moonfrog

What a roller coaster! Two weeks of ups and downs are bringing us right into this new year full of hope but with an extra dose of reality. Amid our very satisfying social whirl, a dear one in our family circle lost his young adult son. So along with the festivities have been times of remembering and mourning. Isn’t that just the essence of life anyway? Sadness and happiness go hand in hand. I expect this next year to be full of both, always hoping that the happy times will soften the sad ones. Today I’m determined to work my way back to what we call normal around here, including sharing often with my blogging friends. So without further ado . . .

My amazing husband did some major sneaking about — visiting spinning forums, researching retailers, calling on a spinning friend — and blessed me with the Majacraft Rose spinning wheel I had decided we could not afford. And he did it without breaking the bank! When my oldest son approached him about what Mom might want for Christmas, the wheels started spinning. I guess I’m a victim of a sweet conspiracy! I feel thoroughly spoiled.

I’ve managed to practice treadling using the angora-wool blend I bought with my simple drop spindle. And a couple nights ago our friends Erik and Connie, who helped point DH toward the right wheel, came over to welcome The Rose to her new home. While the boys sampled some fine brews, Connie gave me a great demo on the wheel, answering all my first questions. And she brought me some beautiful Romney roving from Idaho that will be easier for practicing. There it is in the very appropriate bag with  roses and a great big Thank You! Next to it is the Navajo Churro roving that DH ordered with the wheel. That is supposed to be enough for a sweater, so I don’t want to waste any of it on first practice runs. Doesn’t it all look like a wonderfully fluffy cloud? I’m looking forward to trying the different varieties.

DH also gave me two books to get me started again. I’ve read Spinner’s Companion through and think I know more than I did back in the 70’s when I spun some very rough, thick wool on a wheel similar to the Country Spinner. I have a long way to go before I spin any decent yarn, but I am happy learning.

I want to send out a big Thank You! to Tracy and Jean at Woolly Designs, the great people who held DH’s hand while he ordered this fantastic surprise for me. I had planned to buy my wheel from Katy at The Legacy Farm, but it would have been a bit of a wait until I had saved the money myself. Both distributors have superb customer service.

And that shirt kit that I was afraid DH would be getting for Christmas? Yep. It’s still in the works. The flame inserts are very cool, though. I’ll show you when the construction advances a bit more. I knit a couple rows on DH’s socks, too.
I did manage to finish another hat and start one more. This one is made with Plymouth Encore worsted weight, using the Chocolate Ribs Hat pattern. I’d like to finish a couple more hats for this round of Caps for a Cure, so that will take priority this week.

And that funky-cool headlamp is something I put on my wish list and received from my generous stepdaughter. Now I can knit while DH drives, even if it is dark! I met a woman at band practice who uses one of these to knit sometimes. I think every knitter who travels should have one of these — just in case the situation calls for Extreme Knitting. Maybe that’s Extemely Hilarious Knitting!
Tonight we are going out to dinner with friends, retiring early, then hitting the road on the motorcycles for the Polar Bear Run. Brrrrr! Happy Freezin’ New Year! Hope you are toasty warm and life treats you well as the New Year rolls in with all its surprises!

A hummingbird entertained me while I waited for an appointment yesterday. Such a simple thing, but quite a treat to see this hardy fellow sipping nectar in the cold air while I sat cozy inside a vehicle. It was a welcome interlude in a terribly busy week.

I only managed to knit half a hat on our trip out of town. We had a great visit with family and did some marathon shopping on the way home.

Another treat came in the mail while we were gone. My Knit the Classics ornament swap package came from Jamie, all the way from Canada! The wreath ornaments she made are hanging on a little tree made from branches in our bathroom. I wanted something special to go with a couple very special ornaments, and these fit just right.

And check out the frog stickers and cute froggy tape measure. Jamie also put in a bottle of Euclan, which I’ve been wanting to try. That will work nicely for chemo caps.

Also, inside that shiny green tree box (which is now hanging on our big tree) were some awesome stitch markers that she made.

There are two beaded markers, a silver angel, and my name. How cool is that!

I want to show you a close up of the cute, tiny buttons on the wreaths. There are several kinds. They are too cute! It was fun to receive such a thoughtfully put together package. Everything is great! Thanks, Jamie!

Christmas preparations are progressing well. The tree is decked out, the packages will be wrapped tonight. Bread and cookies will be baked tonight as well. Birthday plans are coming together for my oldest son. I suppose I have no one to blame for the holiday-interrupting timing of his birth other than myself. So it is a fine old tradition to make a huge lasagna and a lemon meringue pie on the 23rd. Then we open packages on Christmas Eve and have a big dinner (and another lemon meringue pie!) on Christmas Day.
There is one gift that might not make it to completion, though, mostly due to the proximity of the recipient. I have the fabric and pattern to make DH a shirt, but he just doesn’t leave for long enough periods of time to let me work on it much. I like having him around, and I’ve decided he might just get a nice “shirt kit” for Christmas. You know — a pattern, fabric, buttons, and one big promise to stitch it up the week after.

Hope all your plans, whatever they may be, are coming together in ways that please you! And just in case I don’t make it back here until after the festivities are over — Have a Wonderful Holiday my Dear Readers!

I guess this is the Year of the Potholder at my house. Four sets done. The blue holiday teddy bear set included two potholders, a hotpad filled with rice, a mitered dishcloth, a scrubby, and an oven mitt. There will also be a store-bought dish towel that matches. This one is for DH’s mom, who we will be visiting this weekend in San Jose. He’d like me to make one more oven mitt, which I will whip out tonight.

Of course, after I was halfway through this set, DH reminded me that his mother was a seamstress for many years. Oh Sh*t! I used to sew a lot and did it quite well, but I haven’t been sewing much at all in the last ten years and it seems I can no longer sew in a straight line. Oh, well. I’m hoping her eyesight is as bad as mine. She’s 86, so it ought to be!

I’ve also been decorating the house. I put evergreen boughs on the porch and added the quaint little gnome to the porch scene. I’ve been wanting one of these for a while. I just hope the high school kids who pass by our house every day don’t take a liking to it. I lost a large frog statue a couple years ago that way.

The other three sets were just potholders. I found some really cute fabric and really enjoyed making these. Now if I can only decide what kind I want for myself and find time to make them! One set of the kitties has already headed to a new home in Kansas.

Along with regular quilt batting, I used a new insulating batting called Insul-Bright that reflects the heat with mylar. If it works like it says it does, these should work really well.
So far, the packages are mailed, the cards are written and sent, and my planned sewing and knitting is done. I’ve purposely kept the bar low this year to reduce the stress. I hope to finish the gift shopping on our trip out-of-town. I have some bread and cookies to bake and some fudge to cook when we get back home, then it’s just pies and Christmas dinner. Not a bad list at all.

I also managed to finish listening to my latest audiobook, The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd. This is the first of her books that I have read. There was some interesting folklore and background on the setting. And the religious detail was also interesting. The story, though, was rather predictable and implausible. I didn’t feel invested in the characters’ lives or in the outcome. It was not a waste of time, but not one that I would add to my recommended reading list.
Hope things are feeling manageable on your end, and you are enjoying the best of the holiday season, whatever that may include for you!

The new Knitty is up and, as always, there’s a pattern in it just for me. It’s called Lauren, and it uses a main color and some contrast. I think the Lorna’s Laces I recently bought and the Peruvian Tweed alpaca that I love to fondle would make up just right with this pattern. The alpaca isn’t bulky weight, but I think I could make it work.

There are hats and mittens and a great variety of original patterns, as always. So go check it out! I’m going to make a little swatch tonight.

Thanks for all the sweet comments about My Herringbone Hat! I do hope some of you will be able to use the pattern. Let me know if it works for you!

I finished my project for the Knit the Classics ornament swap in spite of all the comings and goings of the season. I’ve been wanting to do something like an advent calendar for a long time, and came up with this variation on the theme: 12 mittens for the twelve days of Christmas. Each one holds a small gift to be opened in the days leading up to Christmas Day.

Now, this is not true to the origins of 12 days of Christmas tradition, which were actually the 12 days after Christmas, when the wise men were traveling to Bethlehem. The link above also tells of urban myths associated with the Twelve Days of Christmas song and some humor connected to it. For me, the fun of having a tiny gift for several days as Christmas approaches was the incentive for the project. Gathering all the little goodies to fill the mittens gave me a good dose of Christmas spirit. These will be tucked in with some other fun things and shipped off in time to start the countdown.
I’ve also been working on the Karlchen top-down hat pattern from SmallKnits.com, but that is a total wash! After the increases, I put it on a 16-inch circular and knit it in snatches of time when the intended recipient was out of the house. I had the strange feeling I should put it on a longer cable to check the size. I ignored that impulse, much to my dismay. Karlchen is HUGE! It’s even baggy on DH’s ginormous noggin’. I will try this pattern later and figure out where I went wrong. So it goes.

Our lives are full of holiday gatherings and preparations right now, as are many of your’s. Sunday was a motorcycle Toy Run, riding from one town to another bearing gifts for children in need. Tuesday we went to a madrigal choir dinner. What a hoot! The singers were all dressed in renaissance clothing and were quite a raucous bunch. We toasted with wassail, a spiced punch, while shouting Huzzah! There were strange rules of conduct, since the choir members were noblemen and we were but peasants with no manners. The funniest rule was that the men at the table were given the salt shakers, to be shared only for the price of a kiss. You can imagine how this honor pleased the gentlemen at the table!

One last thing before I sign off today… My package arrived from the Townsend Sock Kal’s Hot Socks Swap. Vickie sent me all the makings of some fine socks. The Sockotta is one I haven’t used, so I’m looking forward to seeing how that knits. The colors of the Cervinia are awesome! She sent some cool patterns from a calendar, lotion in melon-cucumber - one of my favorites, a cute sock blocker key chain kit, and lots of flavored cocoa. Yum!

She made me a frog cloth, too, which is above and beyond! It has been happily washing dishes for several days now.

I’m a bit of a lurker on the Townsend group, but it is a very friendly bunch of knitters and there are great patterns shared there. I just can’t keep up since I’m such a slow sock knitter, but I enjoyed this swap. There are plans for a tote bag swap and an unloved sock yarn swap in January.

My So Called Scarf was one of my favorite projects. I rarely make scarves due to our mild climate, but Stacey’s herringbone scarf pattern gave me hours of enjoyable knitting. I like the rythym of the stitch and the way it looks. I like the scarf so much, that I was determined to make a hat that matched it. I looked high and low and finally gave in to the inevitable. I would have to make it up myself to get just what I wanted. So I pieced together a couple patterns to make My Herringbone Hat.

The lovely yarn I used was part of a swap and I don’t know the brand, although I believe it is merino wool. I have searched for it online and not found any like it. If you recognize the colorway or the type, let me know where I can get some more! It’s a single ply, loosely spun, super soft wool.

The directions that follow are more of a rough recipe than a pattern. Take a little of this, a pinch of that… mix it together and wear it well!