I needed some Thanksgiving knitting, so I took my nearly complete Melpomene with me. I knew that wasn't enough knitting to get me through the whole day, but in the midst of everything else that was going on I failed to plan ahead adequately, and couldn't lay my hands on anything that had the right level of mindlessness and portability. I finally stuffed some yarn and pattern pages that I had lying around in a bag, and voila.
I cast on this Urban Necessity glove to complete the matched set for CodeNinja. I've really been pretty negligent about knitting these and they don't take very long, so I really ought to be ashamed of myself. In my defense, though - it hasn't been very cold. Anyway, I got this started in the car and then put it aside, since the 1x1 ribbed cuff was something I could knit in the dark on the way home. I kept knitting on it later in the weekend when we went Christmas tree hunting, and now I'm almost ready to put the thumb stitches on a holder. I need some time to finish it now with CodeNinja nearby so he can try it on and direct me as to the length of the fingers.
For the football viewing portion of Thanksgiving, I cast on this.
Permafrost by Jared Flood in his Loft yarn, colorway Snowbound. I don't know what I was thinking, this is going like lightening now, but as the number of stitches increases and increases - this is not going to be a quick project! I still have Galadriel's mirror hanging around, sad and neglected, if I needed a big project, and of course as soon as I figure out what I'm going to do for a wedding shawl, I'm going to drop everything else like it's on fire. But, oh well, it's started now, and I'm most of the way through Chart 2. I'll try to catch up on the knitting over my Christmas vacation.
And now for something completely different! Every year, the ladies' group at my church does an ornament exchange, and almost every year I've taken some type of handmade ornaments. A few years ago, before I started knitting, I bought a kit from (I think) Bead Sphere for netted ornament covers. There were three covers in the kit. I made one for that year's ornament exchange, and the rest got shoved inside something somewhere. I uncovered the kit while I was working through the stuff from the craft room and, as the ornament exchange is this coming Friday, decided that if I just went ahead and made the ornament covers, I wouldn't have to figure out somewhere to store the kits! (Genius, I tell you.)
Everything I needed was still in the bag, including all the beads, the needles, and even my little square of Thread Heaven. So I plopped down at my desk and got to work.
It's easy enough - pick up this many beads, thread through this bead on the prior row, etc. etc. Quite simple, though these are size 11 beads, so very tiny. I finished the first one...
And went ahead and started the second.
It takes about 3 hours to do one of these, so I had to quit the second one in the middle and come back to it later, but I finished it on up and it's even prettier than the first one.
I did have a problem with both, however - despite the fact that I was SURE I pulled out enough string as directed, I ran out. This is sort of like running out in the middle of a long-tail cast on - one you've spent the last two hours working on. There's not really a good solution for it and taking all that netting out and starting over would NOT be easy. So...I did a Russion join. It doesn't work quite as well as it does in knitting, but as you can see above - it does work. I'm especially bitter that I ran outof yarn on the second one, though, since I made doubly sure to pull out extra.
I'll pop these over a couple of plain ol' spherical ornaments and they will be gorgeous, perfect for the ornament exchange. This is the best kind of purging.
And now, only one thing remains - my finished Melpomene!
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