December, why you gotta be so short?

MUST KNIT, NO TIME TO BLOG!

1. V-Junkie socks for G.  The same spiral pooling that was annoying me in the Mince Pie Mayhem pattern is working amazingly with the slipped stitches in V-Junkie.  There’s no way I’ll get these done by Christmas, though – just finishing the toe on #1 right now, though, so I’ll wrap that to put under the tree.

2. More Christmas decor!  Bundle-up Bears from Mochimochi Land and the beginnings of a jingling garland of bells.  As always, the Mochimochi Land pattern is unbelievably adorable, and of course well written; I’ve knit 4 so far and hope to do a couple more before winter’s end, including one in the specified yarn weight (as usual, I saw a cute thing and had to make it smaller, using sock yarn instead of worsted weight).  Two of the bears (centre & right) were knit while visiting family, and they stayed with G’s twin cousins (age 8); the white bear has now joined my MIL’s collection of festive Barrista Bears!

I have knit 2 jingle bells so far – it’s a long-term project, knitting a few every year out of my recent sock yarn scraps.  My eventual plan is to make a vertical hanging strand, along the lines of a rain chain.

3. Train Toque for The Nannee.  I knit this while away from home as well, so I’m not sure if the pattern is actually really large or if my gauge was off.  Either way, I ended up decreasing the number of stitches I cast on by about 15% and I still think the toque will be quite roomy for this particular little man.   Instead of repeating the 3 cars in the pattern (engine, car, and caboose), I made a longer train (engine, 3 cars, and caboose).  I also added earflaps ’cause his folks are from the Prairies and they are concerned about cold extremities.  Hope they are well-positioned – I decided to wing it, but they look approximately right.

4. Carol Service Cowl.  Left over beads!  Left over yarn (from my Angelus shawl)!  An awesome cowl pattern that’s been sitting in my library for a little while!  Do you think I can get it done in time to wear it before Christmas?  I don’t know!  But I’m sure going to try!

Okay, enough blogging, back to knitting!

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Hester in the works

I started knitting Ms. Prynne (that’s Hester Prynne, she of the Scarlet Letter) at the beginning of the month as part of a knit-along in the What Would Madame DeFarge Knit group on Ravelry.  As I wrote back in the summer, Ms. Prynne was the first thing that popped into my head when thinking of ways to put my gorgeous pink Kattikloo sock yarn up close to my face where it belongs.  But I was unsure.  See, I have a horror of high necks!  I find turtlenecks uncomfortable, and as a woman with a generous bustline I have very much internalized the concept (brought to you by What Not To Wear) that lower necklines look better on a frame like mine – a concept that I assure you is borne out in photographic evidence.  And as Em at Everything Old said, cowls are either close-fitting enough to be warm, or loose enough to look good!  But although I looked at pages and pages of patterns, I couldn’t find any other neckwarmers that felt right for the yarn, so Ms. Prynne it was!   I chose some fabulous, funky beads left over from another project and got to work!

And then this happened:

All week, it’s been below zero.  And not just a tiny bit, but like -4 or 5 degrees ALL DAY.  I know half the continent (and all of Canada, except Vancouver) is laughing at me, but really, in a normal year we get temperatures around 0 or -1 intermittently, and occasionally maybe get down as low as -3, but most of the winter will be around 5-10ºC, so this week has really been exceptional, and not just because of the unusually solid precipitation!

The day after the first big dump, the day when I went to work thinking “well, that was pretty but it’ll all be gone by tonight” and came home going “WHERE AM I, TORONTO?” I was waiting for the bus with a shawlette tucked point-forward into my winter coat (it’s not actually a coat; it’s actually a sweater with a zipper) and my hood pulled up, but god damn if my neck wasn’t freezing!  The shawlette does a great job of warming where my low-cut tops leave me exposed, and my face is apparently willing to Just Deal With It, but there was evidently a hole in my wardrobe.  A hole that only Ms. Prynne could fill!  But although I worked at top speed that evening I was not able to finish it, nor have I yet.  So I decided it was time to take fashion into my own hands:

Yes, that’s me wearing my unfinished cowl, ball of yarn tucked safe in a pocket.  Yes, I know it was brave of me to go out with my needles uncapped, and yes, I did have to pick up a couple of stitches after I put it on incautiously and dropped the last few.  Hopefully I’ll get it finished before we have any more really cold weather (it’s started raining now and temperatures are supposed to be up around 6º or more, so presumably I’ll have some time).  And I decided that A) it doesn’t look that bad, high neck or no, and B) it’s such a comfortable garment that I don’t even care, so nyah!   Next, I will KNIT ALL THE COWLS.  ALL OF THEM ALL THE TIME!

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