Stitching AND finishing

Since the start of the year I have taken up some stitching again, some needlepoint pieces from my late mother's stash and one cute little cross stitch piece. For the needlepoint there have been some supply problems from one of the needlepoint yarn makers (like, they have not shipped anything for over 2 years due to the economic downturn), and as a result I was at a standstill for a while on my large Iris.

So while I waited for more yarn to come in, I also completed some socks:


. . . and the back of my Rayon Blue Heron sweater (with help from our new kitty who loves to chew the yarn in twain. But that's another posting . . . ):

Blue Heron Rayon sweater with bust shaping. I really, really
like the shaping on this pattern - it's slinky and is going to be just fabulous
for a spring or summer event. Starting again on a
smaller size is going to make all the difference.
And with that nice lace pattern, I think this means I get to treat
myself to a nice, lacy camisole??

Finally, about early March, some yarn finally arrived and I was able to finish my large Iris!! I was able to take it off its frame, too, and this is a good thing because I found yet another piece of my mother's that will fit perfectly on this frame. I had fun playing with choosing the colors, as she had received it as a gift with DMC embroidery thread as the yarn/thread for it, and she just couldn't figure it all out. She had started stitching the background with 1 strand of Persian yarn and it was really hard for her to see it. I got to play with new and pretty colors back in January, so this is going to be something all of my own when I finally start on it. Probably this summer.

In the meantime, I finished stitching the background of my large Iris which was the only thing missing:

I am so happy with how this piece turned out. With Persian yarn, I could combine strands from the old and from the new dye lots and the RH final corner looks seamless.

Now comes the blocking portion of it, which I'm not going to do until I decide how I want to frame it. Which, I admit, may be a while; I have a ton of needlework already to hang in our house, and this piece will block back into shape. I know - I've done it a hundred times with pieces much more cockeyed than this one.

The other stitching piece that I finished recently is my little bird. This was one of 3 birds of a series I bought when I learned that the Danish designer, Eva Rosenstand was going out of business. Her company later found a buyer, but they no longer weave their own linen nor dye their own threads. This latter, especially, is sad for me - her view of colors was unique in all the world and only her kits made prior to 2002 or so will have her original vision to them. Fortunately I have several of her kits, one of which involves the rich Dutch blues, that I will begin someday. It will match the one that I finished a number of years back.

ANYWAY. This little bird is the final in the series of 3 - the first was the Wren in the Furze (yes, there is a nursery rhyme that starts "The Wren, the wren, the king of all birds/St. Stephen's Day was caught in the furze"); the second was the little bluetit; and this one is a little brown bird in a Cherokee rosebush (or its Danish equivalent):

Here s/he is! Standing so proudly, and the leaves which are yellowish-green and colors I would not ordinarily use are really quite a complement to her brown-ness and the pink of the roses.

The beauty of this design is the simplicity of the color changes - the bottom petal on the top rose just looks like it is folded up a little bit. And what suggests this? The sudden color movement from mauve to pink with a single strand of light grey backstitching to delineate the edge of the petal from its back. The human eye does the rest. People asked me frequently "Surely you must design your own patterns?!" to which I only have to show this picture to explain that there are some of us who stitch and bring pictures to life, and some who can imagine and create. I am in awe.

I have also been making great strides with the other Iris picture, the one that looks more modern? Not cubist, but not as realistic as the large Iris by Lee Designs. It has no shading, but each of the petals and leaves is its own patch of color. Which makes the entire piece very striking. Strides of it are here:

Part of what gives this piece its beauty is the intensity of these blues and purples. I needed more of the dark green DMC needlepoint yarn, and it did not go as far as it needed to. The Rolaframe is a doozy to set up - it takes 2 people to mount a piece of needlepoint onto it, and many were the times my staff and I spent setting one up for a customer.

And one more thing: my infamous swan piece is finally done!!

Contemplation with Projects

This year, my goal at The Mountain was not so much knitting as it was trying out some designs for some self-designed sweaters. I took a class in Percentage Sweaters at the 2006 Plying the Arts Festival (you can read more about it here at World in a Spin) and I feel much more confident about knitting some fairly simple sweaters for me and Webmaster Bill after this course. Plus, I have this well-thought-out notebook that is complete with notes, diagrams, and lots of informative information, and I really, really must use it sometime.

With that goal in mind, having selected yarns from shops without any definite pattern for them, I chose The Mountain as my place for swatching and trying out new patterns. You must understand, I hate swatching. I realize it is extremely necessary to the ultimate garment that I will eventually wear and will spend hours (months? years?) knitting, but it takes every ounce of discipline to actually sit down and meticulously knit a small thing, measure, re-knit on different needles, re-measure, etc., etc. I recently had the lovely experience of ripping out half of an entire back simply because I lied to myself about # of stitches per inch to bust size to fit . . . and I realized that the satisfaction of sitting down and knitting does not add up to an ill-fitting garment. I wonder if that's why I like knitting for the younger generation so much?? I can knit big (because I knit loosely) and justify it with "they'll grow into it" in a way that, well, I'd rather not grow into too big knitting!

First on the docket was a cable-front sweater made from Cascade Yarn's Eco-wool that is a nice, big, thick undyed (or minimally dyed) yarn. Mmmmm, yummy. And perfect for a man. It appears that they've added some colors to this line, but there you have it. The earthiness of the tones did turn off some knitters who preferred colors to earthtones, so I guess those knitters now have some additional options. Anyway, I went through my Barbara Walker stitch pattern books, narrowed the selection of cable patterns down to 5, and with the discipline that only The Mountain and its Knitting Water can bring (and about 2 dozen talented knitters who weren't going to let me get away with being a slacker), I began to swatch cable patterns. I learned whilst swatching that I will have to go from a size 10 needle (what the yarn calls for) to a size 9, or the cables won't be tight enough. Except for 1 cable, but I'll just put it out there anyway.

Thanks to my class notebook's sweater notes, I also noted which pattern I knitted and what page it was on, so that in a few months' time, when I have decided what cable I'm going to knit, not an easy task, I'll be able to reference the pattern. All of them are taken from A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns by Barbara Walker, personalized and signed by herself *sigh*.

Alternating Cable, P. 166

Aran Braid, Pp. 166-7

Loose Five-Rib Braid, P. 169

Four-Rib Braid p. 177

Latticed Diamond, p. 194

One of the good things about finding the discipline of swatching is that you discover what you do not like. The above Latticed Diamond is a beautiful but oh-so-complicated pattern - there are cable instructions even for the back of the pattern! So, while it would be eye-catching and bring lots of complements, it will be waaaay too much work for me for this sweater at this time.

We're leaning towards the Aran Braid (choice #2) or the Loose Five-Rib Braid (choice #3). My only concern with #2 is that it is such a narrow pattern it might get lost as the centerpiece of a big, thick sweater. On the other hand, it is a dense enough pattern that I might be able to stay with size 10 needles! So, like I said, the goal was to try out patterns, see how they look, see how much I enjoy knitting them, and then putting it away for a while until the *BING* happens and I dive for the pattern book and knit my sweater, um, WB's sweater, in earnest.

The second set of swatches is for an office-use cardigan, made with Brown Sheep's Cotton Fleece. It is a combination of cotton (for lightness) and wool (for stretch-back-into-shape-ness) that I've always envisioned as that project. And I happened to buy some at Earth Guild a couple of summers ago, helping with The Tiny House (the blog is to the right where you can read about more adventures with this building project in Asheville, NC) and treating myself to some nice yarn all for me. Knowing that cotton looooves to stretch out of shape and stay there, and knowing that I did not want to make a giant sack that I would then feel uncomfortable wearing, I decided to knit some rib patterns. Ribbing helps the garment pull back into shape (those k stitches want to ignore the p stitches and just want to love on each other), so I tried some variations on a theme to see how they would look. Results are below:

A classic 4 x 2 rib - really pulls together; perhaps too much of a good thing??

Stockinette swatch. Yup, it's floppy.

5 x 1 swatch. It looks . . . something ain't quite right here.

4 x 1 swatch. It looks more balanced and, well, subtle.

So I'll probably go with this final swatch, the 4 x 1 swatch, with a contrasting color to be the border. I've also learned that on a cardigan the button band (i.e., the border) needs to be knit in a garter stitch (knit every row, like on the edges) and that's just too bland for me. The yarn is very simple; all the detail will be in the colors and the stitches. I want to use a seed stitch, and just have a single large, probably hand-made button at the top of the sweater, to button it near the neck. After all, who buttons cardigans all the way up? And since it will be a little floppier being open like that all the way down, the idea of a ribbed pattern appeals to me, especially a rib pattern where I can gather it along the waistline to pull in the garment and limit the floppiness. I have some great floppy pullovers that I happily wear at home and, yes, at the office on cold winter days, and I think something a little more tailored would suit me well.

Well, off to make some soup with some delicious purple barley I found at the local Farmer's Market, and maybe a salad to go with. Mmmmm . . . .

Preparing for The Mountain

So here it is, time to prepare for my annual visit with the Atlanta Knitting Guild to The Mountain Retreat center. It really, really is a gorgeous place, and if you look closely at the mountain on the right-hand side of the website's picture, you'll see the Lodge nestled among all the trees. That's where we sit and knit for a weekend. And the mountain from where this photo is taken is a nice hike from the retreat center. Up and down and through streams, but good exercise. Unless it's snowy and cold, and then we all sit and knit instead.

Let me explain something about The Mountain. When I first joined the Atlanta Knitting Guild way, way back in 1999, I was quite intimidated by the amount of knitting going on (remember, I had just bought a needlework shop and knew only the fundamentals of knitting!), and as I continued going to meetings and learning what yarns, techniques, and projects were out there, I also kept hearing the attendees saying, "I started this project at THE MOUNTAIN and . . . " and then they would stand up and show the most gorgeous sweaters, coats, shawls, and the like, that I had ever seen. Of course, I kept wondering, "What IS this Mountain thing, of which these members speak??" So I put on my adventurer's hat and went looking.

The Mountain is a beautiful, still, often snow-covered place in the Blue Ridge mountains of southern North Carolina. Near the part that touches Georgia, which means you drive for about 3 hours and then get to PLAY on twisty windy mountain roads (which is why I drive a Neon. It takes those curves at its top abilities, but it purrrs when it senses those turns!) before coming to a Place. This Place is now a preserved area (there's a particular name for this and I just can't remember it right now!), meaning it will remain wilderness and preserved until infinity.

The AKG began going to the Mountain during President's Day weekend oh, about 20 years or so ago, and it has become a tradition in my life to join in starting in 2001. In years past, it was a quiet place to get away from my shop for a brief time without my shopowner's hat, with the company of others, and Nature Herself in all of Her Winter Divinity. Now I just enjoy being one of the regulars who comes and brings projects and talks with others and watches The Mountain do its calm, quiet magic on their souls. As an old teacher of mine said, "Do everything by doing nothing at all."

Which means that I have 3 days (or so) of knitting - getting up on Friday, knitting all day Saturday and Sunday, then preparing to leave on Monday with a nice, slow, leisurely drive (after the twisty windy mountain roads!) through some small towns in North Georgia. I had the chance to visit some antique shops last year - Webmaster Bill received some antique hand planes, and I'm on the lookout for some replacement English Village soup bowls, but not too much! Also a visit to a music store, but alas, no supplies for my hammered dulcimer.

And in the past I've always had a project or 6 that were in transition or where I was stuck or that were just so big that I needed the inspiration from other knitters to continue. Webmaster Bill's white Irish Wool sweater from Blackwater Abbey Yarns was begun there (and NOT knit in the round - casting on 400 + stitches and having them twist was NOT what I needed to convince me to knit in the round at all costs!), his first cable-knit sweater was begun and finished there (including the mistake cover up on the yoke - a crocheted chain stitch looks a whole lot like a knit stitch from the front!), and my dear G's wedding shawl made with fine Wensleydale Longwool (this shade card, though outdated, shows Storm much better than any other site); in short, it was a place to begin or continue a thoroughly ambitious project with others who could attest to that project's ambition. Or my foolishness, I'm not sure which!

This year I don't feel too overwhelmed by any one project, so I've been gathering together some projects and some that need swatching, and making sure that I have needles, instructions, and gauge swatches all in the same place. My one ambitious project is the Russian lace shawl that I bought waaaay back in 2004 at the first Stitches South/TKGA knitting weekend, with my dear G by my side, and I began it in 2009. It is made of deep purple yarns in very, very tiny lace weight, and while I was taking pictures, Cerridwen decided she just haaad to help out:

Oh look, pretty, pretty, pretty yarn!

She says, hopefully! The technique is the other thing I love about this yarn (the first being the color). It involves an oft-repeated lace pattern (thank goodness I know now about lifelines!) to create the edges, with the jagged edges using a Russian bind-off to give a smooth edge. The straight edge becomes the inner row where a second color is added, and then the entire body is (I think) added from the edges to the center. The colors are below:

Starting with the bluish purple for the edges, then picking
up with the purple purple, and finally the body in the
reddish purple. Mmmmmmm.

I know I have enough yarn; I just hope I'm using the correct colors for the correct section! It will be a bear to rip out. Wool and silk is sooo soft to knit and wear, too. Will have to have a special outfit when this shawl is finally done. And really, I haven't knit much more than when I put it away a year ago after being at the Mountain. I'll need to take some time this weekend to pick it up and become familiar with the pattern again. Strangely enough, I like working on this shawl in the late afternoons and evenings. The concentration I have to go through keeps my mind sharp.

I also have a requisite sock started, and my Rayon yarn by Blue Heron that I discovered I had knit too big. So I had to rip it out and start over. Eeeew. And also the center-pull balls had collapsed in the middle (well, the one I had started from) and I had a great big knotty mess that the ladies at my Tuesday evening knitting group helped me untangle. With the help of some Blue Moon, of course! I've begun knitting this sweater again, at a much smaller size (my gauge was going to make it become a sack, not a svelte sweater), but here is the pattern that really brings out the yarn's color and texture:

Pretty, sparkly, but oooh so easily tangled!

I don't know if you can see it, but there are diagonal little lace openings all along it. Anyway, the only rows that have a lace pattern are R3 and R9, so it's a lot of knitting with only 2 rows in a 12 row repeat of having to stop and think. Until you get into the shaping, which I should have started immediately but because I was watching something interesting on TV . . . it will be at R16 instead of R5 when the waist decrease begins. I think that's what I want, too, because I much prefer long-waisted garments to crop tops. It's a boob thing.

And then there are two more projects that I will just be swatching and trying out patterns for. Three more things - I almost forgot. One is Webmaster Bill's next sweater:


Yes, yes, that IS Barbara Walker's book behind this yummy, thick, brown yarn. I have picked out a bunch of cable patterns, WB has winnowed them down a bit, and with a big swift and ball winder at The Mountain I'll be able to find the perfect pattern for this yarn. I'm looking for a big cable down the front, and once I find the best one, I'll begin to knit a Percentage Sweater, a la Elizabeth Zimmerman and Jacqueline McFee, for WB to thank him for all the times he's put up with my meltdowns over every computer thing that has gone wrong for me at home late at night when I KNOW I shouldn't be computing, but . . . ! You get the picture. And because this yarn is just too yummy, and I HAD to buy something at a shop during the Shop Hop, and and and . . .

Then there is a Cotton Fleece cardigan that I'll be swatching, also knitting as a Percentage Sweater, but flat because I'm not cutting my knitting yet! I've always envisioned Cotton Fleece by Brown Sheep as a cardigan project yarn - it's almost too heavy for Atlanta summers because of the wool mixed in with the cotton, but is perfect as the cardigan that you keep at the office when the AC is waaay too high in the summer. The colors I've chosen for this project are Deep Maroon and Candy Apple. The sweater itself will be Candy Apple, and the edges (I hope!) will be Deep Maroon. I bought this yarn when I bought the yarn for my Beach Sweater 2 years ago in Asheville at Earth Guild shop, and while my Beach Sweater was a priority, I totally fell in love with these two deep, rich, complementary colors. I think some sort of K5 P2 rib pattern will work well - this yarn will stretch and not stretch back into shape, and I don't want to wear a sack at work. A rib pattern will compensate for that stretch; I just have to find the right one, and find the right needles so that my ever-loose gauge doesn't compound the problem. My hope, too, is that I can knit the border in seed stitch for some texture, and just have a single large button at the neck. I mean, who really buttons their cardigans all the way up??

And then finally, a Fair Isle Vest pattern by Classic Elite yarns. I had bought some Elsbeth Lavold Silky Wool yarn back in 2003? 2004? at the Gainesville shop on my way with The Other Susan to The Mountain. The colors were just gorgeous, and this was one of the times that I decided I HAD to buy the yarn or I would regret it forever. Fortunately, Carrie at Sheepish had a complementary color last year along with the pattern, so I bought her out of that color and I finally have a use for this gorgeous yarn! All nice fall colors (sorry, no pictures or links - they're all wound into balls and I don't want to go looking!) with a deep, rich greyish blue to tie them all together. Again, this is a swatching project that might, just might, result in beginning said project. But we'll see.

My list is written, I have the directions to The Mountain on my Desktop ready to print, and next week I have the time off. I really hope I haven't forgotten anything (must review needles!!) before I set off. I'm really looking forward to next weekend!

Some needlepoint since Christmas

Now that my Christmas knitting is done, shipped, and received, I can attend to some other projects. My little bird is still in good shape - have elongated one branch and am about to start with another pink flower. Progress! But really, stitching on linen is such a summertime project, one to stitch when the spring starts to come and the days grow longer and a nice early evening can be spent on the front porch with fabric, scissors, and cotton thread. And a nice glass of wine. Here's my little bird's progress:

He may receive some work in a couple of weekends
when I go to visit a stitching friend.

In the meantime, I noticed a green project bag that I knew contained some pieces of my late mother's needlepoint. I took a look and found two iris pieces that I knew she bought at my shop because I remember buying them from the sales rep. She had always liked pansies and violets, but these were truly beautiful pieces that I know she couldn't resist when I got to convincing her that she had to have them. The first one she had started . . . and then the yarn got separated from its project (thus motivating my plaintive plea in my last post to please, stitchers and knitters, please label your projects or provide a list of your colors, or at the very least, make sure everything is together in one bag. It makes going through your beloved projects so much more in keeping with your own wishes for your beloved projects)! Apparently, Mom had started stitching this piece, notice the Q-Snap frame holding it in place, and so it was up to me to find matching colors. Did I mention that I still have some Persian Yarn in my storage unit?!

While keeping an eye on what I "bought" from myself both for my poor accountant's sake and to keep my website current, I checked, brought home, stitched with, and went back (I think I started doing this activity in the summer, if the truth be told) to find a better match for the greens and the pinks. I did put it down when I couldn't find the exact shades of green for the leaves, but picked it up again earlier this month because, well, really, who's going to know? Except everyone who reads this blog, and really, it doesn't matter all that much. The ol' galloping horse and all! When I picked it up again I started stitching like a crazy woman, just wanting to finish this petal and that color, and all the while doing some background so that there is less background drudgery when our iris is complete:

Mom stitched the far left-hand petal, that delicate pink part, and
the bottom part of the left-hand leaf. She had also
started the basketweave in the bottom left, and it took some
guesswork to find the correct color of yarn she used.

BTW, "Lee" is the name of the needlepoint designer/manufacturer. Lee's Needle Arts is a needlepoint company that had some beautiful needlepoint colors on their canvases that I always found luscious, and the canvases were also reasonably priced for hand-painted canvases. When I bought my shop, I wanted to bring in an alternative to the types of needlepoint my predecessor had always carried. So this was one of my new offerings to a whole new slew of customers, including my mother.

And on this picture is where my background color ran out. Really, I'm quite proud of the progress on my background - there were a lot of places to fill in and join in a continuous, smooth angle. The background is stitched in a basketweave pattern, so called because the back of it looks like a woven basket. Literally. While it takes more yarn to complete and will help keep a monoweave canvas straight (with mono canvas, the individual strands are woven over and under one another, rather than through one another like an interlock or Penelope canvas), it also takes some "reading" of the canvas to know whether you should stitch up the angle or down it. If you get your stitching direction wrong, then it will show uneven-ness on the front, and the back will have two straight up-and-up rows instead of an up row and a sideways, woven row. But I geek out.

While NNW does not have the background color in stock, and the single importer and dye-er of said color has been in product backorder for almost two years on all of their Persian yarn, I think maybe, just maybe, I have found two little skeins that I can use to complete this project, finally. Then those completion endorphins can kick in and I can begin another project!

But wait, I already have started another project!

This one was not on a frame; in fact, Mom had not even started stitching it. I started stitching it without a frame and realized my wisdom over the shop-owning years in "suggesting" that a customer buy a frame when starting a needlepoint project. Not being on a frame already allowed me to buy one from myself (always an interesting financial transaction) and mount it. I gotta say, this style of frame is amazingly versatile for different sizes of needlepoint projects (I used part of it for my Swan piece) but it is holy h#(&ck to mount a piece of needlepoint onto it. It often took me, one of my minions, and the customer to firmly attach the needlepoint to one of these frames, and all the while avoiding the tiny little nails that hold your needlepoint on top and bottom. But again, I digress. Here is the already-started piece, and some progress has been made since last week:

Aren't these colors just extraordinary? The deep, rich blue
set off by an equally strong purple, and while the greens
have a little more yellow than I usually like, their shades kind of
fade into a supporting role against these strong purples tones.

Like I said, Mom had simply put the colors and the canvas (folded! oh noooo!) into a gallon-sized Ziploc bag and not even begun it. Which, if I die tomorrow, will be the case for me with some projects, I admit, but I hope to have many, many more good years of stitching. With this particular piece, I'm using longer "pulls" of yarn from the Persian than I normally do, in part because I am discovering as I stitch just how long a piece goes before I have to start another piece. The yarn is a good quality yarn, and it does not fray towards the end of the stitching. On the other hand, I can't use as much of the skeins of DMC yarn on my pull, as it is a single strand and is more loosely twisted than the individual strands of Persian. And again, I am stitching background (using tent stitch this time, as there are really no large stretches of background that would warrant using the basketweave) as I go, so that I don't stitch all the pretty parts and leave the dull, boring background to do. Someday. That's one of the advantages of working on a frame, too - you do a section, then you roll it to the next section, and just move on up the piece until you are done, pattern and background and all.

So that's it for this post. I will definitely show some progress on the second of the two iris pieces, and perhaps my background color will arrive in the next week or so. Which will leave the question, which do I stitch first??

Much has Happened Since Last We Met

That sounds so very Victorian, doesn't it? I just finished typing up some passages from Hard Times by Charles Dickens and Nightingales by Gillian Gill (the latter a biography of the Nightingale family and how it all led to Florence Nightingale's extraordinary life) and these Victorian thoughts just tickle their way into my creative writing day today.

Obviously, I wrote my last entry over the Thanksgiving weekend, a weekend I spent enjoying my last few weeks with my large, round, grey cat. I had received word in mid-November that her enlarged heart had now morphed into heart failure proper (cardio myopathy), and all of the months of medicating her with Plavix (yes, you read that right), Atenatol (to slow down her rapidly beating heart) and Methemazol (to control her hyperthyroidism) were going to come to an end. And she was an incredibly good patient - she did not try to claw your pill-holding hand out of her mouth, she just did everything she could to walk away from whatever you had popped into her mouth as quickly as she could, and there were times when I found little bits of pill in different places in the house. I was relieved that, if she had to become so ill, it was during a time when I had the monetary funds to buy all this medication for her (Plavix!! Jeez!). Strangely enough, I felt myself hearken back to my Quaker college days and "bear witness" to the uses of modern medications for one's feline off-spring. The last time I went to the pharmacist, there was a woman buying meds for her dog, so I didn't feel so out of place.

Still, that's a lot of stress for a cat and her owner to go through with all those meds and schedules. While I had had a year to prepare myself that animal companions don't live as long as we do (it was in early December last year when I noticed that her heart was beating like a rapid snare drum; she was lying on my pillow with her heart close to my ear), I still broke down in two vets' offices while I dealt with the inevitability that her long life was coming to an end.

There are pictures of her on this blog, but I'll add some just so you can see them now rather than having to scroll around:

Curled up on her favorite crinkly toy. She never went for it as

a play toy thing, but she loooved to sleep on it.

Then there is the earlier post where I showed her lounging on the grass on a warm February day:

Yep, in ATL it's really warm enough, even in February,
to spend some late afternoon time sunning oneself

And fortunately, the weather over Thanksgiving was warm, too, relatively speaking. So we were able to trundle along outside to soak up some rays. I experienced a sort of peace during that weekend - there was the loneliness of being by myself partnered with the joy of buying food that I would cook only for myself (such as Rock Cornish Game Hen). There was the quiet solitude of spending most days listening to a book on tape (on this weekend, the above-mentioned Hard Times with an extraordinary narrator) and doing my Christmas knitting partnered with some time on Thanksgiving evening with my eldest niece and our next-door neighbors, sitting and talking. And there was the otherwise-cold bed with one cat against my belly and the other against my back, doing everything they could to help keep me (and themselves) warm.

So while Webmaster Bill went up to see a large houseful of relatives of 3 consecutive generations, I knitted children's sweaters and a scarf and more sweaters. Guess who wanted her picture taken while I was at it??

Big kitty who has gotten considerably
smaller with heart and kidney problems

She's at peace, now, on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge, that wonderful place where we get to meet all of our dear, departed furry and fuzzy and feathered friends that have joined their lives with ours. Rest well, dear kitty, and someday you will sleep on my head again.

And of course, there was the afore-mentioned Christmas knitting - a great nephew in CA, a great niece in IL, and a kitty hat for friends whose tree-topper is Yoda. How could I not spend an evening knitting up this fantastic Yoda hat to be kitty sized (and it almost was!):

After its 3rd time through the washing machine,
it finally felted to the size
of a small head (not shown here!)

The cool thing was that once you make and decrease the ears, they stick out the side, and while it's drying you can make them kind of curve to resemble Yoda's ears themselves. Trying the hat on the cat was great fun, and made possible by the use of an abundance of kitty treats.

Then there were the sweaters for little ones. I'm beginning to "get" the fun of knitting kids' sweaters - they're quick, they can be really cute, and as long as you get the gauge to almost size, it doesn't matter if they're a little too big - the child will grow into them!

Bright colors for this little girl, who
has become infatuated with "bunnies"

There is a sweater that I can't upload here, as the recipient has not received it yet due to too busy schedules during the Christmas season. All I can say is . . . the buttons really set it off!

Little blue sweater for a little boy,
complete with teddy bear

And then, of course, there was Christmas, then all the many days off in between (fortunately I'm working for a company that recognizes the wisdom of closing the office when most everyone is going to be on vacation, anyway), including finally reading The Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larrsson (yes, it really is that good) and watching a ton of movies.

For all of you who know me, I mean, really, really know me, I will confess here: I bought a ticket to the 3-D showing of Tin-Tin. Why? Well, for the same reason that I saw 13 Days in the movie theaters a decade ago: it's the movie where they show the preview of The Hobbit. All I can say about the preview is WOW. I can't wait. I thought that the love and excitement had cooled off into a warm, nice glow, but no, not really. PJ and his group are going to do things with this interpretation of a mythical masterpiece the likes of which the world has never seen. I am so very, very glad that I live in a time where these masterpieces can come to life on a big screen. Really I am.

By the way - Tin Tin is a really good movie. There were moments when I even forgot that I was watching an animated, motion-capture film. Definitely a boy's adventure: pirates, adventures, and intrigue.

Now that all the Christmas knitting has ended and before I spend time at The Mountain, the time has come to put down the knitting and pick up . . . the needlepoint! Yes, I went rooting around in a closet, wondering what was in these packagesssss, and I found some of my mother's needlepoint. She had started one piece (but just barely), and there was no yarn to go with it so I went with my best guess on it.

I'll take an aside here: if you do any sort of knitting, needlework, paper crafting, etc., please, please put all of your materials together, or at least put a list with your package of materials, colors, etc., or even just show your nearest and dearest what you are working on and what your intentions are for it.

So anyway, on the one I've matched the yarns as near as possible, and with the recent supply problems with Persian yarn, I'm finished on it until I can find just one (or maybe two) more skeins of the background color. I've started a second, also one Mom bought at my shop, also Irises (she always waxed on about pansies, but seemed to have an affinity for irises in her NP) for which I will need a frame (of course, I have several, but it will involve going to get them and I'm a little lazy today), and the final . . . ah, now that is a story!

Several years back, maybe as many as 7, Mom received a gift of needlepoint from her sister-in-law, complete with sufficient thread to finish the design. The canvas was 18 count (18 sts to the inch, for all you knitters out there - canvas comes at 10 sts/in, 12/13/and 14 sts, and 18 sts to the inch, not to mention 40 sts to the inch - this latter is stitched on silk gauze and is very fine, very beautiful, and I'm not going to do it in this lifetime. Think dollhouse rug.) and Mom couldn't see it. Family dynamics being what they are/were, she asked me to do it for her. And asked, and argued, and demanded . . . and still it sat there, because, well, I had a shop to run and models to stitch and had no time for personal stitching anyway. When I began poking through the above-mentioned bag, I decided that it was time to begin stitching it (after I had finished the more traditional needlepoints) and to do so would require just the right kind of thread. And like many projects I'm looking forward to, I like to savor it. Contemplate it, think about it, work on an appetizer for a bit . . . until I can't stand the antici---pation any longer, and just pick it up and work on it feverishly with its beautiful colors. The hummingbirds are going to be silk, the leaves in combinations of cotton and wool, and the remaining background wool. It will be a delight.

For right now, then, I please myself with a really cool deep-purples-and-blues irises in a kind of 2-D design (pictures coming soon!) using traditional wools. After all, I helped Mom pull these yarns, listened to her agree and argue, and if I liked those wools all those years ago, what's not to like now? The fancy stuff will take care of itself - this wintertime is all about quiet contemplation, enjoyment, carefully finishing what had been unfinished.

Till next time, have a marvelous new year, and hug the ones you love. Include yourself in the hug!