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Dear Ellen,

You may remember my Woodland Vines sweater — the one I started in the summer and thought I’d finish in a few weeks?? Well, it sure got sidetracked during the fall, but in a bout of slogging through 2010 projects on needles, I finally moved forward and finished it up.? I had completed the knitting a month ago, but then it sat in a chair waiting for blocking.? The pictures take it from blob, to blob hanging on dress form, to blocked blob (note yoke detail!), to finished product! ?At least it’s finished except for finding the right 11 buttons and sewing them on.? I’ve ordered a few different alternatives from some etsy vendors and am confident that I’ll be pleased with at least one of them, so I’m hoping to be completely finished very soon.

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TGIF is also a finished object now.? All it was waiting on was a decision on whether or not the button solution was adequate or not.? If so, I needed another means to actually secure the sweater for when I wanted it closed as the current solution means buttons are only decorative.? I decided to add a frog (as opposed to deciding to frog) of simple I-cord to use when needed.? When it’s not needed, it can fasten in the back.? I’m pleased…but may revisit the buttons if I find others as perfect in size and color, but far lighter in weight.? The knitting is now finished, I’m waiting for the toggle to arrive in the mail, but you get the idea.? I’ll post final FO pictures of these two once the buttons/closures are completed…maybe even with me wearing them!

I also finished up the headband for my friend at work — it’s very fun.? Not what I would normally wear on my head, but I do kind of like the neck band option.

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I have three WIPs remaining and I’m committed to not casting on anything new till 2011.? First is the Sweater from Down Under.? I had set it down for quite a while, but picked it back up just the other night and am making progress again.? Second is my Simple Lace Scarf…a little more progress there as well.? And finally, those nasty Noro socks.? It’s really hard to get motivated to knit them with my dislike for the knittability of the yarn.? Beyond my earlier complaints, I’m now finding knots — and knots that do not keep the color changes consistent.? Grrr!? I only have part of a single cuff left so it should be finished this weekend if I would just grit my teeth and get it over with.

At least I have some inspiration to get me motivated to move through these projects…Christmas gift goodies from folks like you and Dale!? Looking through the books (especially Wrapped in Comfort by our good friend Alison) will make me want to get some new projects going and I’ve sworn no newbies till the UFOs are done!? With the Knitwear Design Workshop I’ll have my head full of all the new projects I want to design myself!? There are a few other inspiring goodies in the picture…including HiyaHiya Puppy Snips, a Debra’s Garden whorl pendant needle gauge, Yarn Dots, a magnetic measuring tape and a very nice hand knit face cloth.? Our readers can guess which of you gave me the face cloth.? It’s looking like 2011 will be a great year for hand knits!

Love, Jan

P.S. Have you noticed how our spam volume seems to have jumped?? Does this mean we’ve arrived???

Dear Ellen,

I finished!? I finished!? All the holiday knitting that is.? The longest project to work were the dress socks for Dale.? The slog was well worth it though.? Having originally been resistent to the idea of hand knit socks, I believe I have won Dale over.? They are out of Fiber-phile Merino Cashmere Sock Yarn, a delicious blend of superwash merino, cashmere and nylon.? The design is basically a toe-up vanilla with an inset of a 2 stitch cable on the outside of each leg.? Had I done more, I know he wouldn’t wear them.

Thanks to your adventures in cashmere-washability-testing, I am even going to allow him to put these in the washer.? That last bit was the downfall of his final resistance as he just could not see wearing socks that had to be hand washed.? (Of course, he’s been watching me machine wash my hand knit socks for years now…not sure why he thought his would be special.)? It will warm my heart to see him warm his feet with socks made just for him by me!

Love, Jan

Dear Ellen,

This time of year it is impossible to stop Dale from humming and whistling Christmas songs.? Most amusingly, he is usually making up new words for them.? This is not a problem.? Except I get them stuck in my head.? Consider, to the tune of Sleigh Bells, “We have silly little dogs, they look like pollywogs do…Their names are Max and Ruby, they’re cuddly and?cutie…like you.”? I guess that’s a compliment.

We are getting quite into the holiday spirit.? The cards and packages made it out in time that they have a real chance to make it to their destinations by Christmas.? I am nearly done with Christmas knitting — the giant socks for Dale, a headband for Heidi,?and a knitted flower embellishment for a headband remain.? Last night I gave Jessie the newboy cap I knit for her and she loved it.? Doesn’t she look great?? And I finished a moebius cowl for our friend Lisa.? I think there will be more knitted gifts next year, but I’m going to plan them out earlier.

I hope your holiday is FANTASTIC!

Love, Jan

Hi, all,

Thanks for the wishes for better health.? They (and the antibiotics and likely just the natural course of things) seem to be working and I am dressed and working at my desk and not in bed today.? I’m sure I’ll be back to work next week.

All week I’ve been looking at this snowdrift whenever I? stumbled to the kitchen for tea.? And today, my desk looks straight out at it.? Now that I’m feeling better, I have plans for it.? You’ll have to wait and see, as I’ve promised not to overdo, but I hope that in bits and pieces I can tackle and transform it over the weekend.

In the meantime, I’ll share a marvelous side effect of being flat on your back sick the week before your in-laws (MIL, FIL, BIL, 2 SIL’s, niece, nephew) show up for a full week at your house*.? Your mother-in-law, if she is as wonderful as mine, will influence your husband into agreeing to a cleaning service to prep the house.? I’m pretty sure that the relief of the stress of how to get the house clean from my bed is partly responsible for my recovery, too.

I hope to show you the knitting that was managed while I was down for the count (though there were plenty of hours where I was too fatigued to even knit!) sometime this weekend.? In the meantime, thanks again, and stay warm.

Ellen

*It is because of things like this that a week that most people respond to in horror (your in-laws live in your house for a week?!) is one of the highlights of our year.? Believe it or not – some years we have 13 people in one house for the week with no melodrama at all (unless you count charades), but with plenty of poetry reading, cookie eating, cooking and feasting, book club, etc.?? I don’t count the typical parent-child squabbles (Jon, time to stop with the video games!; Wilson, eat your squash!).? It is exhausting but tremendous fun.

Dear Jan,

I took my first sick day, and then another, in a very long time this week.? Nothing dramatic, just a lousy cold.? I knew it wasn’t the flu, because with a really bad cold you feel like your going to die and with a bad case of the flu you wish you would.? I never quite got to that point, and now am definitely on the way up, but not so much that I was much help to Wilson in clearing the 15-17″ of snow that fell in our part of the Twin Cities.

Friday night it started coming down, and by Saturday night we had a 4 foot drift on our deck, drifts piled up against the basement windows, and kitties very grateful for a woodstove.

I did work from home during the week, but also napped, served as cat furniture, drank tea, and yes, especially during the weekend, got some knitting in. My handspun Saroyan is now well past half-done, and I got 50% through the Second Sleeve of my In Honor of Pele cardigan? (while Wilson shoveled, poor guy).? I did make sure and bundle him given the windchills well below 0F.

To break up the knitting, I spun up a bit of mystery fiber that I had purchased in Halifax last May – it was a piece of roving dyed by Handmaiden, bought in a shop that had some sort of connection to them.? They had seconds and odds and ends and I bought several.? Of course, I was going to remember what I bought.? Of course, I didn’t.

A little forensics suggests that it may be cashmere.? It is certainly soft enough.? The staple is quite short, maybe an inch and a half.? Crimpy, but not uber-crimpy like a Merino.? And challenging to spin.

I’m spinning it fine, because there isn’t much fiber and I want more than a few yards.? This means lots of twist, as the finer the yarn the more twist needed to hold it together.? I tried to spin it worsted, but it is soft and a little slippery so I was really having to pinch it hard to keep all that twist from getting into the fiber supply. Too much stress!

It got better when I listened to the yarn (and to many spinning experts who say spin short staple woolen, long staple worsted) and moved to a kind of double draw woolen spinning. Pre-drafting helped a lot, too.? See the difference that a little bit of stretching of the roving makes, turning a dense rope of fiber into a cloud?? So many wonderful transformations in the spinning process…

I guess after this storm it will be months before the landscape transforms back to anything other than white.? We’ll see how that goes.? I love winter, but this one is starting awfully hard and awfully hard.

I think we just hit the point in the evening when I need to go hibernate.

Love,

Ellen