My side of the family celebrated Christmas last night at our house. It was a lot of fun, a lot of food, and a lot of laughter!
No fire last night — this is an old photo!
In preparation
We are getting even more snow! It will make it harder to make my appointed rounds. I missed my Friday morning knitting group and still have last minute stocking stuffers to buy!
Hoping all of you have a wonderful holiday with those who are special to you.
“Grandma” loved the knitted gifts for baby! Tears welled up and she said she couldn’t wait to show them to her mom and to her daughter. Quote, “These are the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen!”
Translation = KNITWORTHY!!
One of my friends’ daughter just had their first grandchild. Certainly a notable reason to knit some baby items. Grandma is heading to the daughter’s home this week in the United Arab Emirates — packing must be light!
I first chose a small carseat blanket — about one quarter the size of a regular baby blanket (18×19 inches). The pattern is called the Shipley Baby Carriage Blanket. It is knit out of -er- how do I say it? — Pound of Love. Yep, crappy practical acrylic. What can I say — it’s for a baby. The size is tiny but I think it’s kind of practical — it can be used as a carseat blanket, changing pad, and when the daughter gets older, a blanket for her dolls.
I attempted to kill the acrylic as described here and hope it worked!
That didn’t seem like enough of a gift and my friend LOVED my Saartje’s Seamless Booties (pattern link here), so I made a pair in Tilli Thomas Pure and Simple 100% silk, color “Hope” and a simple hat:
I used the same buttons for these booties as my first pair! Anyway, I think it is kind of a cute little gift. The “grandma” is so supportive of my knitting that I am sure she will appreciate it.
This is really cute and very timely! It made me laugh!
Christmas Knitting by Franklin Habit
I do not know how to insert a YouTube video directly into a post — technically challenged!
We are both spending the day with family, across the many miles. And, no, the turkey pictured did not fall out of Susan’s tree onto the dinner table!
Enjoy some quiet knitting time this weekend!
I hate to “step on” my own post, but I have to share these pics! Do any of you need a turkey for Thanksgiving? Come on over!
I woke up today to a city of ice — it drizzled all night in below freezing temps. While on the phone to Surly (of course! 😉 ), I noticed a whirl in my peripheral vision — the turkeys had descended! We have been overrun with turkeys in our community, and in our neighborhood specifically. We have a huge crabapple tree that holds its fruit throughout the winter, and the turkeys have found it.
They look like vultures and are WAY too big for the tree!! Yikes!
My knitting moniker is taken from my license plate — or vice versa (chicken and egg?). But, I think of my blog name and Ravelry name as a big part of my identity. Recently I renewed my license tabs. To my surprise, I received a shiny new gift from the state:
They are so pretty! The letters are flat, though — they used to be raised. I suppose it is to save money. I like ’em!!
After my Eala Bhan sweater body and collar dried, I sewed the collar on. It fit perfectly into its slot and when I tried on the sweater, sans sleeves, it fit me, too! I did add an i-cord bead around the outside edge of the collar.
I am halfway done with one sleeve and getting completely bored. The more bored I get, the slower I knit! I may have to take a mini-break from this and knit up something small to break through the monotony. I have a few ideas already! 😉
A mini-break does not mean that I am abandoning my Eala Bhan, but knitting should not feel like work. My EZ Green Sweater is all sleeves, too, so I am really stranded on sleeve island!
We have not written much about our respective Eala Bhans. Early on, we kind of made a pact that we would knit this project in tandem and not post individually, on the off chance that one of us would speed ahead of the other. In reality, of course we knit at different paces: we have different amounts of time to spend, life and work and other projects intervene. But right now we are pretty darn close to each other, so we will post! (Note from Sally: No, we are not all that close. Susan is waaaaaay ahead of me. But that’s fine.)
The Yarn
The yarn is lovely. The feel of it, the wooliness of it, the depth of the color. It gets an A+!
When you take colorwork classes from Alice St@rmore, she presents you with a small white box which holds a sample of every yarn color. Of course, her color cards are required to identify the name of the color in question:
The Pattern
The Eala Bhan pattern is crazy detailed. For the collar, Susan had to move between three pieces of paper to track every row! It is easy to see that the sheer magnitude of pattern itself could turn off many knitters. But it is also very beautiful. Sally thinks it might be too dressy to wear often, but Susan thinks it will be a great work sweater.
Progress
We knit the fronts and back in one piece, knowing full well that this would be a slow go. What we did NOT anticipate was how slow the back would be once you made the split at the armholes! We thought we would breeze along after leaving the fronts behind, but it felt even slower! The fronts themselves were speedy quick.
Susan’s Eala Bhan Blocking
The collar
Susan is ready to start knitting the sleeves.
From Sally: I am NOT ready to start knitting the sleeves. I have finished one front. Mine is not yet blocked, and I hope it looks as nice as Susan’s does after the blocking. Here are a couple of my slower progress pictures.
Sally’s Eala Bhan before the split for the arms (the color is very true here)
Sally’s Eala Bhan with just the left front finished (unblocked)
Weather
And here is what Susan woke up to this morning: snow-flavored rain!
One thing great about knitting is that you can usually rip it out and fix it. The bad thing about knitting is ripping it out and fixing it.
I made a few mods to the sleeve for fit and construction. One thing I wanted was to finish the gusset decreases before I started the sleeve shaping — I did not want the increases and decreases to collide (been there, done that — did not like the look!).
I also did not want the sleeve to narrow quite as drastically. In the first version, I did my sleeve decreases every 6 rounds — now I am starting with the every 8 round decreases. This will mean that the sleeve stays wider where my arm is fat wider and get narrow where my arm tapers to the wrist. Duh.
So, I spent most of my weekend knitting time reknitting and figuring. That’s okay 🙁 . I had nuthin’ better to do…
Eala Bhan is also progressing. I have about 6 inches above the armhole split. Yay!!
PS: How many Trick-or-Treaters did you have? We had ONE. Uno. Singleton. Not a duo. I am now forced to eat all of the leftover Snickers before they go stale.
PS2: Today (Wednesday) I am wearing one of my “new” outfits, made a few weekends ago — made to go with my Sunrise Circle. And it does!!
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