Thanksgiving

Well, I don't have much to report, but I felt like I should post since it's been a while. The reason for that, quite obviously, was Thanksgiving. My husband and I drove to Chicago to visit both of our families, so I have been away from home since last Wednesday morning. The visit was a lot of fun, although the drive wasn't, since we ran into snow both on the way there and on the way back. It was really nice to have a break from the daily grind. However, I did not get a chance to knit the whole time we were gone, so I am going through knitting withdrawal. I think that I will settle in with my lace ornaments when I get home from work today. And I will probably add a cup of tea or hot chocolate to that thought, as it is cold out, we have finally gotten our first snow, and the thermostat at work is not working properly, so I will need to thaw out when I get home!

Fairway Fair Isles pictures

I have made considerable progress on the golf club covers for my husband, mostly because I have thrown caution to the wind and decided that it's okay if I work on them in front of him, since I have next to no knitting time away from him now that I don't knit at work due to a shorter lunch hour. I actually have made more progress than these pictures show, as I have finished two of the covers and just barely started the third one.
Here is the first one completed:



Here is a close-up of the colorwork:



And here is the second one in progress, although like I said, it is completed now:



I think that for my second ever attempt at fair isle, I did not do too badly, although I still need to work on not pulling the yarn so tightly when I carry the colors along. You can probably tell this by the fact that the fair isle sections of the covers are slightly skinnier than the rest of them.

Knitting Meetup

Well, I know I haven't posted in a while, and I don't have any new pictures to share, but I did want to share my excitement that the Lincoln Knitting Meetup is finally up and running. After a series of false starts due to lack of interest, we have had three meetings now (two of which I have attended). The most recent was last night, and it was a really great experience. There were seven of us there - our largest crowd yet. I got to see two socks being worked on two circular needles, something that I had heard about but never seen. I was having a hard time wrapping my brain around the concept, but now that I have seen it done in person, I am at least open to the idea that it could be easier than using double pointed needles (although I have never had any particular problem with dpns), and I think I will at least look into trying it. I also got to see the Denise Interchangeable Needle Set in person for the first time (thanks to the same woman), and I am glad that I decided to ask for a set for Christmas.
I also got some positive feedback on my own knitting. Everyone oohed and ahhed over the colorwork on my one completed Fairway Fair Isle golf club cover (which I will post a picture of soon, I promise), and when we got into a discussion about Knitty patterns, I pulled out the Broad Street Mittens that I made last winter, and they all liked those too. When some of them said that they didn't think they would be able to do anything like either of these projects, I responded with my philosophy that nothing that I've encountered in knitting has been as hard as it seemed initially, and that if I just take the time to figure things out, I can usually do any pattern that I've attempted. I think my determination is at least partially due to the fact that I taught myself to knit from a book with no one to show me how to do it, and it took me a while to get the hang of it, but I did it, and so now I figure that if I take enough time, I can figure out just about anything.

Ornament burnout

Well, over the weekend, I decided I was really sick of working on the lace ornaments (which is not good, since I am only in the middle of my third one, and I'm going to need at least ten of them). So I decided to start working on the golf club covers I am going to give my husband for Christmas. He is pretty much oblivious to my blog, so it is okay to talk about them here. I am using the Fairway Fair Isles pattern from Knitty, only instead of making each cover in a different color scheme, I am making them all in the blue/green pattern and putting stripes around the necks of the covers to indicate which clubs they are. Here is a picture of my progress so far:



It's going fairly quickly. This is basically what I've done over the course of a day and a half. And I feel like I can justify working on this instead of the ornaments because this is also Christmas knitting.

Lace hand grenades?

Okay, I know it's completely silly (and perhaps even a little tasteless), but that is honestly what the two lace ornaments I have finished look like to me. See?



I'm sure they will look much better once they have been stretched into their proper round shape by the balloons.
In other knitting news, for the first time ever, I have received a knitting magazine in the mail and been so inspired that I had to start a project from it right away. My winter Interweave Knits came on Monday, and I was absolutely taken with the handknit shoelaces featured near the beginning. So I dug out some leftover sock yarn, and here is my shoelace so far:



This was just the type of quick-knit project I needed, as I have been in kind of a knitting slump lately, not wanting to work on any of my current projects, but not having the motivation to start a major project. I'm very pleased with how the shoelace is turning out, and I'm looking forward to having a pair of them for my running shoes!