hometown day four - the muff pattern!

Another busy day yesterday - did some tai chi, some mending, visited at the hospital with a cousin who drove in from the Laurentians to see mum, wrote up the Meet Me in St Louis-inspired muff and and matching muffler patterns! You can download it here. Techniques you will need: grafting (or three-needle bind-off if you don't like grafting), figure-8 cast on (great tutorial on knitty.com), cabling, i-cord. There's also a small amount of sewing together for the muff. They're knit in bulky, so they go pretty quickly. Enjoy! n.b.: I was going to put pics in the pdf, but that made it 7 megs instead of 35 k... so until I get around to editing images, you'll just have to look for them here.

hometown day three? i think?

i'm not good at keeping track of days when i don't have my regular structure, i must confess, but i think today will be day three up here... so far i've kept up with mmy tai chi (yay!) and done some much-needed mending (yay!) and sorting-of-stuff (yay!) but haven't done so well with some of my other ambitious tasks. yesterday i was out and about from 10 in the morning until after 6 o'clock at night! visiting the hospital, going for brunch with friends, stopping at mrs tiggy winkles to get a birthday present for the bambino (i am a bit bummed about missing his third birthday - snif), back to the hospital, then off again on a cruller-mission for mum, then back to the hospital, then eventually home. did some work on the purple socks (which are now destived for me!) but i find those tiny 2mm needles just kill my wrists - can't do much before it is just too painful. so, i've cast on for surface in some wonderful briggs & little "sport" which is just wonderfully squishy and springy especially considering its gauge! i'm hoping if i go back and forth between the different projects my wrists will hold out!

brrr...

it is super cold here - definitely had the muff in action yesterday! yikes. there's nothing like cold weather though to make me break out the knitting, especially in warm warm wool. i got mild heck this week for sending the bambino to school with a stranglable scarf, so i knit him a little neckwarmer to keep him both cosy and out of trouble. it's a supereasy superfast stashbuster - half a skein of leftover worsted and a day later, we have this:

whee!! i cast on 64 sts using a long-tail cast on for stretchiness, joined in the round on dpns, then did a k1 p1 rib for 16 rows. then i went raglan, placing markers every 20/12/20/12 sts, and inc 1 on either side of each marker (i did some short-row shaping at the back as well), then bind off over the shoulders and knit in rib back-and-forth for a few extra rows at the front and back. i hope it fits!!

meet me in st louis!

finally some photos of the finished muff and muffler! patterns soon to come. both were fairly fun to make, the only trick was grafting the ends (all those cables!) and figuring out the inside of the muff (there are cuffs to fit snugly around the wrist, keeping out cold air, and then it flares into an inner sort of cavern big enough for both hands), but making it double-layered (on top of all those cables) makes it super warm.



i'm spending the week in my hometown since mum is ill, and hoping to throw off all my holiday-season bad habits and replace them with good ones - eating right, doing my tai chi every day, studying asl everyday, and updating this blog! so i promise to get the patterns up soon!

winter

well i haven't posted in a while because life has been very topsy-turvy - my mum's illness was determined to be caused by brain tumours, and on boxing day we found out it's inoperable and she is currently in hospital receiving palliative care. it's heartbreaking but she is thankfully in no pain and in a surprisingly good mood - i heard today on the radio that happiness is linked to activity in the left prefrontal cortex (or something) which is roughly near to one of the tumours, so i am conforting myself with the notion that she will just get happier and happier as she nears the end.

meanwhile, the tediosity of life goes on, with me losing gloves and the zipper breaking on one of my winter boots. so - new boots for me! and, i have knit a muff - it's blocking now, and i'll write up a pattern when i get a moment. my mum has a picture somewhere of her aunt fan who was dead glamourous and in the picture she is wearing a muff that is dripping with ermine tales - mum has always been entranced by the picture, so a muff seems fitting at the moment. very meet me in st louis, and also - i hope - not as easy to lose as gloves.

more argh

back home in toronto and sherwood is almost finished - just have to do the neck, seam & block! whee! but my 6mm dpns are still mixed up with my wreath project, which i can't seem to find... my lovely husband did a little reno job while h & i were away and i am thrilled beyond belief, but i think my knitting might have gotten tidied up out of harm's way somewhere...

anyway, here is a crappy photo of the almost-done sweater:

oh boy.

totally forgot to bring the wreath with me to mum's, so that is not getting done. i did, however, bring along the sherwood sweater i've been plugging away at for h for the better part of a year. i've done the front & back and am just finishing up the first sleeve, and i thought i'd have a look at the pattern to make sure it's the right length (h is asleep) and... i'm doing it wrong. the pattern repeats with a half-step in the original and a full step in mine. whoops! at least i was wrong consistently from the beginning... ah well.

i'm liking the construction at any rate. i changed it from circs to straights because i prefer them (yes, really!), but i like the 3-needle-bind-off shoulder join, and i like starting the set-in sleeve by picking up stitches along the armscye and knitting down. and the tricky purl-behind-knit that i figured out for the earl-grey socks is coming in very handy on these cables.

even if i am completely wrong, i still like it. except that of course i am certain to run out of yarn. might start haunting others' stashes for a few extra yards of cascade ecological.

(edited now that i am home again and using a keyboard that will allow me to type the letter "h" without use of a mallet)