I Know!

I’ve been slack! I know! It’s been so crazy with Thanksgiving and everything. Speaking of which, I hope that all of my US readers had a great holiday. We ate way too much! Thanksgiving and Christmas are big eating days for Geoff and I since on those days we spend mid-day to afternoon with his family and late afternoon to evening with mine. The good news is that the scale isn’t showing any holiday weight gain (in fact it’s gone down 2 pounds in the past week!). I hope that trend continues!

And I did not get nearly enough knitting done over the holiday weekend. Very disappointing. I’m still working on the Aran Tree Skirt and right now I’m just hoping to have it finished by Christmas. There really isn’t any reason to kill myself over the next week or so. I’m halfway done with it so here’s a progress shot…

I’m not doing much gift-knitting this Christmas. Just one special gift on my list. My grandmother turned 95 this month and I mentioned to Geoff that I wished I had knit her something for her birthday and he asked if I could eek something out for Christmas so I looked for the perfect pattern and found it. I’m knitting her this afghan…

It’s the Cathedral Afghan from Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts 2006. It’s knit with bulky yarn on size 13 needles so it really flies and I should have no problem finishing it for Christmas. I’m using Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Bulky in color Pewter. I’ll try and get a progress shot this weekend.

One knit that I’m feeling SO guilty about is that blanket for my nephew. I blew through half of it in no time and then… nothing. I think I know why. You see, the animals are knit using intarsia and it’s knit with cotton yarn. It’s so hard to make cotton yarn look neat and clean in colorwork! The stitches even looked wonky in the pictures in the book. The wonkiness of it all and the fact that doing the colorwork pretty much requires me to line the blanket have made me dread picking it up to finish it. I’m the worst aunt ever! And every time I see my nephew he is using the blanket I made for my other nephew. He needs his own blanket! So I think I’m going to rip out the blanket down to the point where the animals begin and then reknit it without the animals. I know the animals are sooooo cute but I think they just look sloppy in a cotton yarn and I don’t like sloppy. So it will just be a color block blanket and this will avoid my having to line it. Joy! Now I just need to make myself frog almost half of what I’ve done already… grrrrrrrr…

Well, better run! I’ve got Stitch ‘n Bitch tonight! Wahoo! I promise to not let another week go by without posting! Have a great Friday everyone!