Half a Blanket

In an attempt to do some stash busting, I'm knitting another Excavation blanket. This time I'm trying to use up some (mostly) acrylic (mostly) worsted weight yarn. 

I'll use it in the car when it is finished and will be 30" x 36". I do a variation on the pattern. When knit as written it's square and I need it 6" longer. 

Once I got to 30" wide, I started knitting the extra 6" without starting a colour change with fringe and decreasing twice at the beginning of the colour change. This requires weaving in ends rather than using them as fringe so I'm using Stephen West's 'Weavin' Stephen' technique. There will be a bit of bulk on the edges but I'm not really concerned about that. 

Then I'm going to knit a second triangle and graft it onto the lengthened first triangle. The long fringes will be twisted for an attractive finish then trimmed to a uniform length. 

I did all of what is pictured in only a couple of days so this is a quick knit - done mostly while watching TV with Skip in the evenings.

In no way will this completely deplete my leftover worsted weight yarn but it's a good start. I have also done some rows with DK weight. I just knit loosely and it seems to work OK. It feels a little thinner in those spots but still looks good.

Getting Ready for Tomorrow

Tomorrow is December 1 and the beginning of two crafty pursuits I will be undertaking.

It will be the first day of Arne and Carlos' Advent Calendar 2023. This year it's a toe up stocking on which we'll knit 6 rows per day.

I got the toe finished a couple of days ago

and am looking forward to seeing what they have planned for Day 1. I'm hoping it will be some type of Nordic colourwork.

Secondly, at 6pm Eastern Time, the Jingle Ball begins! It's not too late to sign up and pay your $10US to participate. I believe those wishing to take classes remotely can still sign up. I haven't done much any stitching on my Santa's Night Tree lately. However, my guild's stitch day is this Saturday and I plan to do a rotation among several projects. 

If I can't stream the Liz Mathews class at my stitch day, I'll just watch the recorded video at my leisure another time on the weekend. Recordings of the class will be available for 30 days after the Jingle Ball. She has already posted a video on finishing her 'trees' which I've already watched. It will be interesting to see if she does anything differently in the class. I mostly signed up for the class to get the pattern. 

I also have 3 ornaments to FFO. This one is mounted. 

I just need to add some cording around it, a hanger, and perhaps some buttons and get it in the mail to the intended recipient. I'm also thinking of participating in our guild's ornament exchange and need to select, stitch, embellish, and FFO something for that.

The daily visits to the hospital for Skip's radiation treatments are a bit of a grind. We are so fortunate to live within a few minutes of the cancer centre and it only takes a couple of hours from the time we leave the house to when we get home. It just weighs heavily. We have a close friend who is also receiving treatment there and occasionally our schedules mesh and we get to visit with her husband in the waiting area. Once the treatments are finished on December 12, we'll have a complete break from the hospital for a month - until mid January. That will be nice.

Getting Ready for a Knit Along

Arne and Carlos have created an Advent knitalong. This time it's a Christmas stocking. We got the yarn requirements and instructions for the toe in anticipation of starting the first 6 rounds of colourwork on December 1.

I wasn't interested in using the required Rowan yarn. It wasn't easily available for me and I wanted to try to knit from my stash, but I didn't have red, green, and white yarn in the same weight. So I ventured to Michaels to see if I could find a smallish quantity of the appropriate yarn.

I tried several different yarns - Astra, Wool Ease, Classic Wool, etc. and couldn't find all three colours in one brand and I didn't want to buy the 7oz skeins. I usually agonize over colour selection but this time it was finding all three colours in one weight that was my challenge. Finally I found all three colours in Patons Canadiana.

I started the toe in the red and will finish it tonight. 

If you want to see what all the fuss is about, here is the link to their blog post. Therein is the link to the .pdf for the list of materials and instructions.

We will do 6 rounds for each of 7 days. then the heel on days 8 and 9, then the leg of the stocking to Day 23 and the cuff is Day 24.

I used Judy Becker's Magic Cast On for the beginning of the toe. I haven't knit a lot of socks toe up so I followed Arne's instructions adapting his technique for 4dpns to my preferred Magic Loop. My usual way of doing a toe is to increase on each side of the toe but this pattern had the total stitches in 4 sections and increasing in each section.

On December 1 the Jingle Ball starts, too! Only $10 US for a weekend of fun. There are classes with the 12 designers, and exclusive patterns. Those of us outside of the US have .pdfs available to us. 

I have a class with Liz Mathews on Saturday in the middle of my stitch day with the guild. I'm hoping I'll be able to get a Wifi signal there so I don't have to use my iPhone as a hotspot and use a lot of data. Otherwise, I'll just go home for the 1:30 class. I have another class with her the next day at 1.

I have one ornament FFOd and ready to send out. I have 3 more to finish and one more to stitch and finish for our guild's ornament exchange. 

Christmas is a month from today. Yikes! I will do as much as I can and not worry about the rest.

A Fun Afternoon and Some Inspiration

Yesterday Jen1 came over for a stitching afternoon. We worked on finishing a couple of ornaments and yakked about a lot of stitchy stuff and other things going on in our lives. I didn’t get much done but did get some stitching on more mini wreath banners, and got them ready for FFOing.

BTW, the wreaths I was using were covered in glitter and it was getting everywhere. On Saturday at Jeanette’s, Marilyn suggested using a spray sealer to lock on the glitter. I purchased the craft sealer at Michaels. The printed instructions were microscopic on the container so I wisely took the wreaths outside to spray. The smell was so bad, I put the wreaths in the laundry room, closed the door, and lit a candle to get rid of the airborne propellants and chemically smell. Later that evening all the bad smell was gone. I still had one to do so it ended up airing out in the garage.

Tonight is our monthly guild meeting so I wanted to get a couple of things FFOd to take for Show and Share.

Thanks to Jeanette's vast stash, she had the perfect cording for my Moonshine Cabin. It perfectly matches the Falu red on the birds and house.

Aleene's has finally created an upside down format for their Tacky craft glue. I don't know why more manufacturers don't adopt this format. The tip is very fine, perfect for running a bead of glue in the channel between the front and back of ornament. It made glueing on the cording super easy.

I had this stitched this time last year but have spent most of the time since then looking for something to use as backing. So yesterday, I finally got the batting and fabric attached to the backing and the wrong sides of the front and back glued together. 

I attached the cording this afternoon. At the top, I wrapped the same colour thread around and around and stitched it into the top of the ornament.

It's quite heavy, being 8" in diameter but I wanted it to be a hanging ornament so the 'stars' would catch the light and sparkle.

Joanne from my Monday morning stitching group had the perfect fabric to use for the back.

I affixed a silver 2023 charm which completed the finishing. 

I'm very pleased with how it looks and am really looking forward to hanging it up.

I also re-glued the pearly cording on the Holly n Hardanger ornaments. I want to have them ready to send off to the recipients at the end of this month. This time the glue held - again, the narrow tip of the glue bottle really got into the channel.

And again, added a silver 2023 charm to finish it off.

I have 2 more ornaments to FFO and one to stitch for our guild's Christmas ornament exchange. I'll definitely select a pattern with potential for lots of 'bling'.

It was inspiring to get together with Jen1 and it got my butt in gear to finally complete some FFOs.

... Hear Me Roar

 I haven't done much stitching since last posting. I did, however, tackle some jobs around the house. My neighbour came over with his leaf blower and blew all our leaves to the boulevard. First I did a bit of raking but on Skip's advice, I took out the mulching lawn mower to mulch them up and put them into yard waste bags. 

I don't think I've ever started the lawn mower without Skip supervising. Nothing happened with the first couple of pulls. I took me a while to remember which of the two levers was the 'dead man's switch'. Once I figured that out, the thing started right away. Winning!

I began trying to mulch the leaves on the boulevard but didn't seem to have the grass catcher bag hooked up properly. After a few unsuccessful attempts I figured it out, hoping to God that none of the neighbours were witnessing my failed attempts. After about one pass, the grass catcher was full so I'd empty the bag and carry on. Thank goodness the mower always started on the first pull after stopping to empty the bag. I ended up filling 5 yard waste bags and dragged them to the curb to join the others which are supposed to be picked up some time this month.

Normally they'd be collected on our garbage day every other week but our town employees are on strike. I did a run to the garbage drop off last week but our yard waste is going to be at the curb for a while.

The gigantic tree on the boulevard holds onto its leaves into December so I'll have at least one more leaf mulching event this season. All the neighbour's leaves (not pictured) got blown onto the street. I'm not sure who they think is going to clean them up.

While I was outside, I decided to take the summer tires out of Skip's car. After swapping them out, we store the unused ones in our garage. However, the tire caddy had plastic bag (from the wrapped tires) wrapped around one of the wheels, seizing it up, making moving the caddy quite difficult. It took me at least 30 min to dig the plastic out. With the caddy being fully functional again, I heaved the tires out of Skip's car and onto the caddy. With strategic positioning, this wasn't that difficult a task - much easier than putting them into the car. Scooter helped me with that last Sunday.

I felt great having completed those tasks. I think all this work around the house is making me more fit. I don't huff and puff as much as I used to. I may even tackle the leaves on the road in front of our house one of these days.

This week I also visited my doctor for my Pap smear and Shingles shot. The second shot will be in 2 months. Earlier that morning I visited the dentist and had the work done to prepare for a crown on my I-6 molar (one of the top right ones). I will get the permanent crown installed in a couple of weeks.

This was Skip's week off treatment but because the hospital is taking a Remembrance Day holiday on Monday, his radiation planning, bloodwork and visit to the medical oncologist are this afternoon. 

So that's about all I did this week. Not much stitching but Jeanette has invited some of us to her place for a stitching day tomorrow so I'll get some done then.

Inspired by Liz Mathews

 I'm taking Liz Mathews' tree finishing class with her pattern, Santa's Night Ride pattern at the Jingle Ball*. 

*The Jingle Ball is an online weekend Christmas-themed stitching retreat the first weekend of December. For only $10US you can have access to all the festivities and sign up for any classes of interest. Kits won't be mailed outside of the US but .pdfs are available in unlimited supply to anyone anywhere in the world. The kits for those wanting them in the US are already sold out.

I started stitching it the other day but there's no way I'll have the stitching done in time for the finishing class. However I will attend and have all the information when I finally do finish it.

I was also intrigued by her other class - Festive Mini Wreath and Banner.

I thought this was a great idea.

Being outside of the US we are unable to get the kits for any of the projects and many of them are already sold out. The good thing is we are able to access the .pdfs and use whatever materials we have on hand.

I thought Liz' banners were very cute and went on the hunt for some wreath ornaments that might look very spiffy with a banner. While I was at Canadian Tire today I checked their inventory on their app and found three wreaths that would be good candidates, (the glitter is getting everywhere!!!)

As an aside. the Canadian Tire app has a terrific product locator feature. All you need to do is a search for whatever item you want on their app in the store, and click on the link, making sure you've noted what store you're at. Scroll down a bit and you will see what aisle the item is located in. When you get to that aisle, there is a button to click to locate the item. Click it and a light will flash somewhere in that aisle for you to see where the item is. So cool! I told the cashier that the company needs to advertise this feature more because it really speeds up finding things in their stores. Try it next time you're there.

Anyway back to the mini wreaths and banners.

I found acceptable materials in my stash:

28 ct white Monaco cloth

DMC Light Effects Floss E815 - Dark Red Ruby

DMC Satin Floss S909 - Emerald Green

I could have used regular cotton floss but this shiny floss was in my stash.

I stitched with two strands over 2 threads and, of course, added a gold HotFix jewel in the centres of the green 'poinsettias'.

I then counted out 6 threads from the top and bottom and pulled the 7th threads, then cut along those lines. Then I pulled out 3 threads creating a bit of a fringe. I then cut chevrons out of each side starting out about 10 threads from the centre and cutting at a 45º degree angle.

Then I hot glued the banner to the wreath.

All done! I think it will look very festive on the green background of a tree.

This was a very quick project and I didn't even use Liz' detailed instructions. I look forward to stitching her other banners and will be on the lookout for other wreath ornaments on which to affix them.