Unfinished business

On this last day of the year I thought I’d take stock of some unfinished business, namely my unfinished projects from 2011.   The list is short and consists of a pair of mitts, a scarflet, and a bag.  Not too bad.

Fetching Mitts: 

I don’t like the way theses mitts flare out and curl at the ends which is why they are still unfinished.  I will rip out the finger and thumb edges and finish them with a simple ribbing.

Linen stitch scarflet:

I started this on the flight back from Vegas in October.  I’ve worked on it some since then and have about 16 inches knitted with 9-10 more inches to go.  Christmas knitting prevented me from finishing this.  I hope blocking the finished scarf will correct curling at the edges and keep it from curling when worn.  Other than that one concern, I am loving the colors and the stitch.

Garter Stitch Bag Part 2

This one is for my sister. Love the colors: Cascade 220 in Primavera and Jet.  I used these two colors on my bag along with Ruby.  Same pattern as before but I cast on 21 stitches per square instead of 17.  The original pattern calls for 25 stitches per square but that makes a bag too big for my taste.  And too heavy for my shoulder.  The pattern is relatively mindless knitting though I had to rip out part of a square when I discovered I was mindlessly doing stockinette stitch (knit one row, purl the next) instead of garter stitch (knit all rows).  Easy enough to fix.

The mitts should take an hour or two to finish.

The bag is a bit more time-consuming.  Each row takes me about one minute to knit and each square is 42 rows.  It’s roughly 42-45 minutes per square provided I don’t accidentally purl instead of knit.  I have 6 out of 22 squares finished and I’m seaming it together as I go. Easy to do while watching a movie or football game.

The scarf is, well, just a scarf.  It’s for me and I’m not in a hurry to finish it so it will be at the bottom of the list.

Do you have any unfinished business this year?  Will you finish what you started before casting on something else?

Office mitts

The fingerless mitts I made for the office staff are finished and gifted.  The pattern was developed from a combination of a few glove, mitten, and fingerless mitt patterns I found so it’s more or less original.

The tan and olive green striped ones turned out better than I imagined.  I like how the stripes go from dark to light with the navy first then the dark heather green and finally to the olive.  Subtle but noticeable.

I think they all coordinate well with the hats I gifted last year.

Office hats

Quiet time

This year is the second time Mr. Aitch and I will be spending Christmas Day with just the two of us.  The first time was in 2008.  We didn’t like it.  It was not fun.  And we promised each other that we would never do it again.

But we’re ok with it this year.

Our daughter and family are having Christmas at their own home and starting their own traditions.  We respect their decision as we did the same thing after our children were born.

Our son lives closer but with Mr. Aitch’s choir director obligations our Sunday “down time” doesn’t start until early afternoon.  Adding the fact that neither of us like to drive in the dark makes the day even shorter, literally.

We will be spending the day relaxing and enjoying our new traditional Christmas dinner: Prime rib, garlic mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, fresh-baked rolls, cheesecake and a bottle (or two) of fine wine.

We will visit our son on Monday when we will have more time.

I finished all the mitts for the office gifts except for weaving in the ends of the final one.  Those will be gifted on Tuesday.

Our daughter and family will visit us next weekend.

I hope your celebrations are what you want them to be.

Merry Christmas.

Gift idea for mother-to-be

Looking for a useful but unique gift for a new mom or mother-to-be?  Make some burp cloths.

I made these a few weeks ago for Mr. Aitch’s niece who’s expecting her first baby in February.  I used a few different prints and coordianted them with the baby bedding.

The tutorial is on my tutorial page.  You can make two out of one  yard of flannel or get creative and use two ro more coordinating prints and solids.  My original ones were made out of leftover pieces of flannel as well as some cut up flannel sheets and even a few of Mr. Aitch’s too-small-but-still-good flannel shirts.  Just make sure you pre-shrink the flannel as it will shrink…A LOT!!  I can’t stress that enough.  Pre-shrink!!

Click here for more info then print out the directions and make a mom happy.