, I have so many things to talk about, but the to-do list is ten miles long and looks unlikely to change for at least another two weeks.  Here are a few hints of what's to come, when things are a bit more under control.

Finished: Pun'kin Socks!

Two pumpkin stems . . .

  . . . plus 32 pumpkins and 32 hay bales . . .

Vanishing Pumpkins

The pun'kin socks were almost done.  I still needed to graft the first toe, but the second one was just about ready for the toe decreases.

These have been my transit knitting.  I spend about an hour per weekday waiting for or aboard public transit, which for this pattern corresponded to getting 5-10 rows done in a given day, particularly once I memorized the pattern and stopped referring to the chart.  I had already picked out my next pattern and was looking for a time slot to wind the yarn.

A Deadline Whooshed By

I am clearly terrible at deadline knitting.  I have been working on my grandmother's shawl for 26 days and have just finished chart 3.  This means that I am 26.4% done with the body of the shawl.  At this rate, I can expect to finish to the body of the shawl in approximately 73 days, or December 21.  At that point I would still have the border and bind-off to do.

This shawl is not going to make it to my grandmother in time for her birthday.  It will be a Christmas present.  I would still like to pick up the pace a bit, but it is coming along nicely, if slower than I wanted. 

It doesn't look particularly nice at this stage, because right now it is a crumpled wad.  Its ugly duckling stage will end, though.

Meanwhile, the punkin socks are moving along nicely.  At some point soon, I should convince myself that I can use some home-knitting time to graft the first toe shut instead of knitting on Elizabeth, and then the first sock will be completely finished.  At my current pace, I should reach of the toe of the second within a week.  I should have pumpkin socks in time for Halloween!

Shawl Status

September is devoted to finishing project both at work and on the needles, and right now the total volume is bearing down hard.  Scientific research and mental stimulation is all well and good, but sometimes the only logical response to difficult students and difficult projects and difficult deadlines is to eat ice cream for dinner.

Peanut butter cup ice cream with additional peanut butter and chocolate chunks.  It was worth it.  Luckily I also have knitting to relax.  Let's check on the knitting projects, shall we?

This rather snarled-looking mess is my grandmother's shawl.  It looks much better stretched a bit.

This shawl is a sampler with several bands featuring different Shetland lace patterns.  I have finished the first band, which means I've completed the first 66 rows.  As the entire shawl is about 220 rows, I estimate that I have knit about 9% of the total shawl. 

I also estimate that I am probably not knitting fast enough for my intended deadline.  I'll work on that.

The punkin socks are progressing better than the shawl; I am working on the toe of the first sock.  Their progress is actually helped by the mess of traffic and construction around the city, as I knit while the bus creeps from stop to stop.  I should be casting on the second half of the pair in a day or two.

For now, though, back to the shawl.  Grandma deserves her present!

A Shawl for Grandma

My maternal grandmother was the original crochet person of the family.  She made several afghans for my family, most of which are still in our possession.  She also taught me to crochet when I was about eight.  She lived in another state at the time and taught me during a visit, so my mother supplemented my knowledge with a teach-yourself-crochet book, and I played with the craft off and on into my twenties.  I got more serious about yarn crafts in graduate school, eventually learning to knit, discovering Ravelry, and turning into someone who blogs about these things on the internet.

My grandmother does not crochet any more, due to pain in her hands and a shortened attention span.  She still enjoys talking about it, though, and has told me numerous times about a friend of hers who made crocheted lace.  My grandmother thought it was the most beautiful thing, and it motivated her to learn to crochet herself.

My grandmother turns 80 next month.  I am going to make her a lace shawl.

Finished: Rose Crowns

This is the second handmade I included in my fairy tale swap package.  I have found that I like to come up with three or four handmade ideas for these swaps, because something invariably goes wrong in making one or more or them.  After the tammy, I knew I wanted to do something with roses, because roses are a feature of two of my partner's selected fairy tales.  I knew my partner had a small daughter, that she read fairy tales with . . . and fairy tale costume items then seemed like a good idea.

So I went to ravelry and did a pattern search.  I didn't like anything that I liked in the first couple pages.  Instead, I made up my own pattern for a rose crown.  The roses were made following these instructions, but using shorter starting chains to make rose buds.  I knit the headbands so that they would be stretchy, and simply cast on three stitches and knit until the bands were long enough, where long enough was fourteen inches because that seemed reasonable for a toddler girl. 

Then, the morning when I needed to ship this package, I sat down with some additional green yarn and sewed on all the roses.  It is important to crowd the flowers together at this point; otherwise they stick out funny when the crown is worn. 

Aren't they fun, though?