Christmas, In a Nutshell

Cookies:

teensy tiny saucepan
for reducing black raspberry jelly down to jam.

sheep cookies (because I can)

Then I cut out a LOT of snowflakes.




(l) black raspberry jam cookies
(r) red raspberry jam cookies

peppermint cookies

slightly blurry Christmas tree.

I sewed buttons on the Autumn Leaves Capelet:


And I cast on for Anne Hanson's Starlight Lace Wrap.

That's all for now -- see you guys next year!

All quiet...

Swamped with work. I spend my free time at the gym. I haven't even knitted that much. Some progress on the capelet -- I ended up frogging it and going through the pattern. My suspicion is that it's missing some K2togs or K3togs in the middle section, because without the decreases there is nothing to balance out the YOs... which explains why my stitch count was about 40 stitches over what I should have had according to the pattern. So I rewrote it myself and knitted merrily away. I'm almost finished the leaf section and will soon start the "garter stitch to the end" stretch. The pattern is also missing the third buttonhole, but I don't want to rip back just to put it in. If I get desperate, I'll get creative with my scissors...

I know this post is a bit lean, but I wouldn't leave y'all without some sort of fiber- or textile-related goodness...

The Peculiar Aristocrat

I did this. It gave me wonderful aristocratic titles, but I thought I'd flesh 'em out a little bit with helpful character descriptions.

Countess-Palatine Courtney the Cosmopolitan of Bartonhurst in the River: hosts candlelight suppers with riparian entertainments that are so chic, it's almost painful.

Lady Madame Courtney the Weird of Much Madness upon Avon: runs the best bordello in town, whose motto is, “We do it all. And we mean all. No request too kinky. Do you like pancakes?”

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I cast on for the Hoja Otoñal (Autumn Leaf) Capelet from Kiparoo. I am in love with this yarn. It's the one I was gushing over in the last post. The capelet got wonky somewhere around Row 18, so when I have a minute I'm going to go through and count stitches on the needles and in the pattern and do a little problem-solving.

I worked on Bryan's Beanie during the Ravelry meet-up last Friday. I was having so much fun chatting that I sort of forgot that I had adapted the pattern for gauge... I was doing the decreases, and didn't allow for the fact that the pattern says: DO DECREASES EVERY THIRD ROW. No problem, chief! I did decreases every third row, plugging away through that 1x1 ribbing and running my mouth to anyone who would listen -- completely forgetting that where the gauge swatch in the pattern is 33 sts x 44 rows = 4", my gauge is 22 sts x 26 rows = 4". Yeah.

I also started working on a long-queued sweater for my nephew (Ravelry link). I'm going to try to finish it for his 1st birthday (end of March).

In general news, my workouts are kicking my ass -- in a good way. I do weightlifting two or three times a week, and have combat class once or twice a week. Bag work is hard on my wrists, even when I wrap them... so we'll see whether I continue that. I'd rather have less-effective punches and still be able to knit for an hour in the evening. :-) It's the busy season at work, which means less time for knitting and blogging. Hopefully that also means I'll try harder to sneak in more time for knitting and blogging. ;-) Until next time...