A Little Yarn On The Side

I have done pretty much nothing today.  No canning, no gardening, no cleaning, very little knitting, and aside from having finished reading my book for book club next week, my sole accomplishment for the day was to pay bills.  I don't know what happened to me.  Luckily, yesterday I did get some kitty-free sewing in, so the stockings for Andy and I are progressing, and I finished what started out to be ornaments but I think will be hung as stockings for Theo and Calisto: In the teensy, tiny amount of knitting I've done today, I started the heel of the Christmas stocking:  Since it isn't a sock anyone will ever actually wear, I can knit the stocking flat and just sew up the back side and bottom, so the heel isn't overly tricky.  I'm not working from a pattern, and when I'm making things up, I find it best to be sort of simple if I want to create a second one that will come close to matching.  I think I'll start a holly berry repeat as soon as I pick the ...

I have decided to do a musical theme for Christmas this year, and thought new stockings would be one of the best ways to pick up the theme, so I'm going to use this fabric which would be tricky enough with the lines just as it is, but when you add this it might be really difficult.  I'm not sure how easy it is to see, but these are pictures of both selvedge edges.  The first has the staff lines pretty much perpendicular.   The second one shows them being quite far from it.  So, I decided to lay the fabric out as a single fold and just cut out the pieces I needed where the print and the fabric worked together.  I was cutting along on the first piece, turned around to change scissors, and When I tried to move around him a bit, when I gave up and decided to cut out some little stocking ornaments to make, so while the dog did NOT eat my homework, the cat DID take my sewing.  I think that's a fair excuse........

Thanks to making a mistake that set my progress back last night, I was up until 2:00 AM this morning finishing the soup.  The good news is that if I get a cold from the lack of sleep involved in making chicken soup, at least I now have chicken soup to eat while having a cold.  So, I've been a bit tired today and have made several mistakes, so the stockings aren't nearly as far along as I had hoped, but at least I now have the tree motif done. I'm really pleased with how they are turning out, and I'm hoping I'm taking enough notes to be able to recreate them at a future date.  I think I'll do another holly leaf set before working the heel, but I haven't decided about the foot yet.  I tend to lean toward plain feet, but that might look a bit plain.  Maybe a holly motif of some sort?

Not to name any names, but someone here at Chateau Sutton-Goar thought canning roasted red bell pepper spread followed by making and canning a double batch of chicken soup would be a good idea for the day, so if Finishing Friday gets a late start tomorrow, it's because the idiot (who shall remain nameless) was up until 11:00 PM tonight finishing the ^@*&$( chicken soup!

My total ban on yarn and material is obviously working better than I thought.  I go to Joann's so rarely now that I have been dumped from their mailing list.

Thanks to--you guessed it--another set of mitten ornaments, I need only 19 more projects for the year.  I had thought about trying to make a mitten ornament every day until Christmas, but for right now that project has been put on hold to make a set of Christmas stockings for some friends.  There's a name on the flip side, but that would ruin the "surprise" part of the gift.  Originally I thought I might sew them, but I haven't knit stockings for anyone in years, and after some discussions with mutual friends, I decided to knit them instead.  I used to knit personalized Christmas stockings for close friends when they got married, but after going through a period of giving stockings that were never used, I sort of lost confidence in them.  It's sort of silly, really, as more of them have been happily used every year than the ones that weren't, but  it is really hard to know that you've spent hours on a gift that someone didn't like and doesn't app...

Thanks everyone for your kind thoughts.  The online knitting community just simply rocks.  Today I am just thankful I have so many friends in so many avenues, and I'm thankful that I have special people in my life who mean so much to me that I genuinely mourn them when they're gone.  I don't think everyone has that. So today I am doing things that make me happy.  There is now a second red mitten to make a full "finished project." I got the garlic out of my closet (which is a long, rather weird story). I have a new music ornament for our tree: and my Christmas bin is slightly fuller than yesterday: Okay, REALLY slightly as one mitten and one ornament do not take up much space.  But in VERY happy space-related news: I have used up so much yarn from my fingering-weight bin that three  bags of yarn that were not originally IN the bin are out of the closet and into the bin.  This is even MORE exciting because my temporary wire shelving is starting...