the future was wide open

As I near completion on Christmas 2011 gifts, I'm letting myself daydream about some upcoming knits.

This yarn is destined to be a celebratory wisp of a project, which I'm very much looking forward to knitting.
And I've got a design in my head for these beauties.... Here's hoping I can translate what's in my head to reality! I also need to come up with a plan for completing some long-lingering WIPs. (My current thought is that I may take a break from all Christmas knitting this year, and focus on long overdue years, but we'll see if I can stick to that plan.)

And, just in case you were longing for a shot of my poor continental knitting, here you go:

It's not a trick of the photo: those stitches really are that wonky. They're getting better as I go along, however, and I'm hopeful that they will all block out in the end.

What are your spring knitting plans?

until I'm proven wrong

So I have one Christmas gift (yes, 2011) that's ready to be shared with you all. It's a Paulie with a few mods, which I made for my mother.

I made the sleeves long instead of three-quarters length. Of course, I ended up making them a little too long so perhaps I should have stuck with three-quarters....

I left off the shawl color because I thought my mother would find it fiddly.

And I added a second color to the stripes, knitting it with Plucky Knitter Primo Fingering in Flying Monkeys with stripes of Dandy Lion and Faded Grandeur. In the skein, these colors were much more distinct, but I enjoyed how they blended together once knit. Flying Monkeys is an incredibly interesting gray-brown and I may have mentioned before that I think Dandy Lion is the perfect yellow.

I really enjoyed this knit and my only complaint is that I started it in September with the expectation of being able to finish it for her birthday in October. When that failed, I still thought that I'd easily finish it for Christmas. Well, at least she was able to wear it as driving me to the airport after Easter.

PS: Thanks for the advice on continental knitting! After taking a look at my sister-in-law's hands during knitting, I've concluded that I was wrapping the yarn around my fingers too much. It's been easier going since I cut out a few wraps, but it's still pretty sloppy.

leave me out with the waste

This is not what I do.

So far, I hate knitting continental. Anyone have any tricks to make me like it more?

It's supposed to be 70 degrees tomorrow and I've still got three (relatively wintery) Christmas gifts to finish. Two are almost done and then there's this one....

why do you have to go and make things so complicated?

I've reassessed Christmas 2011 gifts and have come up with a slightly less complicated plan in the hopes of finishing them before July 2012. So here comes a second Millwater! This time, I won't pull the grafting too tight.

PS: Wamps, whatever happened with your Peaks Island?

under them skies of blue

First things first: I arrived at work this morning to see that the fence surrounding my office's parking lot had been yarn bombed! It's hard to see in my photo, but someone has tied scarves to all of the posts of the fence along one city block. Needless to say, I was absolutely delighted. Perhaps it's the work of the knitty gritty committee, or of the person who works in my building and has a license plate cover that says "I'd rather be knitting." Either way, I'm hoping it lasts for a little while because it will make me happy whenever I pull into the parking lot.

Holiday knitting was a dreadful fail this year, even though I wildly scaled back my plans for it. The only thing I finished (sewed in the ends and steam blocked it mere hours before boarding a plane to return from vacation) was this sweater for a little girl who loves "hop hops". I'm hoping her love will continue until she grows into it since it is quite ample now.

Getting a picture of her was very difficult, so most of my pictures look like this.

(Since she is actually quite cute even when she is not in handknits, those of you who know my family may want to check out these pictures of her birthday celebration.) My fair isle still has a ways to go, but at least the bunnies are recognizable as bunnies. Thanks to Wamps for suggesting this pattern!

I used Spud & Chloe sweater, which knit at a much larger gauge than the pattern required. So I knit the stitch counts for the 6 month size, but used the lengths for the 2-to-4 year old size, which worked out well proportionately. I only had time to steam block before gifting, but plan to wet block it when I'm next at home. Since it's unlikely that she'll grow into it before then, I think that it's a safe plan.

Hope you've all had good starts to 2012 and that your holiday knitting was more successful than mine!

if you get an invitation

You'd think that I've now been knitting long enough to learn how to set realistic goals for my knitting. Clearly not.

What unrealistic goals are you all working on? And is my unrealistic goal enough of an excuse to ask to knit during my office's staff meeting? (The last question was rhetorical, but the first one was genuine. I know I pay better attention when I knit, but I don't think others really believe this.)

we'd better stop before this story begins

Once again, I am neglecting all the knitting I need to do simply because I'm too fascinated by watching this sweater grow. So hold me accountable, blog: I will not knit another row on this sweater until all the finishing is done on the knitting that I'm supposed to gift tomorrow. I will not.

Or, at least, I'll only let myself knit rows as a reward for filing my taxes...

so much for doing well on deadlines

As my blog-silence may have suggested, I haven't really had a lot of time to knit this summer. Between the move-that-lasted-forever, the job-that-did-not-slow-down-during-the-summer, and many lovely trips and visitors, I had a hard time fitting knitting in. So when I take stock of my progress on summer knit goals, the picture isn't pretty. In fact, it's downright pathetic. I can't think of a time when I made less progress on a set of self-imposed goals. Here's the (limited) progress that I made:

I'm 11 rows away from finishing my end-of-August goal:I wish I could say that I'm as devoted to this project as Wamps was to her version, which clocked in at 150 rows. But I've decided that mine will be lovely at just around 100.

My save-my-sanity cowl grew, almost without me thinking about it:
It's still a-ways from being finished, but maybe that's for the best.

During the last weekend in August, an unusually long (since moving to the Beat, that is) spell on public transit produced this baby hat:
This wasn't one of my knitting goals, but since it's the closest I came to a FO this summer (only have two ends to sew in!) I'm including it anyway. It's the Umbilical Cord hat in Sheep Feet, Royalty colorway. Having rushed out the door without writing down the pattern, I counted on CH's memory to get me the right number of stitches. Luckily, that was a safe bet. What was not as lucky was how I felt about this yarn once it was knit up. In the skein, I thought it was beautiful, but I think the brown is much too dominant in the final knit. (EW, enter your massive protest here. I don't care. You can't see it in person, so you don't know how overwhelming the brown is.) However, the yarn was the product of my first-ever trip to Webs (which was also EW's first-ever trip to Webs). It is a miraculous place.

Also, I took Labor Day weekend off from everything, and that helped me to jump start some fall knitting.

This lovely is all finished except for the finishing: The yarn knit up just like I imagined, and I learned why so many people love one particular classic knit. You'll have to wait for details until it's gifted, though.

And I'm about halfway through another knit using these colors:This knit reminds me why Blue Sky Dyed Cotton is still high on my list of favorite yarns. All but the green were purchased during my second-ever trip to Webs.

Finally, today was the Coventry Farmer's Market's Fiber Fest. I actually went back to get the most amazing cod in the world, but I couldn't resist a little local yarn:It's the Painted Sheep's Shimmer Yarn in Merlot. It's a superwash merino/tencel blend and I think that I know just the knit for it.

What are you all working on this fall?