Happy New Year!

I'm up at Mom's to celebrate the New Year. She had a checkup mid-December, then spent the next ten days not answering her phone and ignoring her messages. When they finally got thru to her on Christmas Eve Eve, she was told to get right to the ER. I came over as quickly as possible, and Mom spent the night in the hosptital getting a transfusion of three units of blood. Seems she has acute anemia. She was back home for Christmas, and already getting around better than she has in the last 6-8 months. The 29th she had a colonoscopy and endoscopy, both clear. Again, I'm very thankful. There'll have to be more testing, as they don't know yet what's wrong, so I'm very grateful for our little Christmas Miracle, and hopeful that the New Year will bring a a benign diagnosis and easy remedy.

Meanwhile, best wishes to all of my good blog friends and family for the a truly wonderful New Year. Stay safe and take care this weekend.

Thank You Jaala, Thrifting, Knitting and The Holiday Issue!

Thank You Jaala of KnitCircus Magazine (blog) for The Stitch London book; Spud and Chloe project bag, tape measure and two fun hat patterns; two Rocky Mountain Dyeworks mini-skeins; set of six Velvet Hippo stitch markers and Green Mountain Spinnery needle inventory card! What a GREAT package, right? Fun, beautiful, luxurious and useful. My apologies to all the contributors that I can't get a better photo. Hopefully 2012 will be the year of the new camera?



Also in the pic are the scarf and hat I knit to go with the San Antonio/Pueblo sweater from this post. I've been wearing that sweater for over three years, and never got a word, good or bad, from anyone except Mom. In the last week 5 people have complimented the GREAT sweater, and it's nice that the hat and scarf match. OK. I don't get it, but ... OK.

Some booties for Mom made from scaps. Just a ribbed rectangle gathered for the toe and seamed for the heel with a little cuff. They're loosely based on baby booties shown in a segment of Knit and Crochet Today.



Some more knitting, plus a few thrift shop finds. The pink scarf is the same yarn as a hat from this post. I said I disliked the yarn so much I might just donate it. I finally decided I couldn't be that cruel to some poor, unsuspecting thrifter, even though that's how I got it in the first place. The blue is another unlabeled thrift shop find, a fuzzy eyelash in deep blue with spots of silky multicolor. I've got another almost full skein of this yarn, and may someday make a hat to match.



From the thrif shops: The Celtic Collection by Alice Starmore, $2.00.

4 skeins of yarn - 50¢ each - 2 Classic Elite Mackenzie - Silk(30%) Wool(70%) Tweed 100 gr, 176 yds, 1 Adrienne Vitadinni Gina - 97% Wool/3% Nylon 50gr 36 yds, 1 unlabeled, burn test shows 1 strand of acrylic boucle in a shiny Dark Pewter shade with 1 strand of fuzzy wool/mohair in a slightly lighter shade of Grey.

This may be the last post for this year, so I'll take this opportunity to say Happy Holidays to One and All, and May Every Blessing Come Your Way.

Cheers and Tears

Hip Hip Hooray for Fran Baker, wonderful lady, wonderful author - check out her Regency series here, to share the adventures of Miss Rose, Miss Francie and Miss Pippa! (or her Amazon page to find even more of her exciting titles), and wonderful knitter, who sent me a skein of SuperSocke 100 yarn from her latest giveaway on Romancing The Yarn. It's colorway 1056, a cheery combo of red, yellow, white and blue that reminds me of a carnival tent. I'm sorry not to have a pic, camera problems again. OK, the truth is I left the camera at Mom's, so technically it's a memory problem.

Gratitude also goes out to Create For Less and their blog, Think Crafts, which celebrated a recent anniversary by giving away 10 $10 GCs a day for a month! I was lucky enough to receive two, and finally chose two books - Son of Stitch & Bitch and Classic Elite Knits.

Another generous company, Leisure Arts, whose blog is Everyday Life At Lesiure Arts, sent me the entire colection of six books of patterns for their new Knook product. You may recall that I'd won the Knook set in a previous giveaway, so winning the pattern books is a nice treat indeed! The set includes Baby Beanies, Baby Blankets, Dishcloths, Learn To Knook, Simple Scarves and Urban Hats. Thanks!

Congratulations to my good blog-buddy Vivianne, who has been quite fortunate herself lately!

Now we move on to the ugly side of life, AKA: my knitting. I'd designed a dress for Mom's Christmas present, which was to have a large scale entrelac skirt, knit from the bottom up, that would be joined by three-needle bindoff to a top-down circular yoke bodice with a single band of smaller entrelac, and even smaller entrelac at the cuffs. I'd done a couple small entrelac pieces before, so I naturally considered myself an expert at, if not the actual inventor of, this fascinating knitting technique!

Merrily I go knitting the skirt, starting with a crochet provisional caston at the hem, so I can knit up a folded hem later. With my stockinette guage as a guide, I cast on enough stitches for a full skirt. Decreasing along the way, I planned to have a nice tapered line.

The nature of entrelac on the needles makes if very difficult to get an accurate idea of size, since what you've got is several sections of bias knitting hanging at angles, but it seemed to be somewhat according to plan. It wasn't until I'd done the top triangles that I could see it hanging as it would when worn.

It should have been about 28" inches long, based on the stockinette gauge. I'd seen that it looked shorter than that while I was working it, but thought that the weight would pull it down some when it was hanging properly. It didn't. Tug and pull as I might, it did not want to be more than 22-23" long.

Ok, thinks I, perhaps the tight provisional caston is part of the problem, and if the fabric is released to hang as it wants, it will straighten out and lengthen some. So, out comes the caston, and yes indeed, the fabric did grow! Unfortunately, not down, but around. The hem circumfrence was a whopping 68"! SO, what I'd planned as a gracefully tapered skirt, ankle length, turned out to mid-calf length hoop skirt, without the hoops.

Out came the reference books and the computer searches. It seems to be a well known fact that the slanted fabric of entrelac knitting results in a wider/shorter fabric than indicated by the stockinette gauge. It has been widely discussed and written about. Many fora and symposia have been held on the subject. I guess my invitations blew off the porch.

Froggy came a courting' and he did rip, uh-huh, uh-huh! On to plan B.

Merry Christmas Mom, I made you an ashtray in the shape of my hand! Out of yarn!