Here's the Bearly Knit kit from Caroline Laudig that I won in the KBTH Virtual Conference. The pattern for the bear sweater is located HERE and I just love the colors of Campion & J&S Caroline provided. I doubt I could put together such a good colorway for the project. The colors are a bit darker in the photos. Also included in the gift were lots of fun goodies like different types of stitch markers, a stitch holder, highlighter, post-it notes, coilless safety pins, etc. I'm very grateful for winning such a terrific gift and plan to get started on the sweater next month.



Theresa had a recent post about finding time to knit. I'm luckier than most in that I have a lot of time to knit. I only occasionally do some freelance writing, mostly food stuff. I have come up with some ways to get more knitting done and thought I'd list them here.



1. Encourage your DH/SO/partner to cook. My DH is turning out to be a better cook than I am but he used to make some awful stuff. I still rave about everything he makes, even if it isn't good, to keep him cooking. Cooking can take up a huge amount of knitting time. If you do all the cooking, develop a nice list of easy-to-make healthy meals. Also, make larger quantities so there are leftovers (and days you don't have to cook at all).



2. I notice there are certain times of day I am more productive with my knitting. For me it is late afternoon and early evening. I try to honor those times and do the cooking and cleaning at the other times. For instance, I usually don't get as much knitting time on weekends when DH is home so I plan to do the week's laundry then.



3. Be organized. About every two weeks I go through my yarn and patterns and books and needles and get everything where it belongs. I used to be quite disorganized and it would take me hours to find a certain needle or skein of yarn - what a huge waste of time.



4. Find the right balance of knitting projects. I am continually working on this as I often don't have enough easy or mindless projects going. I also don't work well when I have too many projects going simultaneously. I think too many UFO's weighs heavily on my mind and can make me abandon knitting entirely. Conversely, if I'm only working on one project and it isn't going well I can stop knitting altogether just to avoid it.



5. Knit everywhere. Obviously you need mindless knitting for this purpose. I knit when we have friends over and I knit when I'm browsing blogs online. I knit when DH and I play Scrabble. Sometimes I try to think of how I can work more knitting into my life. DH loves to go canoeing and this is a wonderful, uninterrupted time for knitting. Too bad there is no water here in NM.



Today I ordered a sock kit from Blackberry Ridge Farm. Every Halloween I wish I had something related to knit and they sell an inexpensive kit for black socks with orange jack-o-lanterns that I want to make this year. I'm going to add some lettering on the top and maybe a spider on the heel if I can find a good chart of a spider.



I'm back to work on the Lucy Neatby Paradoxical mittens inspired by Mare. I am also getting back to work on Trondheim and the Vinternatt mittens are done.

Sanquhar Gloves

Here is the first Sanquhar glove after I cut it to make the hand shorter. It is done on size 00 dpns in J&S laceweight yarn following the Japanese pattern online HERE. I didn't want to do all that corrugated ribbing so I did the cuff pattern from the old Cast On Sanquhar glove pattern. Essentially it is one row of purling in black then a simple design. The Japanese pattern uses the little salt and pepper triangular gussets at the base of three of the fingers (omitting the pinky and the thumb). As you can see as you look at the tip of the middle finger, you can extend the salt and pepper fingertip pattern to make each finger the right length.

The whole time I was knitting the fingers I had the sense that the hand was too long. Remember my top ten list from September of things I wished I learned earlier about knitting?
Here it is again - note number eight on the list! Apparently I haven't learned it yet after all.

"10 THINGS I WISH I LEARNED EARLIER ABOUT KNITTING

8. If you get the impression while you're knitting something that is is going to be too short, too big, too tight, bad color combo, etc., rip it out immediately rather than wait. Trust your instincts - they're almost always right."

I knew the hand was too long but for some reason I kept knitting the fingers. In my defense, the Japanese pattern has you start at the index finger and every glove pattern I've used has you start knitting at the pinky. I think I would have figured out they were too long sooner if I'd started at the pinky.

I've been changing the heading of the blog weekly to show small photos of my previous work - the newest photos are Landra's gloves from Folk Knitting in Estonia and my argyle sock (pattern from the little VK sock book).

Here's a photo of the Dale baby cardigan in progress. I tried a different idea for the buttonband steek and just cut and knotted the yarn at each end since there would be facing covering this area and I wanted this sweater to be absolutely bulletproof. This would have worked out better if the yarn wasn't so slippery. I still like the Norwegian Sport wool (available from Elann) and would even buy more but it wasn't the right yarn for this particular project. I'll probably find a teddy bear who can wear the cardigan and send that off instead. Oh well - it was still very fun to knit.

Tomorrow I will have photos of the first Sanquhar glove. I cut through the hand to shorten them (and I get to knit the four fingers again) but you'll get the general idea. I did a more decorative cuff than the corrugated ribbing in the Japanese pattern.



Okay I admit it. I never wash swatches before starting a project. (I do swatch though... usually.) If I had I would have learned that the Norwegian Sport wool fuzzes up quite a bit after a run in the washing machine partially obscured the colorwork on the Dale baby cardigan. sigh It is also a rather slippery yarn and some of the yarn ends worked themselves loose. Considering I used 20 different yarns in the project and only knotted the yarns in the steek areas, I'm not sure I can give this sweater to the recipient. I adore my friend Lisa but she'll never hand wash a baby sweater. I am glad I decided to try machine washing the sweater before I sent it to her. I guess I'll have to knit and send a baby Aran instead.









I'm almost finished with the Vinternatt mittens (yarn pictured above) from Nordic Fiber Arts and the second one will be done tonight during the baseball playoffs. I chose the small size so I will have more smallish items in my knitting basket for kids and teens. My knitting basket holds various projects I just feel like doing - people can choose what items they like from it. It works better for me than specific knitted gifts.



I see Mare is now having a mitten attack after all that shadow knitting. She has inspired me to return to to my Paradoxical mittens and also to finish the Sanquhar gloves. The gloves are for me but the mittens will go in the knitting basket.