Backing Towards the Horse Slowly

I've written several posts in the past month, but decided not to post them to the blog, as they all had a rather grumpy feel. I've even been considering changing the name of the blog to "The Bitter Knitter", on account of my numerous knitting disasters. To be fair, I'm not a bitter or grumpy person. Under normal circumstances I'm a pretty cheerful person. However, the knitters block was turning me into a serious snarp. I thought I'd tried everything to overcome it, but the one thing I hadn't tried was just being patient and letting it run it's course. Something about Christmas makes me feel as if I should be knitting frantically, and that (combined with a paw through deep stash) made me feel all warm and fuzzy towards my knitting. I have, in just three days, finished up four projects. That's like taking the monkey on your back and making it dance for coins. I feel liberated.
Here is the first of my triumphs. This is the "Mathless"cardigan that I was supposed to be writing up a pattern for. Well, I gave up trying to make it simple, and just finished the darn thing off.

That white stuff is snow. We've had about 5 inches over the past three days. I couldn't resist the snowy photo op. The buttons were found only a couple of days ago at a local antique shop. She had a really adorable lithograph of a young girl knitting, but it was in rough shape, and the buttons were a better deal. Besides which, I think my obsession with knitting needs to have some boundaries. I don't need to subject the rest of my family to bad artwork, just because the subject is knitting. Now, If I ever see a print of dogs knitting, I might not be able to pass it up.


The second success is a finished "Ishbel Beret" from "Whimsical Little Knits" by Ysolda Teague. This was a truly pleasurable knit. The Cardiff cashmere is super light and squishy,and the pattern is easy to memorize. It took a long time to finish because I misplaced the second ball of cashmere. I found it during the deep stash dive I mentioned earlier.


My last photos are of a baby hat I made out of my first attempts at Navajo plying. The hat was cast aside as a shameful error in judgment. It has resurfaced many times, and I finally took pity on it. I found a couple of leaves that I'd knit out of Jo Sharp's "Rare Comfort" mohair, and I sewed them on. I'm pretty happy with the end result. Maybe I'll be able to get a photo of it on the boy.


If you're better at counting than me, you'll notice that I said I had four successes, but there are only three projects in this post. The fourth project was the "Tomten Jacket" by Elizabeth Zimmerman. I couldn't bring myself to put in the zipper on my sewing machine. The risks were too great, and I knew that there was no way that jacket was going to make it out in one piece. So after months of waiting for "a sign from Jesus", as my Dad would say, I hand sewed in the zipper. It's completely adorable, but by the time I'd sewn in the zipper, the light was waning, and my little boy is too fast for low light photographs.