Christmas Aftermath

I failed to finish Michael's Christmas sweater by Christmas and I am okay with it. We've been having tropical winter weather so who needs a wool sweater right now anyway. Despite a high yuck factor (a pile of wool on my lap in the sweltering wet heat because I refuse to use the air conditioner in December), I have set a new personal knitting record for sweater knitting. I accomplished this in one week:



Granted, Michael wears a pretty small sweater. However, I think I've done well for a week's worth of knitting considering the last sweater I knit for him took 3 weeks and that was last Christmas and an even smaller sweater. I am fairly glowing with pride over the whole thing. And since I promised my Mom a sweater a little over a year ago, I need a good boost to my sweater knitting mojo. (I actually knit an entire back and a portion of the front to a sweater for my mom before I decided I didn't like the way it looked and accepted the fact it was too big anyway. It has been sitting and waiting for me to unravel it ever since. I have a new pattern in mind and plan to cast on for it in the very near future.)

Yesterday I wound a warp for a wrap for me. I wanted something long and wide and cozy.



I bought the weft yarn in front from Heritage Yarns a couple years ago before Kurt finished repairing my loom. It is a discontinued yarn called "Cloud 9" in the "Flower Garden" colorway.

I'd planned a 520 end warp and ran out of Perle cotton at 475 ends. Although I did the math before starting and should have had at least 20 yards left over after winding my complete warp, I think the string I cut to measure my warp stretched as I plotted my course around the warping board resulting in a longer warp then planned and an insufficient supply of warp yarn. Fortunately, I should be able to reduce the width of the wrap and make due with what I have. If I am careful not to pull in the sides of the warp as I weave, I am hoping I can reduce the take-in and have a wrap as wide as I want it. The recent scarves I've woven have had almost no take-in at the sides when finished so I feel the odds of success are good. Otherwise, I'll have a crazy fat scarf on my hands.

We have a new wireless Internet modem and all is well on the computer front right now. I am so glad.

Christmas 2008

Any minute, our new wireless Internet modem could go up in flames. Seriously. We've been unable to connect to the Internet all day except in bits and pieces. However, in an amazing feat of obsessive-compulsive behavior, I've managed to upload a dozen Christmas pictures over the last few hours of trying.

We had a nice Christmas. After sitting up to watch Star Gate SG1 with the children until an irrationally late hour on Christmas Eve (I have no idea what we were thinking), everyone slept in this morning. Well, not Kurt. He generally gets up insanely early. This morning was no exception. He got up and tried to be helpful. Putting the dishes away. Or so he says. I awoke convinced someone had crashed Michael's new wagon into the wall separating my bedroom from the living room.

Originally we planned to open presents after breakfast. However, I gave in to the children's pleading when I realized I could probably escape cooking an entire meal if we had breakfast AFTER presents and ate dinner a bit early.



I gave the children the coordinating hats I knit for them.



Gregory's favorite color is blue. Gregory actually got excited about getting a hat after I told him I wouldn't knit for him anymore until he took better care of the stuff I make. We'll see how he does with his hat.



Gabrielle's favorite color is pink.



And Michael flips over the color red.

Unfortunately for Michael, green wagons cost less than red ones.



One of these days I will have to face him when he discovers wagons are supposed to be red. Oh well.

I think I finally picked a Christmas gift for one of the children of which Kurt approves. When I told Kurt I got Michael a wagon, I suggested we could teach Michael to transport bags of feed from the workshop to the chicken coops. Kurt liked the idea - very much.

And while I shopped for improperly colored toys for Michael, we picked up a blue Lightning McQueen car.



The whole blue thing confused Michael temporarily. However, he discovered the blue car shoots missiles and he got over the whole red thing rather quickly.

Michael really loves his red hat. In spite of sweltering tropical weather, Michael wore his wool hat all day and then hid it under some Christmas decorations so I wouldn't take it and put it away.



Gregory loved his new digital camera, though the rest of us are starting to become very annoyed with it.



After a few hours, the constant flashing (he had to replace the batteries in his camera half way through the day) started to set off a migraine. Silly kid. He keeps taking pictures of me and telling me I'm beautiful and then shows me the face of someone much older and flabbier than I could possibly be and so I make him erase the pictures. The whole thing is quite tiring.

I managed to distract Gregory temporarily with weaving yarn.



I got him a couple cones of 10/2 Pearle cotton so he can try some of the intricate drafts he loves to pick out. Once we get the Internet actually working again, he will probably update his blog as well.

Gabrielle got her Christmas present a couple of months ago (her sewing machine) so there wasn't much for her under the tree today. We let her open the family presents her grandparents sent.



She handled the whole "limited presents thing" very well and in fact used her allowance to buy everyone else in the family a present. She maintained an "others" focus that was very sweet.

I gave Kurt the scarf I wove last week and I think he likes it.



He put on the scarf and the socks I knit for him immediately. With the sweltering heat, the woolen gifts seem out of place. It is hard to believe we were breaking ice off the windshields just a couple of days ago.

Kurt gave me a lovely gift today.



600 yards of textured alpaca yarn. He actually tracked down the one yarn store within 50 miles and bought me yarn. I love it. I'd like to weave it into a scarf I think and I'm wondering if I can use wool knitting yarn for warp. Like some Jaggerspun wool and silk lace-weight perhaps.

Superpowers Lost

I can't believe how fast I've been knitting. I finished a couple Christmas watch caps in record time, Michael's red hat being the latest.



Michael loves the red hat so much I cannot find a place to hide it where he can't find it. I put it on the back of my dresser behind the baby scale until I could wash and block it. Michael climbed up a stack of Christmas boxes, climbed on my dresser, ferreted out the hat, brought it to me and asked if he could wear it. He figures if it is red, it must be his. By the time he gets it on Christmas, he will hardly be surprised.

I started and finished another pair of socks for Kurt to replace the giant ones I sent to my brother.



And of course I finished the weaving I blogged about a couple days ago. I had really given up the idea of completing a present for everyone on my list by Christmas and yet I finished late Saturday night. Illness had given me knitting superpowers!

With my new superpowers I dared the impossible. Late Saturday night (or early Sunday morning in some parts of the country), I cast on a sweater for Michael. Never mind that I've never even finished a pair of socks in 4 days, I had superpowers.

And then it happened. Not kryptonite. Not catastrophe. Health.

I regained enough energy I could no longer justify refusing to cook for my family or do basic housework. They too were regaining health and looked to me to provide for their basic needs. All of a sudden, my knitting time shrunk back to a normal hour or two a day of constantly interrupted and distracted knitting. Despite all of the optimism I can rally, I start to suspect I won't finish Michael's sweater by Christmas.



Part of me believes a project undertaken without a pattern can be completed faster. So I am making up Michael's sweater as I go based on the E.Z. percentage system in her book, Knitting Without Tears. I have a couple skeins of compatible yarn in a few Fall colors and think I'll knit a stranded design around the yoke, if I can find one or create one I like. I'd like something with leaves. Today is Tuesday. I have until tomorrow night to finish. Sadly, I don't think I could do it even if I got my superpowers back.

Yesterday morning, winter blasted through the area. It has been warm for a week or so with temperatures in the mid 70s during the day and mid 50s at night. The Weather Channel predicts a return to warm weather tomorrow. We've spent the last 30 hours trying to cram in all the cozy, warm fuzzy Christmas stuff we could.



I turned on the fireplace (a gas fireplace just seems wrong though I sure love not having to haul wood) and made hot apple cider.



I use the apple cider found in the grocery store produce section as a base for my cider. I scrub an orange and stud it with whole cloves. It all goes into the cider in a crock pot. I also add a few sticks of cinnamon. I keep it hot in the crock pot and we help ourselves throughout the day until gone.

I love cold weather (the kind we have on the Gulf Coast, not the real kind). I love being bundled up in a shawl sipping cider or coffee and knitting. Even if my fingers do get slow from the cold. And they are cold and slow right now.

There probably isn't any way I'm going to finish that sweater by tomorrow.

Still Focused

The family's head colds turned into chest congestion, resulting in whiny children and low energy for me. As a family we've pretty much abandoned all order and responsibility around the house under the guise of rest and recovery. Somehow our current philosophy ended up with Gregory and I having a loom warping contest.



Actually, Gregory started warping his loom before he got sick and stalled out. He uses some of my equipment. I wanted to weave a Christmas scarf and told him I would be taking my stuff back if he didn't get going. Somehow, that turned into a race.

I tried something new.



I tied the ends of my new warp to my old one since I wanted to repeat the last pattern I used. Gregory considered it cheating though it didn't save me too much time. Knotting all those threads took awhile.

Gregory finished his warp first so I declared a race for finishing our scarves. (I didn't bother to tell Gregory how much fatter my weft yarn would be compared to his until after he accepted my challenge.)



I used alpaca yarn from Knit Picks while Gregory used Perle cotton for both warp and weft.



I won.

In order to weave with the Christmas tree blocking my natural light source, I tried something a bit desperate.



I balanced a very expensive lamp on the top of my frail castle. It almost crashed to the floor only once and then I managed to catch it with my pinkie. Although the resulting pain stopped me from weaving briefly, my sense of competition carried me though in the end.



With the exception of the first section of the scarf where my selvages are a bit messy, I really like how the scarf turned out. I'm hoping the recipient will appreciate the warmth and ignore the rough edges on the one end. I can't wait to start my next weaving project now that I'm getting the whole selvage thing down!

The Cold Before Christmas

I have a head cold. A bad one. It is no fun. But I learned something the last few days.



I can actually knit much faster than I thought I could. I started this blue hat awhile ago and had just finished the ribbing before I got sick. I figured it would take about a week to get through the stranded portion. Then a head cold gave me focused knitting time. I finished the hat in a day.

I realized I normally behave like an ADHD child when knitting. I knit for a couple minutes then jump up to do something else. I tend to my preschooler's needs. I prepare meals. I do laundry. I clean up. I intervene in squabbles between kids. I assist with home school. I do a hundred different things while trying to work on the stitches of my knitted items. As I compare my speed to others, I always end up feeling slow.

This week, almost all of us are sick. No one is eating much. I made three or four days worth of muffins for breakfast and the kids help themselves if they want them. We've been sort of skipping over lunch. The kids grab an apple or baked potato if they get hungry. For dinner, we've been eating out of the pantry. I have jars and jars of homemade chicken soup. The freezer contains loaves of a variety of breads and vegetables. Preparation time is minimal. Most of our time is spent in front of the television or guarding our horded stashes of tissue. (Incidentally, we are going to have a tissue crises here if something doesn't give soon. The Kleenex is long gone and we have nearly decimated the toilet paper supply.)

The kids have little energy and I've allowed them unlimited afternoon television time. They've laid in bed, enthralled by their rarely watched video collection, for hours at a time. The boys sniffle and sneeze and periodically send Gabrielle, the only healthy one, to replenish the stash of videos. In the meantime I've been huddling on the couch, wrapped in my favorite shawl, listening to The Little House on the Prairie audio books and knitting. Yesterday, I started another hat.



I finished all of this in a single day. Who'd have thought I could accomplish so much. Michael went absolutely nuts when he saw me pull out the red yarn. He loves the color red. He paws and clutches at my red knitting whenever he sees it. He wants it, oh how he wants it. Fortunately, I'm making the red hat for Michael for Christmas. And thanks to my cold, I may actually get it done.

Right before we all got sick, we built the Christmas tree and started the ceremony of decorating it.



I get a sense of awe every time we bring out the decorations. A few years ago, after Hurricane Ivan stole most of our possessions, my Christian Artisans sisters sent me Christmas tree decorations. Many of them were handmade. As I lovingly unwrap each precious ornament, I remember the love my sisters in Christ poured out during the difficult time following the hurricane. I am reminded how blessed I am. There is nothing so sweet as true fellowship among Christians. Christmas reminds me not only that "our Redeemer lives", but that we belong to a world wide family when we opt into salvation through Jesus Christ.

For at least a year, I have wrestled with the idea of stashing some Socks that Rock sock yarn in the "Lunasea" and "Jailhouse Rock" colorways.



I finally gave into the temptation. These yarns are so pretty, so much prettier than I expected when I saw them online! I love the colors and can't wait until I am in a position to knit some socks for me again. I have a sock pattern called "Rivendale" that just begs to be knitted in the "Lunasea" yarn. Who knows, if my head cold lingers, I may actually get to it soon.