Just Keep Knitting

Friday was the ornament exchange for my church. I whipped together a container for my ornament as fast as I could, as pride would not allow me to just wrap the thing and be done with it. I'm pretty happy with the top:



But I thought the sides were kind of plain. I was out of ideas, short on materials, and like an idiot...I put the paper on first and came up with decorations later.



Which meant those Versamark snowflakes were stamped on a rounded surface. I am a moron. I used an angel punch and my little xyron to stick on the angels. All in all - not my best effort. I wish I had done the top first so I could have based the whole thing around that. The ornament stamp came from Angela's Happy Stamper. I used dark green opaque embossing powder and then cut it out. I adhered it carefully so that it covered up the smudge on the quote. That stamp also came from Angela's.

I put the same ribbon on my Tree ornament, added some tissue paper,



and off I went to the exchange. I got an adorable little snowman ornament, which I neglected to photograph.

This took knitting time away from Whispering Pines, but I'm still plugging along.



That photo shows the color pretty accurately I think. When viewed up close, like this:



It appears white, and you can see the bits of color running through it. But from a distance, as in the first photo, the impression it gives is of an ice blue. Very pretty. Anyway, I'm on the last tree, but every row is so long at this point that whenever I am called upon to describe my progress I use words like plugging, plodding, anything that gives the impression of doggedly toiling onward with your head down, making no effort to measure your progress because it will just discourage you anyway. Other knits are calling, I am trying to ignore them, even as my hands freeze off and the wind gets under my collar and my ears go all tingly (Okay, we have not quite reached tingly levels of cold yet, but the wind on bare hands is enough to make you think you are going to get frostbite just trying to get your groceries out to the car).

One of my friends sent me this for Christmas:



4 oz of hand-dyed fingering weight yarn from the Homestead Heritage craft fair. She got me some worsted last year that has been sitting in my stash waiting for me to get over the aversion to scarfs I had after beginning my knitting life with several. I actually washed one of the skeins last week to try and soften it up a bit, as it was a little rugged and a tad sheepy (If anyone has any solutions for the removal of VM I would love to know, as there is kind of a lot in those skeins).

The sock yarn is not rugged and has no VM and it is shiny and beautiful and the perfect color. It's hard to tell in the photo, but it has more of a semisolid effect to it. Very pretty. Too pretty for socks. I am thinking Hamsa.

I wore my Scheherazade to church on Sunday and two separate people told me they would pay me to make them one. My general reaction was uh, no...As appealing as extra money sounds, I don't think I want to cross that kind of line. I will make presents, I will keep mental notes about what people like, but I am not going to knit for money. Besides, I am pretty sure that is illegal under the pattern copyright.

I'm getting a bonus this year, and I plan to use it to buy a spinning wheel (probably an Ashford Kiwi). I did not make it very far in my resolution to drop spindle every day, so I may be setting myself up for disappointment or insanity by getting a wheel, but I am taking the plunge anyway. Used wheels generally keep a lot of their value.

I wonder if I could get the SO's mom to paint my wheel for me. She is a very good painter and I would so love for my wheel to be pretty. Maybe I can trade her some knitting for it! I don't know, though, would that affect the balance? Would it not spin as well?