A Little Yarn On The Side

For someone who is not a big fan of colorwork, 55 colorwork Christmas ornaments might seem like an insane challenge.  It took me three days to finish ornament number TWO:  and about an hour or two to finish one that I made up: I don't know if it's following charts or trying to manage the longer floats without having them show through the white that is so slow, but I'm hoping to get a bit better by ornament 5 or 6.  Otherwise it's going to be a long, LONG year. Thankfully, I do have lots of ornament options, and this morning I cut away the excess stabilizer from the lace ornaments, soaked them, and now they're drying on a cookie rack.  The stabilizer is made from cornstarch, so it's harmless, and I learned last year that wet ornaments are SUPER sticky so they can't be dried on a towel.  I still need to make one more piece for the light blue snowflake, and when they're dry we'll see how the 3-D ornaments work.  This is a new technique for...

.........I think maybe we can rule out "keep going until it hurts" as the fun part of the recovery process................

Boise's temperatures have been dropping down in the single-digits lately, which is a bit colder than we normally get.  Of course, this makes a great excuse for the abnormal amount of knitted goodies we own, but it turns out that it isn't a great thing for my back.  Or, I should say, for the second back injury that was caused by the new pt exercises.  I'm not sure if it was a strain, sprain, or just a pulled muscle, but the treatment is pretty much the same regardless:  R est, I ce, C ompression, E levation.  Okay, I have no idea exactly how to "elevate" my backside, and like all women everywhere, I've been trying to "compress" it for years.  It had been getting better quite steadily, but the cold snap has caused the muscles to tighten, causing them to hurt, causing me to clench my muscles even more, which hurts even more.........you get the idea.  Luckily, the Valium does help, but it still meant spending yesterday totally and completely flat in bed...

Since there will NEVER be a piece of fabric that big again that gets the thread/stippling treatment, yesterday I decided to make a project bag out of the big blue piece: It will be interesting to see how it holds up.  On the one hand, it could snag on just about anything, but on the other hand with all the extra stitching, it is the strongest cotton bag in existence.  It still needs handles, but I had an idea for attaching some silver ribbon in the center of cotton handles--which would be an even cooler idea if I actually HAD some silver ribbon and wasn't on a buying-ban until November.  Another idea is to add decorative stitching in silver to the handles.......but I've run out of silver thread.  I thought I had some silver embroidery thread, but so far I haven't run across it.  I haven't lost hope, as the sewing room still needs some unpacking and a LOT of organizing, but for now this is "The-bag-which-shall-remain-handle-less." I had sort of hoped it wo...

Yesterday I finished another mitten ornament, and the first of the 55 ball ornaments: I still need to sew up the bottom, but I wanted to make sure I had enough, but not too much, stuffing in it first.  I'm really pleased with it--though I'm not sure colorwork will ever be my favorite sort of knitting.  Still, I love the ornament. And speaking of ornaments I love, I finally got pictures of the three finished lace icicles, and I adore them.  The design pack came with 6 different designs, and they're all just wonderful.  They're thread-hogs, but they're wonderful.  I would be spending every day making more, except that I'm trying really hard to buy nothing craft-wise, and didn't want to run out of white embroidery thread just yet, because: Next on the list was the three-dimensional lace snowman, and I really can't picture a better color for a snowman than white.  I've finished all three pieces, but they aren't ready to be soaked yet a...

On Ravelry, several people have been talking about how many miles of yarn they have in their stash.  Though I was born here in America, I still struggle with our completely crazy measuring system.  My first year canning was a nightmare:  2 cups make a pint, 2 pints make a quart............and then WHAMMO! 4 quarts the the gallon.  NO!  If we start out by 2s, we need to STAY with the 2s.  Of course, this is nothing compared with our other measuring standards--12 inches to 1 foot.   Do we jump to 12 feet?  No--we pick the totally daft 3 feet = a yard.  Do we stick with 3s?  Nope.  1760 yards make a mile.  If it was going to be a random number anyway, how about an easier one to remember?   See what I mean?  It's completely insane.  So knowing that I have just under 200,000 yards sounds like a lot, of course--and IS a lot--but I don't really have a mental picture.  Until I did the math: I have 113 m...

In all fairness, I think ALL my yearly challenges sound pretty daft in January.  Some, of course, sound daft the entire year, and I'm thinking this one might be one of those. Technically, I'm actually ahead of schedule and doing well, with 2 mitten ornaments and a blue bell pumped out yesterday: Of course, not every day is a holiday, nor do I need to be resting my back every afternoon.  My back was feeling so good on Monday that I just couldn't STOP doing things.  Nothing disastrous, but extra stretches, extra exercises--it felt so good, in fact, that I had a hard time sleeping.  It's hard to realize how exhausting pain is until it's gone.  Between the Valium and the pain, I've been sleeping a LOT, and I think I'd just reached sleeping capacity.  I had meant to crank out a few more mitten ornaments yesterday, but got distracted by other things.  Today, however, I have powered up Jeeves and am trying out some of the new embroidery designs I g...