It’s like a Christmas miracle around these parts for my loyal 3 readers. After barely posting for the last couple years, this is the fourth post for December AND I have a billion more project posts to add! Of course, if you don’t like project posts, then I’m sorry you were naughty this year and this is your coal.

In the beginning was OBSESSED with knitting. Anyplace I went I bought yarn because it was so very pretty. If I walked into a yarn store I turned into Gollum surrounded by precious rings made from every fiber and color you could possibly imagine. How could I not leave with yarn. Then I hit a point where I fell out of knitting. I still did it, but I didn’t live and breath the stuff. I still bought yarn because it was beautiful, but even that began to taper off eventually.

Now that I have a baby, you would think that I would be knitting even less than I was during my least interested point. Apparently not. I have knit more this year with a baby drooling underfoot than the last two years combined, if you can believe Ravelry and you can.

I don’t know what happened, but the odd thing is even though my knitting rate is increasing, I currently have no interest in buying yarn! I know! It very well may be a sign of the apocolypse, but I’m tired of having enough yarn to knit sweaters for the entire population of Rhode Island. I like using up what I have. I actually want to get rid of my enormous stash, and have a small manageable stash of one or two skeins. What’s wrong with me? I must be ill.

That said, I have bought yarn this year, but for specific patterns and oddly enough I’m using it almost as soon as I buy it. Between you and me, I like not having the yarn hang around too long. There’s much less pressure. Better still, I’ve gone through old yarn in various projects and it feels great! There’s a sort of relief to having the yarn stash decrease.

In the spirit of yarn decluttering, I’ve decided that for 2011, I can’t buy any yarn until our local yarn festival in September and Rhinebeck in October UNLESS I HAVE A SPECIFIC PROJECT I NEED YARN FOR, and I can only buy a specified amount of yarn that I determine in advance of the fests. For example, I can buy yarn for 2 pairs of socks or X skeins of yarn for a sweater with a pattern selected. No more buying sock yarn because it’s pretty or a yarn for a shawl or sweater I want to make some day. I will go in and buy something specific or not at all.

Of course, I am making the Husband come this year so he can help me (and he owes me for all the races I watch). I mean, you can’t expect a former yarn addict to walk into yarnvana and not fall off the wagon a little bit. I just want to continue this yarn purging. It feels good. I think maybe the next step is to inventory what I already own and get it figured out. Hmmmm…I may need spotters. Maybe this time next year I’ll have only 10 skeins of yarn total! Wait, I have a lot of yarn. Maybe this time in 15 years, I’ll have only 10 skeins of yarn total. A girl can dream.

Pattern: Toni Ribbed Hat
Yarn: Knit Picks Swish Worsted
Needles: US 7

One would think that as soon as a knitter finds out she (or he) is expecting, she would start knitting hats for the little bundle of poop and snot. Alas, no. I wasn’t sure what OP’s head size would be when born so I figured I’d wait and see. Then I was too busy trying to figure out this new life, that OP’s first winter came and went with no hat made from mommy.

Not this winter. This winter, I made her a lovely hat that she tolerates. OP has never liked hats and is always taking them off. This one she puts up with and eventually takes off, but at least she waits until we are in the car seat before removing her hat. I’ll take that as a win.

It’s a good pattern, but I have to try it again. I liked how the designer did the decreases, which is different from the way I normally decrease, but I got it in my head that there was a typo. Instead of checking online or just trying it out and having trust in the designer, I did it my way. I need to see how it would work following her design. Of course, the design is for a flat hat, and I did mine is in the round so maybe I was right. I liked the pattern, though so I would totally enjoy a redo.

As for the yarn,  I haven’t gone wrong yet with any Knit Picks yarn, this style included. I love it. Highly recommend it.

OP loves apples. It’s my fault. I was home alone with her when she was somewhere between 9 and 10 months. I was hungry and started eating an apple. Well, the look I received from this little eater was so intensely interested in my food, that I decided to let her “eat” the apple. I figured I would hold it to her mouth and if anything she would suck the juices. And that was mostly what happened, except she also scraped her little front teeth along the apple’s flesh and made a sort of apple sauce. I watched her very carefully and made sure she ate only the meat and not the skin. She did quite well at it.

The next weekend we were on our own again, and again I was hungry. Another apple came out and a happy little girl looked at it. Again, we shared. I ate a bite, she ate a bite. Only this time she gripped my hand so hard with the apple at her mouth and would not let go.  If I pulled my hand away, she growled like a starving feral wolf who just found an entire elephant to eat and I walked by. I had created a monster.

Grandma and grandpa gave her an apple to hold on her own. Best day ever in her little world, I think. Now she eats apples, with constant supervision like a champ. Scraping her little teeth along the meat to make applesauce and happy the entire time. Be careful to keep your hand away or she may bite it off.

Pattern: Cobbled together from multiple patterns
Yarn: Cascade 220
Needles: US 8

You’ve heard of the sweater curse for boyfriends, right? That’s where you knit your boyfriend a sweater and, after it is complete, you break up. There’s no definitive reason this occurs but it does. I suspect either the amount of time it takes to make a sweater is about right for an average relationship or she makes the ugliest sweater and he won’t wear it causing stress and ending the relationship. This is a cursed Husband’s sweater. The Husband and I are not breaking up (you hear me Husband) mainly because he’s locked in the basement. No, this sweater is cursed because I had to knit it twice.

The sweater is a top-down raglan knit in the round. For those not into knitting, that means, the sweater is made from the top down in one piece. As you knit the torso, you make live stitches that are later used to knit the sleeves. So, before the child was born, I began the torso. In the hospital while she slept in her little plastic box they give you, I knit the torso. I had the Husband try it on as we went, thanks to the benefits of knitting top down, and the sweater fit great. Then, at home with my little newborn baby, I began the first sleeve and as I had the husband try the sweater on with a partially finished sleeve, it no longer fit. Oh, the torso fit great, but the sleeves were HUGE. As far as I know, with a top-down raglan you can’t fix that without frogging back to where the sleeves are made. That was weeks if not months of work gone. So before I did that, I talked to my good friend at YarnKettle who has made a ton of these sweaters, and asked her opinion. It didn’t look good and I had to frog and start again.

The second time went much better. It’s a very simple sweater, but I figured out a lot of things I need to do for the Husband to get a sweater that fits how he likes. It’s a great start for future, more intricate top-down sweaters for him. He’s happy with it and plans to wear it soon which makes me happy. There’s nothing more annoying than spending time knitting something only to have the receiver hate it or not wear it. Then again, he hasn’t worn it yet…so maybe he won’t and then I’ll get upset and our marriage will be over! But then I’d loose the free computer skills he brings and he does kill bugs for me…hmmm…I think the marriage is safe.