Great progress on that Fisherman sweater that I’m knitting for my husband. No, I didn’t finish it by Christmas, but the front and back are finished and I’ve started on the sleeves. I’m running low on yarn, so I will have to spin a couple more skeins before I can completely finish the sweater. I’m really happy with my progress so far; it’s been years since I’ve attempted this kind of pattern knitting, and now that I’m more familiar with the patterns, I’m knitting with more confidence and accuracy. I hope to finish the sweater this month!
One of my friends has lent me an antique Nøstepinde, a Scandinavian device that is used for hand winding center pull balls of yarn (often, I understand, used in twined knitting so that one can knit from both ends of the ball). I’ve tried it on some of my wool and find that it works well, as well as my mechanical ball winder. I’ll use it on smaller skeins of yarn, as it’s nice to be able to control the tension as I wind the ball.
Some of the yarn in the photo was used to knit, using the domino knitting technique, Christmas potholders. The squares are attached as they are knit; the potholder then is given an I-cord edging and felted in the washing machine. The resulting potholders are thick and very usable. And they are a great way to use up leftover yarn!
I made some glass Christmas ornaments for close friends. I used sea glass from the beach, making these very special and beautiful ornaments. I was really pleased with how they turned out!
A close friend and I played Christmas cello duos at the local Artists’ Guild “Arts Market”. There’s nothing like seasonal music to bring the joy of the season to life. I really loved the duos we played, which were arrangements of Christmas melodies interspersed with medieval recorder and flute melodies.
I got involved in some more I-cord knitting when I went to the local biweekly knitting group in Woods Hole. A friend was attempting the snail hat in the newest Elizabeth Zimmermann garter stitch book. What a complicated pattern! After several attempts and ripping out and starting over, we ended the evening with her having a start to the hat. I went home and last night tried the pattern myself. Following the directions exactly I ended up with a tall, thin, narrow piece of knitting that I finally ripped out! I went back and started with only 8 garter stitch ridges (the pattern takes you through two four short row repeats (2 ridges) and takes you on to eight more) and much bigger needles. So far that seems to be creating the correct shape. And although the pattern says you can knit the first stitch on each set of rows, only slipping that first stitch purl wise seems to give the desired result. I guess these complicated directions much increase the sales of instructional videos for Schoolhouse Press!!! I have high hopes for this hat which is being knitting with some yarn I dyed in an Indigo dying workshop last winter!
My big Christmas project was redoing a family/friends cookbook; it contains recipes from family and friends contributed over a number of years. The previous edition was done in Libre Office and I had some trouble converting it to Word; finally I was successful. And using booklet printing and legal sized paper, I was able to produce a larger, more readable output. I loved doing this book and sharing it with family and close friends!
Averill Mountain Crafts 