Knitting crunch time

The good news is I'm on the home stretch of sock one, reaching the toes tonight, should be able to kitchener off tomorrow and start the race on sock number 2. I think the fit is good, my mom has some feet issues and I have to adjust the sock to her foot. It is a bit of a loose fit on my foot so it should fit well on her. I have made gifts for my family for years. I've been doing one type of needlework or crafting since I was a teenager. They always appreciated anything I ever gave them. But I must say, my mom has enjoyed my hand knit socks more than almost anything I have ever given her. Funny how something as simple as a sock can bring such joy to a person.

And hard as it is, I'm desperately fighting the urge of spinning. I simply can't break now. I have 13 days to finish both socks and a second Norwegian mitten. Both the socks and the mitten are fair isle so I'm not as fast as I could be on "plain" knitting. But I'm pretty sure I can still get these two gifts done.

And watch on the day I get home from celebrating Christmas at my sisters, I'm betting I will be online picking out a couple new batches of roving to send to me from Etsy. smile....see that is only 16 days away. So while one part of me is wishing time would slow down so I could knit faster, the other part of me is wishing time to fly by so I can get to spinning! No wonder I'm in such a quandary.

No picture today

Why you ask? because the sock karma is fading! I did turn the heel last night on sock number 1. There is still hope, but between work and shopping for others, my time seems to be slipping away faster than normal. Lists to prepare for others to shop from. Shoes to find by searching multiple stores. Deals that must be purchased TODAY ONLY! all kill my knitting time. I slog home at the end of the day tired and dragging. But I still believe I will make it. yup, that is my plan anyway.

Christmas Socks sabatoged

This is what threw me off my carefully calculated path. Roving. Pretty roving. And an empty spindle. sigh...empty no more. but it is sure a nice diversion.

All is not lost, just merely delayed. I wouldn't want to be cocky and just fly through those socks. No, I'm much better at working under pressure. Let's see, from today, I will have 16 days until I must have 2 completed socks under the tree. TWO....not one, not one and 1/2. But two. And I'm sure I will do that....see here is how far I got....still sock one, but heh! I'm through with the cuff part and flying on the plain section. Tonight's plan is to stop with sock one and start the more labor intensive part of sock two.

But guess what is calling my name....

Darn if I don't have more roving....and more room on the spindle....sigh...I'm hopeless....well after all I still have 16 days to make a pair of socks. I'm sure if I have 15 days I can still make a pair of socks!

Day 3 in the Christmas socks campaign

Well I didn't get as far as I hoped last night. My mom and girls and I watch Survivor together and couldn't very well knit on the socks during that! But after getting upstairs I waded through another 10 rows of the chart. So I'm only on row 30. 14 rows left. Hopefully I will finish the cuff tonight. I am happy with how it is turning out though.

Tomorrow is my Emily's first sleep over. She is so excited, that may be why her suitcase was packed last night! smile....

While Emily is away, I'm hoping to take Anna and do some Christmas shopping. Then later I can take Emily on her own and see what we can take care of.

I'm wishing Santa would bring me a spinning wheel for Christmas but since I'm Santa for my family and we put the Santa gifts in our stockings, I strongly doubt that will happen! But maybe I can convince Santa to leave me some nice roving....now that I think I can do!

Day Two of Christmas sock

So here we are, day two in the mad dash to the finish of the Christmas knitting....see Exhibit 1

I made good progress in just about 2 hours of knitting last night. I'm on row 19 of the 44 row section of the cuff. Then it is plain knitting for the entire rest of the sock. Since I also will drop down a size in needles at that time, it will be easy for me to immediately start again on the second cuff and churn out the fair isle section again. My fear is I will be knitting late into the last few nights and mistakes in fair isle are much more likely when I'm tired versus knitting plain stockinette row after row. So my goal is that by the end of next week, I will have both cuff sections completed. We will see.

I also think it will take at least a day to weave in all the ends, good grief, do you see that mess? But I'm also loving the pattern and the yarn. I haven't knit on socks for the last couple months and I really miss it. Between using Addi turbos and lovely sock yarn, there just isn't nicer knitting around for me.

Christmas Knitting

So call me crazy. I have 3 weeks to finish a pair of socks and a pair of mittens. And one mitten is about an hour away from being done.

see? This is for my nephews lovely fiancee, Anna. I'm farther along than this picture, I'm actually reducing for the top of the mitten. I figure about 10 more rows there and the thumb and cross off one mitten from my list. But then I realized I didn't think things through quite as well as I should have. See I'm not going to see Anna for Christmas and I will see Kyle at his folks place for Christmas weekend. But I will see my mom and that is where it gets interesting. I plan on giving my mom her socks on Christmas Eve when it is just the four of us, mom, my girls, and me. Yup. That is in exactly 3 weeks. The socks I picked out are from my favorite sock book, Favorite socks, 25 Timeless patterns from Interweave. And her socks have a beautiful fair isle pattern on the large cuff which then turns into plain stockinette for the leg and foot. She asked me for them last year, but I was a newbie sock knitter and wasn't comfortable with fair isle yet. But I've gotten better, can do fair isle (see above) and am thrilled to be able to make these for her. But that means I need to have these socks finished in 3 weeks. And the knitting must be done when she isn't around. hmmmm....and here is where I am today with her socks.....

Yup, I think I'm in the phase of knitting delusion that the Yarn Harlot talks about. But man, I'm sure I can get it done! Stay tuned.....

Spinning 101

I took a spinning class a week ago and I'm thrilled. I tried to learn from a DVD but clearly I needed more interactive help than that. So I was frustrated trying to create something that looked remotely like yarn. When I saw the class at All About Yarn to learn on a drop spindle, I think I called to sign up within 2 minutes of receiving the email update of their classes. And it was great. The end result is that I can now spin something that resembles yarn. The first attempts resulted in lumpy bumpy yarn which we were corrected and told we had made "Designer Yarn" smile....whatever you call it, I was still proud of my efforts.


Lumpy bumpy it may be, it was still something I made. The drop spindle works quite well although I admit I'm not great about letting it remain spinning while I'm drafting etc and pinching the yarn to move the twist up. I tend to send it spinning and then clamping it between my knees while I work the twist up the roving. Maybe with more practice I will get more confident on that part.

So after working on half of the roving I had 3 balls of lumpy bumpy designer yarn.....so I started again and look what I ended up with this time!



This looks much closer to regular yarn to me! Still have sections that are lumpy than the rest, but I'm quite proud of this. There will definitely be more spinning in my future. I might have gone online to Etsy and purchased a couple more batches of 4 ounces of roving. smile....can't wait to get it and start spinning.

But in the mean time I have some Christmas knitting to take care of.

I'm about 2/3 done with the first mitten for my nephew's fiancee, Anna. Although my knitting was slowed this weekend because I tweaked my back. But I'm much better and think I can handle sitting for the amount of time I need to get some knitting done.