Yarns that Whisper

I knit for a very short time on my sweater this morning.  sometimes you just have to give your hands a rest.  So being it was my zoom knitting day, I had a good long think about what I was going to knit.  I am trying not to start a hundred different things so I was restricting it to what was in my WIP chest.  I dug around for a bit and came up with a very pretty shawl that I was working on.  

I was knitting Carina Spencer's Brush Creek Shawl with some Truly lovely delicate Shilasdair yarn that a friend, Rae gave me a few years ago.  The yarn is gorgeous stuff and while I liked the design, I wasn't really committed to it.  I am very committed to the yarn though.  It is a soft blend of merino, angora, cashmere and baby camel and it deserved a pattern I really liked.  Here it is in its shawl incarnation.

I do wear shawls here at home.  They cover the back of my neck if I am not wearing a turtleneck.  I appreciate them, but the ends kind of get in the way when I am doing things.  What I really, really like to wear is my cowls.  The one I made of Adam and Eve and some Shibui Silk Cloud is in constant use.  I also use the Topsy Turvy Moebius made from a Skein of Silk Mini Maiden from Handmaiden. That has been in constant use since I finished it.  I also wear the cowl I made for keeping in my car for emergencies except it is out in my car.  For emergencies.   Clearly I need more soft delicate cowls.  I did knit one the other day but that is going to be one for the car.  It is too long and a bit bulky for in the house.  It is nice though.  

It struck me that what this yarn needed was a cowl pattern for 3colours with some interesting stuff going on but not too much patterning.  The angora in this gives the yarn its flair and show so you don't want to hide that with lots of lace or cables.  This is one of those yarns where it just needs to speak its own truth.  And I just happened to remember Joji Locatelli's 3 Color Cashmere Cowl.  That was exactly what I was looking for.

That deep orange red madder colour will do the showy bit and the other two softer tones will be doing the alternating dance.

I just finished the first plain section.  Plain is not really the right word.  There is an alternating openwork pop every few stitches and rows to keep you focused and on your toes.  I have just added the second colour and then that whole repeats again, first in the mushroom, then in the natural.

The stitches are just utterly perfect as they go round and round.  The yarns whispers.  It doesn't flow or drape.  At the end of this, I know it is just going to whisper and settle into soft folds around my neck and I can hardly wait to wear it so I can whisper back.

Irritation and Solutions

I am not sure you can see it here.  There are two rows of dark blue, then a row of white and light blues and then, active on my cable and tips is another row of dark blue.

That row of dark blue I am actively knitting?  Wrong colour.  Undercurrent is a two row striped sweater based on Jared Flood's long ago, two row striped scarf.  Since I am almost at the end of that round of dark blue, it is kind of a pain.  Each and every day, I do this at least once.  If I would have tracked the extra rows I knit just because of wrong colour rows, I would have finished the body of this sweater. The blues are in some places stunningly close.  If you look at the bottom of the photo you can see one patch where the two yarns are really very close.  So, yet again, I took back an almost complete row.

I love this sweater, but it is not without issues.  

I did something else that I wanted to write about.  For a long time, I have been planning to sew project bags and sweater bags so that I could stop using ziplocs.  I have fabric scraps and there will be more as I sew up the fabric I bought last winter.  I am particularly interested in bags to store my completed sweaters.  The ziplocs fill my big sweater chest with air and the last two years, ziploc seals have not been very reliable on the 5 to a box bag size. I am tired of replacing them after just a few uses.  

I wanted zipper bags over bags with a tie.  It will be the best option to keep bugs out of my things. So today, I merrily went looking at zippers.  And I started thinking of zippers and sewing zippers.  I hate sewing zippers.  It brings out all the things about my sewing that is not good.  It is fussy and fiddly and I just am not a big fan.  I will if I must but...

So I started looking at bags online.  I love some of the ones my favourite vloggers make.  They are fun and creative and sadly out of my price range.  Plus they really aren't quite what I need for size and they are far too lovely to just bury in my old sweater chest.  I don't really even need fancy ones for projects.  I don't go far enough to need more than a couple pretty bags and I have two or three small projects bags already.  

I thought about need versus want and settled on purchasing a basic cotton tote style bag with a zipper.  The cost is affordable at under six dollars each.  These are plain unlined with long shoulder straps that will likely come off.  And did I mention that they already have a zipper sewn in?  

So yes, I caved but if it gives me more time to knit and solves a problem with my current storage, I am game for it.

Eucalyptus dreams

I never quite got round to trying on my sweater for the second time.  I had the urge to clean and since that is such a rare feeling, I listened to it and did a bit of cleaning and putting.  I did however take a photo of said sweater.

It is looking more and more like the sort of thing I dearly love to wear.  It is twelve inches from the underarm at the moment, so it is going along at a reasonable pace.  It isn't going to be a ten day sweater but that is just fine with me.  All the more joy in the knitting.

The biggest job I did today was to wash all the sweaters I love to wear.  You can wear sweaters a long time if you have a bit of a sleeve underneath but since I am a spilly talker, they usually end up needing to have the coffee and food stains cleaned after a bit.  A good soak in my small washer and a spin to get them almost dry and now, they are hanging around my bathroom and all over the rest of my room I can smell the lovely scent of warm wool and eucalyptus.  Heavenly.

 

It will accompany my dreams.

Knitting away

Me and my sweater are just hanging around knitting being the best of friends.  That is really all that is going on knitwise and I am in love with it.  

 I love the yarn.  It is a 90 percent merino and 10 percent rayon blend, though I think the nubs are the biggest part of the rayon.  It just is so smooth coming off my needle tips.  And it is bouncy somehow, though it doesn't strike you particularly as bouncy in the way a cable plyed yarn is bouncy, but it has a real sense of its own space.  And it is warm and weighty, but not heavy weight, just warmth weight.  It radiates warm as if you were sitting in front of a fire.  

It is very easy to stay faithful to this.  I love everything about it still.  

Tomorrow morning it will get its second try on just to be sure that my gauge used for my calcuations is actually true.  I have taken and retaken gauge and some out the same each time and yet gauge is not something i trust without some backup.  So cross your fingers for tomorrow that this very pretty knit will reach its full potential.

2020 Too

The other day I read a reply to a friend's post on Facebook that explained better than I ever could, how I felt on New Years evening.  

Friend of Friend:      Well, there was 2020.

                                    Then 2020 won.

                                    Now we're starting 2020 II.

This may be the most brilliant thing ever written about the last couple of years and a very large part of my fears...I don't like that word...concerns that it will be accurate about the coming year.  I was working up some worry till I read this.  It injected just a little funny into the whole darn mess.

I have not minded the quarantine so much.  I have found benefits to staying at home and I found many new things to interest me. Much of it has been a weird sort of fun, including finding that zoom knitting could very easily be one of my favourite ways to socially knit. Do I want to do it yet another year?  No.  Who would.  And there it is.  I survived so far, but come on already.

 

In the end though, accurate a forecast though it may be, the only thing we can do is just take each day we get and live that day as completely in that moment as we can.  We cannot control this virus, only our response to it.  We cannot control the weather either and well, we deal with it.  We cannot control the sunrises and sunsets but we just get on with it.

That really is the only way to deal with this.  Live each day as it comes.  Just see what it is and respond  to it.   Don't fill your inner space with worry about what the virus will do to this year, just get on with it.

Wow

The more I work on this, the more I love it.  

I have gone full Undercurrent with the stripes and the way the collar sits at the neck line.  It makes the collar widely open and I have gone with a nice deep placket ala Romys wide button bands, to keep that very open feel.  There is a button on the collar though, for those times when a nice close fit is needed.  

I am a couple inches below the underarms, and it is time for a try on.  I should have done that this evening, but my bed is calling.  This cold I have,  mild though it is, is tuckering me out. My blankets are warm and my bed is oh so comfy, so crawling in and sleeping is easy to do. As eager as I am to crawl in in the evening, I look forward to getting up to knit deliciousness.  

I look less forward to household chores and laundry, but they are the price of things. So...

A Good Day

I felt unsettled this morning and my hand needed a break after working so much on my pretty Fleece Artist sweater.  So I took a break and pulled out some boxes I have been meaning to check into for a while now.  

I have a stack of square cube boxes with lids, all of which are labeled but for one.  One of them is where the bits and ends of sock yarn goes when a pair of socks is finished.  Another is stuffed with leather bits.  One box has bobbins for spinning.  Another has my handspun finished yarns.  And there there is a box labeled yarn to put away and another box labeled other yarn.   It was these last I wanted to see.  

On opening, it was revealing and yet not so revealing.

There was a half completed shawl that I was never going to finish.  I love the yarns.  Both are silk and wool blends and would make a lovely cowl.  I think that is what these will be.  I packaged them up and tucked them aside.

Then there were various bags and bits of yarn, but as I was going through them, I realized here was another pretty thing for a cowl.  It's a small part of one of the prettiest colours of Kauni 2/8 and two and a bit skeins of white white baby yarn.  Cowl of something surely. Tucked aside in a project bag, waiting.

Yummy.  Two skeins of Kathmandu Chunky and a few ends, but plenty for a pair of mittens.  This yarn would make the best mittens.  Packaged up and set aside.

And this lovely red and orange and yellow left over from a pair of wrist warmers needs to be a cowl or mittens or maybe even wrist warmers for me for bed.

And here were some yarns I was thinkin of just the other day.  I think I can use these along with some of my Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Chunky Tweed to stretch things out just the smallest bit so that I can make a sweater exactly as I want from both of the greens I have of that really cozy yarn.

This is a bit lighter weight than the Debbie Bliss, but it has a very similar look.  If I beef up this with a bit of laceweight or with some fingering if needed, it should work.  Packaged up and set aside till I do a big stash dive to sort out the yarns.

And then with all that cowl thinking and other stuff, I decided to pull out one of the yarns from my handspun stash. It is easy to leave it as a finished project and never knit with it, but this is a good year to take it out and use it. 

Right from the get go, I felt this bouncy unflappable yarn would make a great cowl.  

If I seem to be cowl obsessed, it is because I am.  I have been chilly so far this winter, and having something warm cozying up to the back of my neck makes me ever so much warmer over all.  I have been wearing my Huj Tub and a really lovely lace mobius from the Rainey Sisters,  TopsyTurvy, because they both snuggle perfectly for defeating chilly.  Need more cowls.  Also need more wrist warmers, but that is for another day.

I took all the really small parts of yarns, the walnut sized balls, the part skeins, the stuff that I don't want to see again, but may need one day, and put them in a box all their own and put the project things in a box and called it a good day.  

Keith's toy for Christmas and for all the helping he does.

And in action.  It's kinda cool.

The perfect way to start.

This was the last thing completed in the old year.  It always makes me feel warm and cozy inside when socks come back to mark significant things in life.  They are so ordinary so regular, so routine that they are a reminder that even as the big days and special holidays flow through our life, it is all the little ordinary things that really make a filled and wonderful life.

And this is the new thing for this year.  I started it with my birthday yarn, a mashup of Romy and Undercurrent.  The spirit will be Undercurrent with it's wide open 'should have been a hood' collar and it's two row striping but its construction will be Romy with it's knit on collar and buttonbands and its contiguous shoulders.  

I am not a hundred percent sure it will be a cardigan though.  There are a lot of reasons to join the front bands together right around the depth of the sleeves.  Pullovers end up being the sweaters I wear most and where there were once cardigans in my wardrobe, all but one,  they are now pullovers. I simply like them better that way.  

I am having a marvelous time knitting and am going right back to that after I finish here.  There is a special coffee with my name on it waiting and a good book too.  It is the perfect way to spend the first day of the year.

Breath taking. Literally.

A surprise!   My birthday yarn came early and Christmas and my birthday are now one. 

Thicket from Fleece Artist in the Aulavik National Parks colour and the bold strong blues of Stellars Jay.  A sweater quantity.  It's so beautiful I could cry.

That list of things I think about knitting got longer this evening.  Or shorter.  I am not sure yet. Either way, this is just so good.  But a striped sweater would surely bang out fast enough.

It's here

With things as they are, my knitting went straight for my comfort zone, socks.  It is where I began and who knows.  I may well be where I end.

Nice progress.

But I dreamed of the next thing to knit.  I dreamed of knitting my Pesto yarn from Mid knit Cravings.  I have a skein of a wonderful acidy olive green colour, Kelp Forest, to use for the very interesting hem and cuffs on Laura Aylor's Sun Dog.  I am going to add a polo type collar made to look like a second top underneath the wide neck of the original, and there is an almost 100% chance of the bit of a henley treatment as well, just to show off the more solid green.  This will be one of the first things I cast on in the New Year.  

But I also have a hankering for one more last grand thing before the year is out, a special something for between Christmas and New Years.  What I need is one of those sweaters that just love to be swacked out in a week or ten days of work.  I have some of that really nice warm Bulky Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tweed Chunky in my stash, begging to be used and it is just the most wonderful yarn.  I am voting for a copy of 2019's Liesl by Ysolda Teague.  I did that sweater in ten days, but I am certain I could do it faster without all the worrying I did about running out of yarn and which blue was the right blue.  And, like I said, I do have a couple other colours of the same yarn in my stash.  

The problem I have is that I used 8.5 skeins for the original sweater, and I have 8 skeins of olive green  and only 7 of a brighter cheerier apple green.  I do still have some teal blue, a yarn from Diamond though I can't find it in my online stash at the moment but the colour is nice with the greens and it might be enough to stretch the green far enough out to make a sweater with the same sleeves and length.  Won't really know till I knit with it.  I also recall it was the smallest bit lighter in gauge than the Debbie Bliss.  

But then there is this sweater.  I fell in love with the beauty of the project and I really wanted to create it.  I have the same colour of Kauni that the OP knit her sweater in, and I was going to use some of my much treasured Tove stash to imitate the softly changing colours of the knitter's background.  I have these yarns all pulled and in my inspiration cabinet, wound and ready to go.  I just need to pick out a motif from one of my books and to decide exactly how I will do the background colours and then, to sit down and  start.  That could take ten days all on its own.

But, I am also in the mood for a bit of a stash dive. While  I want to see and be with all the yarns, there are a few particular things I want to bring out.  I have some pretty yellow Washed Linen  that will make a perfectly matching summer cardigan to one of my fabrics for summer clothes.

And there is my much desired shawl, the Jahreszeiten - Herbst.   My version is languishing in the depths of my WIP bin, maybe a row longer than in the project page photo.  And the Elton sweater in River City's River colourway or the Breezeway top I started last year in a mashup of Fleece Artist green sock yarns.  

I could go on, because well, there is some cherry red Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport that calls my name as well as a cone of softest tans and this wonderfully aged looking apple green, like old Granny Smiths.  Sweet heavens, I have marvelous yarns.  

In these last few days before Christmas, socks are really where the knitting is.  There is time after for making dreams turn to reality.  Who knows if the dreams will lead to a new sweater or not.  But where ever the dreams land, I will be content.  I love knitting.  I really do.  

Have a wonderful Christmas, everyone out there.  My posting from here to the end of the year won't be regular but I will post when I have something interesting to say and I will post a year end sort of thing too.  But the holidays are at hand and there is Christmas joy to spread, and if I spread it well, it shall come back to me fourfold.

Trying to be stoic, failing miserably.

Just some rather ho hum sock knitting went on today.  Nothing serious at all.  

I called one of my kids families this morning about Christmas.  Scott and Amy have two little ones who cannot be vaccinated yet and the way that Omicron is going around, and the speed at which caseloads are growing, well, I was feeling less and less comfortable about having Christmas with everyone all at once.

Amy was telling me that they were actually going to call today too.  For the same reason, plus Isaac woke this morning with a sore throat and so they have to go find tests for him before they feel good about any Christmasing at all.  It is also complicated by weather.  The window on the back of their vehicle imploded a few weeks ago, and they way supply lines are right now, the ten days for the window is now well into three weeks and Christmas makes it four.  Wouldn't be an issue if it was -4 C but the forecast is for beastly cold -27 C .  Would you drive an hour and twenty minutes with a baby in those conditions.  I wouldn't but then, I told her I wouldn't be keen on them coming if it was that cold anyway.  Owen is just too small to take the risks if there is trouble.

I had talked to the other family the day before, and he said if anyone there gets sick, they are staying home but that they would do what we needed  them to do.  So if they are healthy, they will come, but it will be a much smaller celebration than I had hoped for after last year.  

Still, I would rather they stay healthy and that will be enough.  These days, that counts for a lot.  But I am trying not to be too sad about the way it is coming down.  We will zoom or facetime, and that is a lot more than people have had before. 

Trying to be stoic, failing miserably.

Of socks and more socks.

I knit on sweaters over the weekend.  I was at the part where it was time to separate arms from body and there just were not enough stitches and no matter what I did, I was going to have to go back and add.  The amazing part of things is that I did.  And I knit again to the arms.  And that was enough of that.

I had a hankering to knit socks.  I knew that I had some pretty ones on the go and I knew one particular pair needed attention to get the pattern going correctly.  So after dinner yesterday, I worked on these. I love this yarn.  It is the bounciest softest thing and it really is lovely for socks.

The Gridiron pattern from River City Yarns is a particular favourite for this yarn too.  It's two skeins, one of the multi colour green Touchdown in the Saskatchewan colourway and the Hat Trick semi solid  Hooking.  Toes, heels and cuffs will be in the semi solid and all of the rest of the sock will be the magic of the Gridiron pattern in their yarn.

I went through the other sock bags too.  These are probably the closest to complete. I have to look for the band for this.  I cannot recall what it is.

But these are so much more fun using two colours from my bag of ends.

And this lovely Opal colour bought one dark winter a few years ago at Jos in Stony Plain.  I am using a pattern from Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush, though I can't seem to figure out the patterns name.  maybe tomorrow.

Tonite it is back to the Gridiron pair.  For now it is enough.

The Day the Monkeys Were Done.

As you saw, my monkey are complete.  It took a mere half an hour to do and I am pretty pleased.  I could have done a few things different, but I didn't so there it is.  They are ready for gifting.

I gave myself the rest of the morning to work on my sweater.  I added a few short rows at the back below the yoke and then just knit.  This sweater is interesting because now that this lovely yoke is done, it turns into a raglan for the rest of the increases you may need.  After a complex yoke that may be a little difficult to customise for size, you now can do what you need.  

And then it was time to go out and get some groceries and pick up the mail and some orders and to get Keith's bandages looked at.  I think he was worried about driving but also about the bandages.  He told me he wanted me along for moral support and in case he couldn't do something.   He did fine.  

I had the very last of the very last things in the mail, all of it my wee Christmas presents.  I was so excited.  On of the things I have thought about for years was about electrifying my dollhouse cabinet.  It came down to it that I really did not want to make the cabinet harder to use for other things down the road.  Thankfully, today, you don't have to.  The range of battttery operated LED lights is fantastic.  As you can see, I now have at least one wee light for each of my rooms.  The living room will have the very fancy chandelier, the bedroom the one that is lit in the photo, and the kitchen the simple globe.  They are all upside down as shown here but they are adorable. 

There. is a dresser for the bedroom, the last room that needs furnishing in the house, and a really well made little wooden chest for at the foot of the bed.  I will make the bed out of some wire to look like the old metal bedsteads that were around when I was young.  Nothing fancy.  

The bedroom is also where the lady of the house has her sewing machine too.

I did get myself one other special treat for Christmas but I am saving those for watching between Christmas and New Years.  Those will go under my tree.

I did order something really special for my birthday too.  I ordered a sweaters worth of Fleece Artist  Thicket.  It is a beautiful yarn and I have thought about getting some for hats just to say I worked with it.  Midknit Cravings was also in contention.  Then I saw the fund raiser. Hats can wait.  They are sending five dollars of every skein of Vine or Thicket sold before December 26 to BC Flood relief and that, to me is very worth it.  If I was ever going to have a sweater of Fleece Artist yarn, this was the time.  Seriously.  Consider a getting yourself a glorious bit of yarn and give a helping hand to the many many people who need it.

Blind Monkeys

The needles did not make it.  

These trusty tools just couldn't quite survive the great stresses they were under.  They did a hero's job and now it is time to lay them to rest.  No problem.  I have plenty of others.

As I thought, there is a good bit of yarn left over.  2 full balls, 2 partials, and a small ball.  The red is used very little and I do mean very little for the way I made the monkeys so plenty of that left and I have a small ball of the first of the cream balls and really only used the second ball for tail tips and the bit around the mouth.  I suspect a pair of socks in my future.  I think I will make them double thicksince I have lots of yarn and I am really enjoying socks knit with heavier yarn.  My floor by the big window is chilly.  

And here is my troop of mostly finished monkeys.  

They just need the eyes embroidered on and they are done.  That will take very little time really.  My troop of monkey is almost complete.

And then on to knitting for me.  I have sweaters to make...I have shawls to knit...I have these delicious yarns....

Updated:  Not blind anymore.  It took less than half an hour and the really simple knots worked perfectly!  

And done!

A much better Day

It was a much better day but it was still outside the plans for this time of year.  I had to bake bread and buns and I threw muffins into the fray as well.  In for a penny, in for a pound.  I haven't baked bread because the oven does not hold temperature properly.  You never quite know  what you are going to get for heat.  I had decent results for being away from it for so long again.  I hope the oven carries on for a bit of cookie and poppy seed roll baking later this week.

After the baking, I sat down to watch some tv and do some monkeying around.  I had a nice cup of coffee and just really enjoyed the putzing.

Knitting the wee mouth patch is a bit of a thing, but the result is perfect, so I will keep on doing it.  They are monkeys all quite unique even though they are the 'same'.  The ears point just a wee bit different.  The tails hang each in their own way.  The arms pop to the side just so, each a little different.  It really is quite right for my perfectly different from each other kids.

I may not enjoy toy making.  Too fiddly, but I must say, my kids are quite worth the fiddling.  At least once.  

It was a Day

I have no idea what I did today. I woke at 5 or so I thought. I groused about on my computer for a bit and I was planning on going back to bed for that last hour of cozy snoozing, but I heard Keith from downstairs come to make his coffee.  So I got up to chat and I looked at the clocks out there and, it was not close to 6 as I thought.  It was close to 7.  He never changed my wall clock.  I had forgotten that and never focused my bleary eyes on my computer cock.  Or my phone clock.

Just like that, my day started an hour late.  Everything was turned around and was out of order.  Because I had intended to go back to bed, I had not taken my morning medications, a not very good error.  It was laundry day and fix the bed day, but that didn't happen.  Well one load of laundry but I have the folding to do from last week.  

I spent way t much time on you tube watching people make tortillas and F1 controversies and all the things that are great time wasters.  After lunch, I watched Downton Abbey the movie, fully intending to sew monkeys but the monkeys were a no go.  Knitting was a no go.  And in the afternoon I made said tortillas with my new tortilla press (I can dozens of way to use this tool) and then it was bedtime.  

There was between those things.  There was no real noticing of between those things.  And here I am.  It was a day.  

I think I am just in need of a long nap.  Last week was not a great week.  Keith had some medical issues two nights that meant I missed out on a bunch of sleep and that led to a quick day surgery on Friday.  He was home again Friday evening, but I had to check him every couple of hours as you must after being under an anesthetic.  So three nights last week were pretty much toast.  He cannot drive for two weeks and he is not supposed to lift anything over ten pounds for them either. Which is sort of a bugger at this time of year.

I am going to sleep in hard tomorrow.   I am going to take that extra sleep even if I hear Keith making coffee.  No matter how good his coffee smells, I am going back to sleep.  And then tomorrow, I have to see about some groceries. And wrapping paper.  Once again, I win the world because all my holiday shopping is complete but for wrapping paper. 

It was a day.  Bring on tomorrow. Because, well that is the way it works. 

Satisfied.

Friday, I sorted out what I would do for the ears.  I just did not like the ears as written in the pattern.  Not at sock yarn scale anyways.  I sorted it out and forgot to write it down and when I did what I thought I had done on the first pair, I could not get it right.  So yesterday I had to come up with something else.  I went with a simple round ear knit firmly with two strands of yarn.  The decreases just naturally seemed to give the a curl that is just right.  You will see below.

Today I faced my last big problem for my monkeys.  This is the monkey mouth as from the pattern.  It is just too big, too wide and too sticky out for the cuteness I wanted these to have.  I don't actually like it on the worsted weight projects online either so I knew it needed something different.

 I looked at tons of monkeys online from all sources and found that the ones I disliked shared the very very large mouths.  I preferred monkey with a thin line mouth much better, so I decided to come up with something like it.  This was my first try.  

It turned out fine, but it seemed a little wide to me.  I would have gone with it if I could have figured out a tidy way to sew it on the face in an even line.  I have six to do.  There had to be a better way.

He looks like he is puckering up to kiss someone.  I picked up stitches where I wanted the mouth to sit on both the top and bottom and knit a little garter stitch patch in red and white.  Do not ask to see the back.  Nothing technical right about the way I carried the white and I do not care.  If I have my way, no one will ever see the back.  It was far easier to do, even though it still was fiddly, but I liked the way the monkey looked.

I finished one monkey to see if there were better ways to attach stuff and to see if the arms, tails and ears were easy to sew.  They were and voila.  One complete monkey with another partial.  Almost complete.  I will embroider eyes on when all the monkeys are done. 

I even got his wee tail on.

It's one of those days of work where I just feel satisfied in a very old fashioned sort of way.  There is lots to do yet, but I feel like the end is near.  I might be able to get to some knitting for myself before Christmas yet.

And then she sat to knit

And knit I did, but I also stuffed.  Six monkey bodies ready for arms.

You can see just at the side, One monkey arm stuffed, bound off and ready to be sewn on to a body.

and when those are completed, there is a host of sewing and stuffing of tails.  Somewhere in this mess, there are six tails. 

There are some ears in there too andone very much too large mouth, but I know how I will take care of that.

All this tiny knitting has been a bit hard on my hands and my head and i am really looking forward to easier knitting when this project is done.  It hasn't been easy on my needles either.

And so it goes.  I figure two more days of serious work and these little things ought to be complete.

Christmas

Nailed it.

I am so happy to see these pretty things.  So many memories attached.  There is the tiny unicorn bought at a San Fransico chain store, with its golden horn and its dainty red bow.  And the four glass ornaments, creche, tree, boot and angel, bought at Grybas Drugs forever ago.  They were on our first tree as a couple and they have been there every year.  And birds with their feather Tails, reminders of ones my mom had when I was young.  And the beads.  I have beads on my tree over a garland of tinsel.  On a bigger tree and as a cild there were both, but this tree really only can handle one.  

I still could put my icicles on, but we shall see how the day goes.  I have the bead tree to bring out and do any needed restoration, and some music boxes to put in by hall book case so the kids can play the single song that I seem to have.  

But today, most exciting, I get to knit.  And stuff.  And see if I can't get some Monkey's together.  

And laundry.  There is always laundry.

A start

It's not a great photo, but this was my work yesterday.  

It doesn't look like a lot but it was.  

There was a layer of cleaning.  Maybe tidying is a better word.  There were things filling the cupboard corner all the way to the end of the wall.  It wasn't messy just piled.  It is just too easy to set stuff there to put away later, be it downstairs or in my space.  Part of setting up the tree was dealing with later and dealing with it properly.

This tree usually gets all my red and white decorations but this year, it has all of Keith's ornaments on it.  As they grew, my grandmother, while she was still alive gave the boys each ornaments, and my mom did the same and so did I.  Plus there are a few interesting things from school and things they made.  It's a kind of sweet trip down memory lane, even for Keith who doesn't  want Christmas in his living space at all.  

My tree of collected ornaments goes up today.  It's  a larger tree but not a huge.  It sized for small space living but remains full size.  And then, the rest of it.  

When I lived in my wee house, I down sized my Christmas decorations.  I don't have the miles of garland anymore and I don't  have stuff for each door.  There is a bit though and that, plus a few special things will go out in a bit of a new space this year. I moved a Kallax book case into the hall and it is a perfect spot for Auntie Lorraine's beaded tree, a music box, and some funky Santa's.  

So much to do.  So many Monkey's too stuff.  Eeeeeeeep.  I will get there.  Magically.  It will happen and it will be fine.

Stuff and nonsense.

No knitting today.  It was a day filled with household and errands and getting out the Christmas stuff.  It sounds as if my wee people and their moms and dads are coming for Christmas.  Grandma is going to have to do a tiny bit better than she did last year with respect to decorating. 

I did get all the monkey bodies completed and the first body is ready for stuffing.  I did not want to pull out the stuffing till I have the tree boxes put away and all that stuff up.  In lieu of knitting monkeys, I am knitting the little backpacks where in they will carry something special for my kids.  Did I say knit?  I am crocheting them actually.  It is quicker and sock yarns are a great weight for it.  Nothing fancy to be sure.  It's just a little messenger style bag with a nice flap and straps to turn it into a nice backpack.  

So not a lot of knitting content today, and most likely, not tomorrow either.  But Christmas is happening here and that is enough to be doing.  

Next week is baking week and the week following...  Well, it is getting everything else ready so that on the day, brunch can happen magically or with Keith's help.  Either way it is good.  

The path to getting there.

It is all in the path you take to get there.  Seriously.

By mid morning, I had finished the body I started yesterday.  So I picked up another set of legs and did as I planned.  I changed to work the first few rounds of the body on two circular needles.  It changed everything.  

By noon, another body was very nearly complete.  

Once I was up the body about a quarter of an inch, I changed to my time tested dpns.  For the tight knitting near the join, the circs were fine, but no way can I knit faster with those needles than I can on dpns. 

By the time my hands gave out just about supper time, there was carnage everywhere.

Two complete body and leg sets and a third with only an inch to go.  There are only two sets of legs after that.  Tomorrow ought to take care of that nicely.  Changing the start of the work made a huge difference.

So the plan is to get out the stuffing and knit the top of the monkey heads as I stuff each body, then arms.  I will sew and stuff tails too.  Once everything already knit is stuffed and attached I will sit down and knit the snouts of my monkeys.  The snout as from the pattern looks a bit off at this scale,  too large I think, so I may have to change it up a bit.  The ears were too big but I have that figured out and they take no time to knit at all.  I feel like I am in a really good place here with all the monkeys.

My shopping is done.  My monkeys are looking good.  I just need wrapping paper, the tree set up and then it will be time to sort out the cooking and the cookies.  Still a lot to do before Christmas and yet, I feel pretty good.

There was sewing Tuesday, but it did not go so well as the first day.  Without completion, it just looks like a pile of nothing.  It will wait to be blogged about till then.

I knit yesterday.  

I knit on bodies yesterday.  Just one in truth but it's a start.  And just like all the small parts, getting there starts out fussy.  

I debated about switching needles to a circular pair I have but it needs cleaning.  It's one of those old brass covered addi ones, where the whole tip tarnished over time and with use.  I have a pair of these in the right size, purchased for using two circs for colour work, but I haven't used these yet.  The next body I will give it a go, at least on the first rows where the join, just like with sweaters, is a kind of a pain.  

Bodies are on the way. It will be so nice to get these done.  I'm  looking forward to stuffing day. Body stuffing day.  The other stuffing is going to have to wait a while.  I have a few weeks till that day.

Monkeying Around

With the arms done for all the monkeys, It is time to do the tails and the tails have a problem.  This tail is 18 stitches around.  That scale seems to suit this small monkey, but 18 stitches means 6 stitches on each side of the needle and as many needle switches as there are stitches.  

It would take forever.  This.  Is.  Fiddly.

I debated about how else I could do it and I am opting for a seam.  

Eighteen stitches flat knits up in next to no time.  I did try knitting flat, because this is the perfect sort of thing to keep in practise with knitting backwards, but I just didn't want to invest the time right now.  Too many other things to do.  There is one other huge plus by knitting the tails flat.  By pulling firmly on the seam as I sew, I think I can give my monkey tails a wee bit of a curl.  I don't need much curl, but  a bit would be a very sweet thing.  

I have also been thinking about backpacks.  I mean to do a wee backpack for each monkey.  It is where I will tuck a special something for each of the kids.  I will do them all in leftover sock yarn and I think they will be crocheted.  Crochet especially for small fiddly things is going to be a lot faster than knitting.

By the end of the day, my wee pile of monkey tails was saying I am half done.  I spent very little time today knitting though so I am pretty sure that tomorrow should get the rest off the needles.

As I said though, I did not do a lot of knitting today.  I was deep into some more sewing for me.  It's going really well and I can't wait to show you tomorrow.