A Few More FOs

(that's Finished Objects for those not familiar with knitters' jargon) 

I buckled down Saturday evening and finished the Pumpkin Great-Grandbaby hat to send to Aunt B for her impending first great-grandchild.  That seems wrong on so many levels.  First of all, my Aunt B is nowhere near old enough to be a great-grandma and second, LD's not old enough to be a grandpa.  Hell, he's younger than I am... although I will confess that both of my children are in their 30s and haven't made me a grandma yet (no pressure, guys, really) so perhaps my perspective's a little skewed.  But the hat is darling.  I highly recommend it if you need a quick baby gift.  If you devote yourself to it monogamously you can finish it in one long day or two evenings of chat & knit.



All day Thursday at work (and it was a looooong day with only a single customer, paying or non) I made a lot of Green Shrug progress.  I'm within 5 rows of putting the sleeve stitches on waste yarn and joining the body stitches at the underarm and keeping on down the body.  Remember this is a shrug so it's not longer than the bottom of my ribs anyway and I'm knitting it with hawser-gauge yarn (3 rows = 1") so it shouldn't take me long to get to 15" from the top of the shoulder.  A casual measuring just now shows that I've got approximately 9" done already.  I may be tempted to add a bit of length to the body and sleeves; I'll see how the yarn holds out because there is no buying more (I got this yarn in Goshen, IN in 2011; hard to match dye lots) and I need to save yarn for the neck band which is added last.  I want to have it finished so that I can take it with me to The Clearing in mid-May.  I'll so make it by then.



Yesterday afternoon when it began to snow AGAIN I took my iPod and went down into the basement to sew something.  Skully shared a pattern for a soup bowl potholder that I've been meaning to make and seeing Durwood carrying his hot bowl across the kitchen yesterday at lunch gave me the impetus I needed to get the job done.  I decided as long as I was making one I'd make two, one for him and one for me.  I dug through the stash and found a fish print for him and a chicken print for me, and some yellow near-solid for the insides.  This is a very straightforward, simple pattern that turns out a very handy item.  The only caveat is that you must use cotton fabric and cotton batting so nothing melts in the microzapper.  And they're washable for those worried about soup slopping over on the walk from micro to table. 


And do not put them away because they're "too nice" either.  Handmade things don't reach their full destiny if they're not used and loved and sometimes loved to rags.  As a knitter/crocheter, lotion crafter, and sewist I expect the things I make and give away to be used and abused.  Don't save lotion or lip balm, the stuff I make has no preservatives in it and is only good for about a year.  If you wear out, felt from use, tear, lose on the bus, spit up or whizz on (mostly I'm speaking to the babies in my audience here), or sit too close to the fire in anything I have made you, don't be embarrassed, just tell me and I'll either fix it or make a new one.  Cross my heart.  Makers like to make things so if we get to make more, that's all to the good.  Sorry for the rant, it just bugs me when I make things for people and they don't use whatever it is.  (can you tell?)