How Lucky Can I Be?

It really bothers me to start a project that I cannot complete in a timely manner.  I started to work on an order for a man's sweater early last fall, and I am just now able to get it finished.  I knew there would be problems because he chose a color that would need to be reordered to have enough to knit his sweater.  I started in anyway, thinking that the new yarn would be in before I finished the four balls I already had.  Unfortunately, the yarn has been on back order ever since, and continues to be now.  By chance, I found the exact same yarn in a store here in Westport, called the Sisters of the Wool.  She sells yarn products sold by local farmers.  I could not believe my luck when I saw the very yarn I wanted in the color I needed.  The wool is sent to the same spinners as is the wool that I use from my daughter-in-law.  That meant that the yarn was not just similar, but exactly the same. She only had three skeins of the charcoal gray that I was using and only a few skeins in different colors. The supply was very limited, and I couldn't believe how lucky I could be.  I bought two of the skeins thinking it would be enough to finish the sweater, but I was wrong.  I went back and got the third ball of yarn.  Three skeins is what I needed, and three skeins was what she had in my color.  Yes, how lucky can I be?  Well, last night I finished the sweater and here is the final result.

I used this shot of the sweater to try to show the hood.

Now that this sweater is done, I will get onto another project that my daughter has requested.  She saw a sweater knitted by a friend for a baby shower.  She liked the style and wants me to try to make one for Lexi.  I will need to alter the pattern again because it is for only up to 12 mo. and Lexi is already 19 mo.  Just another challenge.

Quilt for Ezra

I was anxious to make a quilt for my new grandson that is on the way.  Kim told me Sunday that she would like to have a knitted one that she can use at church.  She liked the tree of life pattern quilt that I made for Portia, so I started in on Sunday afternoon.  I finished it just today.  It is a challenge because it has so many stitch changes and counting, but it is so rewarding to see the final outcome.

This is what the full quilt looks like.

This shows how the trees cross in the tree of life panels.

This panel in the middle is called the flower garden.

This shows the leaf pattern in the border.

New Finger Puppets

Well, I got really busy that week between two days before Christmas and New Year's.  Along with completing the knitted items, I made my dipped chocolates, made the scrapbook pages to update everyone's scrapbooks that I made for them when they got married, and knitted six finger puppets for my new Sunbeam class at church.  I wanted them for their first day in my class which was New Year's Day.  As it turned out, only one of the six showed up, so I postponed my introductory lesson to this coming week.

Frustration really settled in when I was dipping my chocolates two days before Christmas.  I got up early that day and made my centers, so that they could chill for a while before I dipped them.  When it came time to do the dipping was when it all started to fall apart.  For some reason, the chocolate would not melt to a nice consistency for dipping.  It all globbed together in a lump.  I tossed the first batch and managed to get a little dipped with the next one before it happened again.  I guess it was getting too hot for some reason.  I was using my double boiler as always, and it was still a problem.  Instead of dumping this batch, I added some nuts and made it into bark.  No matter what kind of chocolate I used, the problem happened again for a third and fourth time.  I was nearly in tears...I had all these beautiful centers, and I couldn't get them dipped.  I took a break and went out to dinner with my husband.  When I came back, I melted some chocolate chips to see if I could finish dipping my centers.  It worked  better, but still the chocolate was very thick on the candies.  At least, I was able to fill the tins for my presents that I needed for the next day.

The white chocolate nut cluster in the middle, the red, green, white, and chocolate bark, and a chocolate raisin cluster were all made from chocolate that didn't allow me to dip.  That leaves four examples of the dipped chocolates of which I had vanilla, peanut butter, orange, and cherry cream centers. I also made coconut and chocolate covered cherries.  I wish they looked as good as they taste, but they still made a nice present in the end.

The scrapbook pages took all day and more to compile.  I had to do a lot of work on the computer before I could even start to put the pages together.  I had to move all the pictures for each family into a folder for that family (four new folders). Then, I had to choose the pictures that I wanted to use and print them out.  It took two nights of work to do all of that.  To compile the pages, I started at 6:30 on Wed. morning and worked without a break until 1:30 Thurs. morning and still did not have all the pages completed.  I had to make a whole new book for Tom and Mindy because I had not made one for them.  I made any where from 8-11 new pages for each of the other books.  I went to bed and got up again a few hours later and finished the four pages that I had laid out and made two more pages, that I had not planned on, for two of the other books.  With that done, I had to do some serious house cleaning for my company that was coming for the week end.

I didn't take any pictures of the new pages of the scrapbooks, but this is an example from Marty's and Kim's book that shows some of the work involved in putting together these books.  You can see other pages in my list of things along side of my blog of examples of what I make to sell.

It is so crazy...it turned out to be a year for pictures.  I did the scrapbooking for the kids, and they all gave me pictures in various forms for Christmas.  I got a bound book of pictures from T.W.'s family, tile magnets for my fridge with pictures of each of my grandchildren on them from Marty's family, a 2012 calendar with pictures of all my family on the various months from Cheryl's family, and a smaller carry-along picture book of Tom's family from them.  It was a great year for pictures.  I say you can never get too many pictures.  It is such a great way to preserve our family history.

On Fri. night and all day Sat., I worked on the finger puppets to get them ready for Sunday.  I'm glad that I have four girls and only two boys this year.  Girls' hair is much easier to do than boys' hair.

These are my finger puppets for my three-year old Sunbeams.  I try to make them look as much like the child as I can.  This year, I have a set of twins (the two girls in the middle) are my twin puppets. My boys both have a darker skin color, so I had to use a darker yarn for them.

I have already started to make my Christmas presents for next year.  I was so bored yesterday with nothing to work on, that I decided in the night what I would do for the ladies and got up this morning and started in.  Nearly half done with one of them.  I am having to alter patterns again because I cannot find what I want in the size I want.  I'm actually getting much better with altering now, and feel quite confident in giving it a try.

Christmas is over!

Christmas is over officially, since we celebrated ours on New Year's Day.  Now, I can share the things that I made for the adults, and some pictures of the kids wearing a few of their new things.

Cheryl's tote bag

Mindy's tote bag

Ellen's tote bag

T.W.'s, Marty's, Jon's, Tony's, and Tom's hats

This is the tote bag I made for Kim, but someone bought it.  I made her another one, and I forgot to take a picture of it.  It looks the same, except that the stripes are the colors in Dot's hat and sweater in the picture below.

Dot, modeling her new sweater and hat.

Dot, modeling her new sweatshirt and still wearing the hat.

Zoe, modeling her strawberry hat.

Joey, wearing his pajamas.

Jackson, wearing his pajamas.

Zoe, modeling her bathrobe.

Zoe, modeling her sweat suit.

Jackson, wearing his sweat suit.

It has been strange today, because I haven't had any projects to work on.  I have been trying to figure out my new Galaxy pad that I got for Christmas.  Now, that is very difficult.  I'm just not very good with modern technology.  People tell me to just experiment with it and I will figure it out.  I don't know...it doesn't seem to be working.