Wednesday, December 16, 2009

of snowflakes and six feet of i-cord

i've been a knitting fool lately, or at least, as much of one as i can squeeze into my spare time. some of you may remember the bag that was knitting last year for a christmas present for my mom. well after running out of yarn half way through and searching high and low for anything that would work with it i managed to finish the last stitches christmas eve, tossed it in the washing machine to felt and waited with anticipation to see the finished result.

i was not prepared for the outcome. the first problem was that the original yarn did not felt.at.ALL while the new yarn I got as a contrast did felt beautifully. this is really the lesser of evils as the unfelted yarn also had a giant hole *sob* right in the front and the strap had so many holes it was virtually unusable. you can imagine my horror when i opened the pillowcase i had washed it in and found the mess. needless to say i spent probably a half an hour sobbing and then i called my mom to explain what had happened to her gift. i never blogged about it last year because it was such an aweful experience and i couldn't bring myself to type it out (i'll admit even a year later it still made me cry a little). my mom, of course, was totally awesome about it and helped prop me up a little. christmas has always been more about celebrating Christ's birth and spending time as a family and less about the gifts, something i've always been grateful for. regardless, i have been wanting to redo the bag for her.

fast forward to the past month i've been feverishly knitting away at this bag and am at the point where i seem to be endlessly knitting i-cord. 6 feet to be exact. i've done about 4.5 so only 18 inches left to go. i'll be relieved to finish the knitting but that means time for felting and i would be lying if i didn't say that i was very, very nervous to wash it up this time.

progress

i've also been trying to teach myself to crochet snowflakes on the side. after three failed attempts (the first one was unravelled mid-way by my 3-yr-old and the other two were scrapped because i just wasn't loving how they were turning out) i think i've got a winner.....time will tell.

christmas is literally around the corner and promises to be very busy this year, with lots of visiting and coming-and-going, but it will be a good busy i'm sure. not quite as busy as one of the first years we were married where it felt like we were just the pinballs in a pinball machine bouncing around in a whirlwind of stops never really staying long enough to enjoy any of it. one of the great things about having kids is it forces you to slow down a bit and see the season through their eyes. it's nice to have that wonder and excitement again.


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