I think my knitting mojo had come back. Didn't know it was gone, really. I've just been frustrated at the lack of progress on some projects. Making promises to myself, then not keeping them. Of course the projects don't progress unless one works on them, and I've just not wanted to touch them. I even put my purple vest in a pretty basket, and carried it around the house with me. Still didn't touch it.

Then, yesterday,
WHAM
Back came the mojo, and I could hardly put the vest down. Now, understand, it's a wierd thing. Side to side vest in the round? What was I thinking. But, here is progress in a strangely tubular sort of way:


I've been sort of guilty working on a new project when I have three that have been languishing. However, I rationalize it by claiming that I need a "traveling" project. The other three need too many colors, not to mention that one is hanging on a knitting machine. The pink vest and the machine knit blanket will be travelers when the time comes to attach their I cord borders, but not yet. So, I have this project, out of the frog pond, and about half way to the arm holes:


Usually, it's the dog I catch snoring, but yesterday, GingGong was the snorlax. She was snoring, and her little fangs were sticking out. I thought it was worth a shot to try to get it in a picture.

OOOOOOOhhh Comments. I get so few, it really excites me to see them there.

SO, Dave is a Disney guy, on the Disney channel, so those of you who don't get Disney won't see him for a while. As far a purling, I did notice he knit on straights. The cartoon artists didn't really clearly show the stitch patterns, so he certainly could have made a garter stitch dog sweater. Something tells me too much time has already been spent on contemplating Dave's cartoonish knitting skills.

In the mean time, I held a retirement party for a friend, and spent the weekend preparing for that rather than working on my project, so I've missed my first milestone on the "finish the stupid vest" goal. Urg.

A new knitting television star!

Dave the Barbarian. Not a great cartoon, and I find from reading Dave's background that gourmet cooking and origami are his lead hobbies. However, on the episode my daughter forced me to view, he did knit several dog sweaters, demonstrationg excellent design and shaping skills. I expect we can see better knitting interviews from Dave than Daryl Hannah, don't you agree?

Ahhhh, the joy of shopping with a pre-teen. Too young to go alone; too old to want advice from Mom. I notice that there are some nice sofas in the Junior depts these days, just fine for sitting with the purses, shopping bags and all important money. My daughter grew sooooo much this year that all relatives sent clothes in sizes too small, so we returned and exchanged this weekend. The traveling project made some progress:



And I found a picture of the pink vest. I really should work more on this. Especially if I want to have it done by the end of February:



OK - Deals with myself:
Jan 25th - 50% point.
Feb 1 - 75%
Feb 7 off needles and steeked

I have a silly secret.

Every morning, (before) I click on Wendy, I check out the comic "For Better or For Worse". It's a sweet soap opera of a comic. Well, she dropped a big romantic bomb on her readers today. Now, if you don't read the strip, you may have to go back about a year to figure out what the deal is, but for those who follow FBoFW, what do you think will happen next week?

Hmmmm......

SO, I think I have the camera thing figured out. Win98 and Win2000 are different in a lot of ways and I'm still adapting. So, here is the poor bit of yoar that went to the frog pond:

There is a bit of ribbing done again, but not enough to photograph. I found my swatch and measured it. I must have read the ruler wrong before, because the real knitting was the same guage as the swatch.

Now, I've gotten moving on the purple/pink vest. What was causing me trouble, I think is that I've gone off and started a rather creative construction method. I'm knitting side to side because the recipient is rather large and wants the patterns to go in the "slimming" vertical direction. Because of the trouble I had working the pattern back and forth, I'm also knitting in the round. So It's comaing out as a rather odd shaped tube. Again, due to the large size of the target, the armhole needs to be big big big. Her center back measurement was a normal 13". However, the finished size at the bust will be lose to 60". You do the math. The thing is going to be half armhole. Needless to say, the thing looks really wierd.

Now, with all the messing around trying to get the camera to work withthe new computer software, I've worn down the battery, so no pictures of this today.

Sniffy nose all around today.

I noticed my hit counter reset some time or other.

Comments are nice. Don't see any here, do I?

Well, no blog pictures for a little bit. I had to have my pc re-imaged, and seem to have lost the connections to the picture editing software. Maybe later in the week.

I'm guilty of not finishing some of the projects that are challenging me. The GS vest should be done by now. I worked on it some, and it's really not that annoying, and really does work up fast, as it's worsted weight. It should be interesting once it's cut open.

After that, I need to remember where I was with Hank. Once I start on him again, I think he will finish up quickly.

My husband is out of town for four weeks. Could I possibly finish both by then? He's anxious to see his Hank finished.

Lucky Mistake
In the mean time, I like to have a "travel" project. I started a sweater for our friend "M". However, a lucky mistake that caused me to take the piece off the needles to fix also caused me to measure. The guage was off by enough to have to frog and start again. Not a bad thing, thought. I was not happy with a few of the design choices I had made. I'm using a slip stitch pattern in the round. Because of the particulars of the pattern, I was concerned that the "seams" would be too tight. I've decided that this pattern would work out better done in pieces, so I've re cast on for the back. There we have the "lucky" mistake."

Happy New Year.

After a few weeks of vacation, not blogging, and really not knitting I'm back. At least I think I am. Did anyone miss me?

Here are some pictures from last year:
The blue vest if finished:

I brought it to our family Xmas party, and tried it on my aunt. She liked it so I gave it to her. I was thinking of someone else, but that someone can be picky, and I wasn't sure she would like it. Auntie did, so auntie wins.

Now, for those who pay attention, I did make some adjustments to the shoulder. I personally don't like vests with shoulders that extend over where a fully fashioned shoulder should extend. I think they look floppy and "home made" rather than "hand made." I doubled all the arm hole decreases in the pattern except the initial underarm decrease, and was happy with the results. I liked the pattern a lot, and will probably make it again, with another adjustment. I read so many positve remarks in the summer about waist shaping, and I see no reason not to put some into this vest. The way the garmet hangs, you can almost see it, but I think some more shape will be pretty nice here.

Also, if I neede proof, which I don't, that my husband loves me, look what he brought me from Peru:

If you can't tell, it's six bags of alpaca knitting yarn. Yum yum. Now, I need to get my WIP's finished so I can dig into that.

And, someone is really happy that we're home: