Secret, Secret

Holiday knitting is coming along. I've finished two gifts already - and one I finished twice. I'll tell that story in a few months. (Hint: my personal knitting motto is "gauge, schmage!") (Another hint: frogging fun fur is bad enough, but frogging fun fur held together with a strand of mohair is damn near impossible.) (That one was for you, mom!)

There's not much going on that's not gift-related. My Dippers are as stalled as ever -- the last two or three times I've taken them out to work on them, I've started in the wrong place on the chart and spent the entire time working on them knitting the wrong rows and then tinking them back. Not very productive. So those are aside for right now. I also sometimes get into these phases with socks where I feel like figuring out how to turn the heel is going to be a huge ordeal, so I avoid them until I can dredge up the energy to figure them out. Not once has the heel or whichever part actually been as bad as I was anticipating, but that doesn't stop me from letting it hang over my head.


Here's my pet ferret, Daisy:



Daisy did get put aside for a while, but I've found myself needing an occasional break from wrestling with the concentration-intensive gift knitting, and a row or two of double crochet breaks it up nicely. It's also quite warm already, so it's nice to hold in my lap while I'm working on other stuff. I've been trying to alternate light and dark colors, but at this point it's clear that this is going to be an object of more practical value than aesthetic.

Let's see what else is on my camera, shall we? Oh yes, here is a blanket I threw together recently:

Once upon a time, I got a new comforter for my bed. Along with it, I got the most beautiful comforter cover and sheets and pillowcases in the world. Time passed, the various parts of the bed set declined in health, and the new dog adopted a balled-up sheet that had come out of the laundry quite ripped.

I'm not big on throwing things away, and the dog seemed happy to rearrange this big ball of sheet and sleep on it every day, so aside from the occasional trip through the laundry, it stayed in this state for several years. Then, finally, I got around to washing it, cutting it up, and sewing it into a blanket. It's probably about 5'x4', and I did it envelope-style, sewing two equal pieces down on three and most of the fourth sides to a large piece of batting, then turning it inside-out and sewing the turning hole closed. Although I was able to get pretty big whole pieces out of the material, there were several places that already had holes or were about to, so I cut out simple patches from the remaining material, turned the edges under, and sewed those through all three layers. Voila! Quilting! I sewed 1/4" in from the edges, quilted some square shapes in random places, and then quilted some straight lines down the entire length of the blanket. All told it probably took about 6 hours, and I'm really happy with it. The dog still crumples it up and rearranges it, but it has a bit more of a backbone now.

Okay, I think that's it. I have grandiose plans to get my gifts finished wellllll before Christmas this year, so maybe I'll have some actual knitting to show before then.