I can’t believe how long it’s been since I posted, especially since I’ve been so otherwise diligent this year. I just haven’t had time to blog, do email, or much of anything else “connected,” and I’m really missing it! In brief, everyone is out of the hospital – at least until Monday. My father-in-law is settled into a very nice apartment in a retirement community, and we’ve started sorting through the life accumulation of two packrats, which is going to take a very long time. My current project is “build an ancestor.” So far, I’ve found gall stones, a braid of auburn hair, and nearly an entire mouthful of teeth, so I’m well on my way. Amazing what you can find in people’s attics and back corners of dresser drawers…
After multiple visits and a churlish response to DH’s last call, we fired our furnace man and had another in. He’s pronounced our furnace irreparably ancient and quoted for a replacement, which, of course, is not in the budget, but rather mandatory. We’ve paid the deposit on the two desperately needed replacement windows, and are hoping the wind holds its breath until January, when they should be in.
So other than collecting body parts, organizing maintenance men, and tallying hospital patients, I’ve been pretending that Christmas is coming in a week. Thankfully, the majority of my Christmas knitting has been rather brainless stuff, as I’m rather brainless myself at present. I’ll share pix after the fact since there’s a rare possibility a recipient or two might stumble into this post, and I’d just hate to blow a surprise, no matter how small it might be. However, there is one project I would like to share right now.
I’ve been up to the city, hanging out at my LYS for the last four Mondays, teaching EZ’s BSJ, and in the process, I just happened to notice some crazy new yarn Arlene had in stock. Now I have to confess that I’m not normally into novelty yarns, but this one captivated me instantly. Maybe it was the fantastic color, which simply refuses to photograph accuratly, or just the fact that it produces a project that appears to be about anything BUT knit. Regardless, I brought home two balls, one for my best friend and the other for me. I had mine knit before I went to bed that evening, though not without a struggle. Katia produced a flyer to go with this yarn, supposedly showing how to make a scarf with it, but it was almost worse than having nothing, and I’m not the only person to express that opinion! I sorted out some basic concepts from that page, then knit and frogged and knit some more. Finally I had something that worked and made sense, I think, and the scarf I made is drop dead wonderful! In fact, I loved it so much that I bought 4 more balls of the yarn!
Tonight I’ve worked for the past few hours writing up my version of how to use Katia Rizos to make a quick and easy scarf. If you have a source for the yarn nearby, you have oodles of time to make up several for last minute gifts yet. It takes me less than 3 hours to make one from start to finish. The pattern is up as a free download on Ravelry as “Quick Chic Scarf” and I’m going to add it here on the blog, as well, so check the sidebar if you haven’t joined Ravelry yet.
And just for fun, here are pix of another new Katia yarn, Triana, both in the ball and knit up.
Maybe it’s because I already figured out how to knit the Rizos, but the Triana handout made a little more sense to me, so no pattern for this one. Actually, it’s just “cast on 8 and knit,” so not much of a pattern at that. 😉 But it made a fun scarf, and I had a blast knitting up a sample for the shop.
Okay, enough fun for tonight. I have a Christmas gift to finish, and so much worked backed up from the past 6 weeks that I’ll be until next Christmas actually doing it all, I fear!
Face From the Past's Blog 