Blanket Yarn Blankets Are Done.

And so the long blanket-a-palooza is done.  Cassie's blanket is complete.

I still have ends to weave in but that won't take too long.  Its a good thing to do after my knitting day is done because it isn't putting stress on my hands and wrists.  The funny thing is this.

This is what remains after I finished.  I have very little of the Twilight Blanket yarn left and slightly more of the mixed colour.  I expected this because the darkest colour does a foundation row of single crochet as well as an additional pattern repeat of the navy at the end so the blanket could start and finish on the same colour.  What blows my mind is the Light Teal leftovers.  That large ball is solid.  I was pulling from the outside of the ball so the centre is still packed as from the factory.  There are the same number of rows of mixed and light teal so they should have used almost the same amount of yarn. The picture show the difference in what I have remaining.  Methinks that the factory gave me a lot more yarn than shown on the label.  

Not such a bad thing unless you were hoping to use up most of the yarn dagnabbit.

I am not quite done with the Blanket yarnfest.  Marcus asked for an amigurumi of Casper.  The colours I used for Casper in his blanket were originally bought for it but I was made aware he needed Casper in his blanket too.  

I had to get other yarn for the amigurumi so there will be lots and lots leftover. Oh well.  I will have to content myself that I will be using up all of the soft grey and the cream leftovers from the other projects. (Casper was a gold coloured tabby cat with a cream coloured tummy)

On the Advent Sock knitting, it goes well.

Heels complete.  I thought about doing half a heel a day and likely, I should have. The hands are a bit iffy this morning. Oh well.  From here on it is easy knitting.  

I did get in enough time on my other socks to finish that second sock heel too.

And now, with my hands iffy, I am starting to wonder if my approach to making heels last longer is still doable for me.  Even the heel flap on this sock was very hard on my hands.  Firm knitting on small needles is maybe harder than I can cope with.  I may have to switch to a technique that I read about a long time ago in Piecework Magazine.  

The magazine article was about mittens that were common in the upper northeastern US.  Instead of knitting a lining or using thrums, they worked yarn on the inside through the purl bumps.  I saw a similar thing done on socks by someone, Lucy Neatby, if I remember correctly.  Yarn was woven in through the purl bumps on the wear areas of the foot.  It will be much easier on my hands that knitting on small needles with doubled yarn.  So I am going to give that a try next year.

My day is well under way.  The second load of laundry is in.  The first cup of coffee is gone and it is time to go for my "walk" with my cubii and a hiking video from the Dave's Walks or Simply Hiking channels on Youtube.  And then knitting in between. It looks like the start of a good day.