A Little Yarn On The Side

To be honest, when I dreamed up the idea of doing 100 projects in one year, I had doubts about whether or not I would be able to pull it off, or whether I'd be doing a 72-hour knitting marathon during the last days of December to meet my goal, but I just cast off project 100.  And it's my favorite of the entire year: It's not a great picture, but on Monday I received an email from a cousin who is currently battling cancer.  I'd sent her a chemo cap about a year ago, and she asked if she could hire me to make her two more--one in chocolate brown and one in black--because the other one is currently about all she can wear right now.  As most of you probably know, when someone you like is going through something horrible like cancer, what you wish for most (besides their full and rapid recovery) is the ability to do something to help.  I told her I would be more than thrilled to make her more and that she is to consider them a Christmas gift, so I could think of no proj...

Bob:  In a surprise move yesterday, Ms. Sutton abandoned the expected cornucopia-finishing and instead surprised us with a flurry of scarves. Ron:  How right you are, Bob!  We were predicting all 11 cornucopias to be necessary for Ms. Sutton to hit 100 projects for 2010, but seemingly out of nowhere came project 98: a pair of scarves that no one predicted.  Bob:  This certainly is getting interesting.  These scarves were a complete experiment for Ms. Sutton.  She was attempting to use a combination of threads on a rolled edge  and I think it would be fair to call the results only moderately successful as the edge doesn't have that nice finish that Woolly Nylon would have given it, but as Woolly Nylon has become almost impossible to find in Boise, I think she was a bit too desperate to finish the scarves to wait until she could mail-order the missing thread.  Ron:  We are certainly seeing a slight relaxing of project standards ...

Ron:  Here we are at Chateau Sutton-Goar and with cornucopia number nine being finished today, the question now is what will give out first:  cornucopias, quick knitting projects, or Ms. Sutton's sanity. Bob:   It's looking like an even race at this point. Ron:  It does indeed, Bob, though Ms. Sutton did manage to complete the Ravelympics sweater even after completely parting with her sanity, so anything could happen now. .........

*  that not all yarn behaves like mohair when one needs to frog *  that my husband has a 40-inch chest, not a 48-inch chest *  that Theo's favorite craft is sewing.  He can do so much less damage to fabric than yarn. *  that I didn't make the 100-Projects goal "knitting only." *  that today, with a tryptophan and carbohydrate hang-over,  I have a very simple project to work on *  that one can replace broken knitting needles for relatively small amounts of money, and one doesn't have to wait months for defective parts to be replaced *  that I have great online knitting buddies, even if I may never meet them in person *  that I have already learned that some people are not knit-worthy, and won't be wasting my time on them *  that I have almost reached the 100-project goal, and could be a normal person again in the very near future.  (I said "could.")

The good news is, towel number 3 is done which finished project number 94. The bad news is, Jeeves is definitely having problems--not the card or the design.  See the little "jag" on the inside curve there? That isn't supposed to be there.  Nor is the line of random stitching BELOW the solid orange.  These are problems caused by Jeeves randomly resetting his location.  He still did it in the place he did on the other two towels, but this time he expanded and did it several other times.  Luckily, I was ready for it this time and was able to readjust him so that it wasn't too obvious. Now, want to know what makes this even MORE fun?  THIS IS HOW THE ORIGINAL PROBLEM WITH JEEVES STARTED IN THE FIRST PLACE!  You know--that first repair that took two weeks, which then spawned the much LONGER repair because he came back with more problems than he went in with. It is just two months since I got Jeeves back.  Oh, and just in case I didn't hate ...

Unless something goes majorly wrong (or I finally snap and Andy finds me running around the house with an unfinished cornucopia on my head yelling "I'm an elf!  I'm an elf"), the next 5 Finished Projects are likely to be cornucopias.  That will leave me just two projects short. No promises, but possible contenders are, a new scarf, using a clever but somewhat boring pattern by the Yarn Harlot . It is going quickly, and is good for multi-tasking--like while embroidering with Jeeves.  My trusty side-kick and I   have been making towels as prizes for our upcoming Christmas party & cheese tasting.  I need 3 and just finished the second one tonight.  There's a problem, happening with the design--it keeps moving at a certain spot.  On the first towel, you can see the black, which is supposed to be the shadow of the cheese, quite a bit lower than the cheese.  I had enlarged the design on the machine, and thinking that might be the problem (no...

Things to be thankful for:      1.  There is a finished project 93      2.  It is a cornucopia, and it looks like the preceding FIVE cornucopias, which is just as well as that is actually what I'm aiming for.      3.  The cornucopias really make nice gifts      4.  We actually get to keep one this year, which is nice because I ended up giving away all the ones I made last year      5.  The decorative cord is half-attached to cornucopia #7      6.  When all 11 of the darn things are finished, I will have used up just over 96 yards of fabric for the year, and have finished 98 projects so far this year      7.  There aren't 12 of them