More knitting dilemmas

After a four-day knitting hiatus, I finally pulled Mom's stole out to work on last night, and I did 10 rows before I went to bed. Before I put the knitting down, however, I started calculating how much was left to do.... I'm on the 2nd of 5 chart repeats, each of which is 84 rows. I have 20 more rows in this repeat. That makes 272 rows, plus 21 more rows of edging before the knitted-on border. At 10 rows a day, this will take me another month, before I even get to the borders. I did give Mom a non-knitted gift, and told her that I was working on the stole, and I'd get it to her as soon as it's done.

I got some gorgeous yarn in the mail yesterday (charming son said, "You can have Christmas all over again!"). I'd love to play with it, but I'm afraid that if I do, Mom's stole will again be neglected. And there are socks in progress that I haven't touched in what seems like months.

It would probably be best if I keep plugging away at Mom's stole (Leda's Dream) -- it's not that I don't like it -- somehow it's just not very exciting. Could be the yarn, too -- I'm using KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud, in Mist, which is a pale pale purple. It's OK, just not very exciting, either. Aw, I really don't mean to sound so whiny. I'll go knit now.

Christmas knitting

Well, I have finished my Christmas knitting.... except for Mom's stole. Still haven't touched it except for the half-dozen rows I did right after my last post. I think Mom's going to get something else (not knitted ~gasp), and I'll give her the stole as soon as it's finished.

I made 1 hooded scarf for a niece, 2 ski masks/helmet liners for her brothers, felt clogs for my sister (their mother), my daughter, her college roommate, another niece, my mother-in-law (started those on the way to her house on Wednesday, finished them on Friday morning, and we opened gifts Friday evening. I hadn't felted them yet, so I asked her if she thought they'd fit, and the look on her face when she realized how big they were was priceless). A seaman's scarf for my mother-in-law's husband, and Faina's scarf for my sister-in-law.







More felting lessons: I probably should try using something like Soak or Eucalan, that doesn't need rinsing. I used a cold rinse and then spun the water out of my mother-in-law's slippers, and I just about got them too small, with odd little creases in them. So next time, no cold rinse!
I'll be making at least a couple more pair in the near future -- one for my son, and one for me!

Decisions, decisions

I am faced with a bit of a dilemma -- too much Christmas gift knitting! I don't know what came over me this year. Most of it is smaller stuff that can be done rather quickly. Then I have one big project that I actually started in June, didn't finish in time for Mom's birthday in mid-July, and thought surely I had plenty of time to finish it by Christmas. It sat untouched from sometime in early July till just a couple of days ago. If I'd actually done just a couple of rows a day during all that time, I'd be [hmm, where's the calculator? Oh... it looks like I'd have about 30 more rows to do, instead of 300] a lot closer to having it finished. As it is, I calculated the other day that I need to do about 20 rows a day. No problem! Except that a row seems to take about 10 minutes.

So, the decision I'm wrestling with is: do I work on the smaller projects, and do Mom's stole after I finish the other stuff, or do I work on Mom's stole and not get to the other stuff at all? I'm working on one of the smaller projects now, so I guess that's the direction I've decided to go. I've already moved any knitted gifts for members of my immediate household to the end of the queue (and yes, Princess, that includes household members who are off at college but will be home in a couple of weeks, and not going back until the middle of January).

I could do a couple of rows on Mom's stole each day, but concentrate on getting the other projects done. I hope Mom won't be too disappointed -- there is some (very slim) chance that I could get all of this done in the next 22 days. Who knows?

Oh, darn!

This is what I found when I took off my shoes the other day. It's the first time this has happened. These are just over a year old, the Amble pattern from SixSoxKnitalong. The yarn is Jaeger Matchmaker merino, and I decided not too long after I'd made them that it would have been better to have used a size 0 needle instead of the size 1's I used. A firmer fabric would probably have been more durable. A closer look revealed that just one strand of yarn broke, so I latched up the escaped stitches and duplicate stitched/Kitchenered the loops. Ta daa! And just so you can see that there are two whole socks ...


There is another pair of felt clogs finished, and another in the works. Also working on several other Christmas gifts.