Christmas knitting

Well, Christmas is officially over, but the vacation lingers on. I finished the Christmas knitting very late this year--as in Dec. 23. That was caused by other knitting that kept getting in the way! There were two babies to knit gifts for this fall, so that took up some time.

Ken's vest took much more time than anticipated. I keep wanting the read a pattern and then assume that that's the way that I'm going to knit it, when I should remember that I am a Masterknitter and should act like one! I need to think more before I begin the knitting. Anyway, I ended up tearing out his vest several times, before I remembered to cast on many fewer stitches for the ribbing and then increase when I began the cables--increasing only in the cable area to avoid "cable flare". It worked, but I sure wish that I could remember to do this on a regular basis. The pattern as an all-over cable pattern and that meant quite a bit of time--to say nothing of the times that I mis-crossed the cables and had to ladder down to redo the cable. That said, it was a very well written pattern, down to having extra stitches for sewing up, and patterns that matched at the seams to create the illusion of no interruption in the pattern. Here's the final product--which fits him beautifully.

And, then there was Olivia's sweater. I used a new yarn which I am not impressed with--Valley Yarns Valley Superwash DK. I am not impressed with this yarn at all. Yes, it's soft, but it was pilling and looking old before I had even finished the sweater. I also did not really like the cables that went up the center and sides of the sweater. That said, it was fun to knit with the pictures. And, here it is:

And I forgot Kylie's Christmas stocking. Sue picked the pattern. She wanted something a little untraditional! There are now four stockings in their family.

And, now it's on to some knitting of my own. I'm working on mittens for me--Vader had chewed the end of one mitten when he was a puppy and the moths had gotten to the other one. I've worn them for two years in that condition and finally decided that I needed some new ones. I finished the first one the other night and worked on the second one last night as I was watching "The Bucket List". What a good film. The first good film out of the last four that I chose for myself!