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January 29, 2008

Accidentally all green

I knit faster than I blog. Here's the (unblocked) front of a top.

and here's the sleeve. Yup. It's a sleeve. You'll see in just a couple days because I'm almost halfway done with the back.

Classic Elite has already published this pattern in the Mostly Modern book. They've called it the Cotton Bam Boo Fluttery Sleeve Top (ravelry link). I'll be publishing it myself soon (a week or two?) and I'm thinking about giving it a somewhat more concise name. Any ideas?

Here's a little look at a sweater that you'll see eventually. In the summer maybe? In the fall? I'll have to check.

LAMCK! (look at my cute kid)

She touches the needles, then moves the yarn, then touches the needles, then moves the yarn. When I gave her her own needles and yarn later in the day, she said, "[Tadpole] make a sweater for Grandma Grandpa."

Posted by kate at 08:25 AM | Comments (65)

January 28, 2008

FO: Pumpkin Mittens

"Pink and green socks" --> "Pinkin socks" --> "Pumpkin socks" --> "Pumpkin mittens"

Tadpole was really excited about her pink and green socks pumpkin mittens. She proudly showed them to her Papa when he got home. Yarn is from Mama E in "Mermaids." It's very yummy and squooshy and soft. I think I have enough left for a smallish pair for me or maybe I'll just start making big pumpkin mittens for next year.

Email update: I spent a bajillion hours answering emails the other night and got down to 30 flagged messages. It's now back up to 55.

Posted by kate at 12:51 PM | Comments (10)

January 20, 2008

144 is the new zero

That is the number of flagged email messages I constantly have to answer. There were more than that an hour ago, but I'm back to 144. Whenever I manage to get it below that, it goes back up to 144. Maybe I should consider that the new zero. Maybe I'm just wildly ineffective at answering them. Maybe I just get too darned many of them. sigh.

Anyway, I'm super overdue with my examination of 2007. I've been avoiding it because I have the feeling I didn't get much done this year. Here's a collage of what I did get done (besides a tiny bit of spinning that never got photographed)

In addition to what you see in the photo, there are 13 UFOs, 4 of which linger on from 2006.

I'm going to state my goals for 2008 simply:
Do more.
Do less.
Do something for me once in a while.

I hope I'll be seeing lots of you this year and that we'll learn all sorts of wonderful new things together. (That sounded cheesey but I don't care)

Posted by kate at 09:18 AM | Comments (18)

January 02, 2008

2008 already?

I made these for my mom for Christmas:

and these as a baby/Christmas gift

The sweater and hat yarn is my handspun. The sweater is calculated from my top-down raglan calculator worksheet that I use when I give workshops. The hat can be seen better here and the pattern is here (for those of you who don't know). I actually had a ton of yarn left though I had made the sweater smaller than I wanted in fear of running out. I could have even made socks but I stopped myself. The gift was late as it was. The color is truer in the next photo. The bunny was whipped out in just an hour. I had forgotten how quick it was. The yarn is Phildar Neige and the pattern is here (although I suppose most of you know that).

And here is the lovely little recipient who is a girl so I should have just knitted the darned sweater instead of stopping regularly to fret over the color and wearability in case of it being a boy.

Poor little lady. I promise I'll make your hat long enough to cover your ears next time. I should have remembered that you half of you comes from a family of melon-heads.

I'd like to wish you all a happy, healthy, prosperous and knit-filled 2008. I'm a bit behind in my yearly tradition of looking what I accomplished and thinking about what I hope for for the coming year. I'll try to get on that before February or at least before the spring thaw. Love to you all, Kate

Posted by kate at 09:44 PM | Comments (27)