I really need to do a quick wrap-up of the end of December so that Future Kara can remember all the stuff that happened. Let’s see… I finished making Dan’s “Discipline” hooked rug on Christmas morning before he woke up. He loves it. In fact, he loves it so much he doesn’t want to walk on it, so we’re going to hang it on his office wall. Henry loves his cozy warm robot quilt. I love my tangerine-orange KitchenAid stand mixer and the wonderful stack of books that everyone gave me, and my jigsaw puzzle, and the amazing huge framed Link to the Past map!

Henry and I had a bit of an adventure when we bought the Christmas tree, a new variety called a Grand Fir, which was beautiful, inexpensive, long-lasting, and smelled amazing. I hope we can get a Grand Fir next year too. Anyway, after we bought the tree we discovered that Henry’s learner’s permit was missing. We retraced our steps and asked the tree guys to look for it, but it was just gone. And Henry was scheduled for his driver’s test a few days later, so it was a real problem! Next day we went to the DMV and got a new permit, and then immediately found his old one in the car. Hilarious. Problem solved. :) And he passed his test! He can now drive himself to and from kung fu, and even run errands for us. Excellent.

I printed out my Christmas Village at 50% and built it and it’s so tiny and cute! (Make your own: http://www.archive.org/details/SantasChristmasVillage)

One more thing — here’s the frog I knit for Elli:
(Ravelry page http://ravel.me/kayray/tf)

First — Happy 16th birthday (a little late) to my dear Henry! You’re really fun to hang out with and I am so proud of you!

We went to the zoo together on a cool cloudy Sunday for photography fun:

Here’s another nice thing I want to share. Dan gave me a tiny rug-hooking kit for my birthday and I had such fun learning this new skill! Very soon I want to make something bigger. It seems like a great craft for using up the small amounts of leftover yarn that I end up with, and all I will need to buy is a bit of burlap for the foundation!

And I’m working on a beautiful yellow lace shawl. The pattern is “Hartfield”. Details on Ravelry: http://ravel.me/kayray/h1

The Ravelry pattern page is here:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/mosaic-headband (no login required)

And now, photos!

I made the first one with green and white Risata:

After I posted it on Rav, I got a lot of compliments and even a few requests that I’d write up a pattern, so I did. And then I knit a blue and white one with Palette while following my own pattern so I could check for mistakes and confusion:

I’ve always been intimidated by mosaic knitting. The descriptions are always so wordy and I couldn’t quite believe that it would work. But when I decided to be brave and try it out on this little project, I discovered how fun and easy it is! To sum up: you follow a chart of dark and light squares. You knit across and back with only one color of yarn, then drop that color and knit back and forth with the other color. While knitting with color A, you slip any stitches which are color B on the chart. Both directions. That’s it, that’s all there is to it. Just try it!

Thing One is another striped Chroma vest like the one I designed and made for Mom, but with a few refinements to the pattern and some adjustments to fit me. I reached the underarms today, which means it’s time to plan out the steeks and the whole thing gets much narrower and moves along even faster, so I’m well over halfway finished with the main knitting. After that it’s just steeks and ribbing. Woohoo!

Ravelry page here (no login required): http://ravel.me/kayray/cv2

(Actual green is more mossy, less minty. Actual red is less orange, more a dull tomato red)

Thing Two is a “Nerderdel” lace tired skirt. Just started it today as a reward for making such great progress on the vest. The yarn is knitpicks “cotlin” (cotton/linen blend).

Ravelry page here (no login required): http://ravel.me/kayray/nlts

I might also enter a striped scarf that I’m making, which is pretty and would be fun to show off, but it’s not very special. Also it’s SO BORING and SLOW to knit and it’s only half-done…

Ravelry page here (no login required): http://ravel.me/kayray/cs

So cute! Both vest and Mom :) (more photos on flickr)

It’s made of Knitpicks’ “Chroma” and “Wool of the Andes” yarn. I worked it bottom-up and steeked the armholes so the stripes would be consistent. Crocheted steeks are MUCH more fun than sewn ones!

You can read all about its construction and see more photos on its Ravelry page (no login required):
http://www.ravelry.com/projects/kayray/chroma-vest

I took it along to the North Coast Knitters Guild Knit-at-Night on Wednesday and it was much admired! I love love love the Knit-at-Night. Everyone is so friendly and encouraging and warm. I really look forward to going every month.

The Ogawa Family, together with the Red Cross, is challenging donors to donate for Japan disaster relief. Every tax deductible dollar you donate, the Ogawa family will match equally in contributions to the Red Cross up to $500,000. Together we can donate One Million Dollars to the Red Cross.

They were only at 14% of the goal when we donated on Monday, and now they’re almost halfway there with 17 more days remaining. Please give what you can!

And now back to your regularly scheduled blog post.

Henry just spent a week on Santa Catalina Island doing a marine biology camping program with some of his schoolmates. Last Sunday afternoon (the 20th) Henry and I drove to Long Beach (it’s about 2.5 hours away, depending on traffic) in a terrible rainstorm and spent the night in a very nice hotel that Dan chose for us so that we could get Henry to the dock by 8:30 the next morning without the stress of leaving home at 5:30am and still being nearly late like we were last year. We got some dinner at Ruby’s and then had a relaxing time in our hotel and watched season 7 of Peep Show together while I knit a warm hat for him. (To quote Super Hans, I was knitting like an electric Nan.)

Here’s a view of the storm from our 4th floor hotel room. A HUGE eucalyptus branch blew down into that intersection a little while later!

Got Henry to the dock on time the next morning and he got on the ferry boat and sailed away.

And then I drove up to Long Beach yesterday (Friday) to fetch him. I left at 11am, though I didn’t need to be there until 2:45, because last year I left at noon and was an hour late because of traffic. But traffic was easy yesterday and I got there at 1pm, so I found a free parking lot and knitted while I waited. It was so wonderful to see him again! We never go a whole day without talking or emailing or texting, so five days felt like an eternity to me :) While we drove, he told me about all the fun stuff he did all week — nighttime snorkeling, a 15-mile hike, a visit to an old mine, kayaking, etc. I’m so glad he had such a great time! What a wonderful opportunity!

Here’s the Birthday Vest for Mom that I’ve been working on:

Still need to add pockets but then it’s done! You can read about it on the Ravelry page (no log-in required): http://ravel.me/kayray/cv

I’m using Knitpicks’ gorgeous new Chroma Worsted in the “Midwinter” colorway, with stripes of black Wool of the Andes. The Chroma is SOFT. Soft, soft, soft. And beautiful! But it seems very delicate; although it does have 20% nylon mixed in for strength, it has almost no twist at all, so it’s almost like knitting with a strand of unspun fleece. I wouldn’t recommend it for socks, but for anything else worn next to the skin it would be perfect.

The color here is fairly accurate:

I’m inventing the pattern of course, and working bottom-up for a change because I wanted to establish the stripes before I had to deal with armholes and neck shaping. I’m working from all three balls of Chroma at once (two rows from each, then six rows of black), having first evened them out so that they were all at the same point in the color transitions.

Last night I knit through the waist section and started bust increases and neck decreases! (color here is wildly inaccurate):

You can get more details on the Ravelry page, no log-in required: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/kayray/chroma-vest

I’m planning to steek the armholes, if I can get up the courage and if I’m POSITIVE the fit is correct.

Yarn: Lang Jawoll Superwash
Needles: size 000

I knit the cuffs on 72 stitches and the rest of the sock on 70. I used the cuff pattern and the nifty “lozenge” pattern, and did my own favorite heel and toe. This is a great pattern if you don’t like to count rows! The purl stripe comes every tenth row in the cuff and the lozenge pattern is very easy to memorize and you can just work as many repeats as you need by just counting diamonds.

These socks are here on Ravelry:
http://www.ravelry.com/projects/kayray/gentlemans-sock-with-lozenge-pattern (no log-in necessary)

I’ve already started another pair in dark green.

Today I’ll take Henry in for a checkup, and then I hope we get to hang out with Celia and Chloe a bit in the afternoon, and then in the evening it’s possible that Bob and Chloe might come over to watch “Hud” with us, which just arrived from Netflix yesterday and is one of my favorite movies.

I’m reading my very first Edith Wharton novel, “The House of Mirth”, and it’s fantastic. I’m almost glad I waited this long to discover her,’cause now I have a whole lot of wonderful books to look forward to, if “The House of Mirth” is any indication. I also re-read “The Three MIss Margarets” and “The Hills at Home” last week. Both were as good as I remembered from reading them years and years ago. I’d like to read the two books that everyone is talking about — “The Hunger Games” and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” — so I ordered them from my library but it’s “wait time unknown” heh. But I don’t usually like to buy fiction unless I’ve read it once and know I’ll want to read it again.

Knitting — I’m working on a top-down cotton tank top which I’d like to extend down into a little dress-thing if I have enough yarn. Well, even if I don’t I can get a few more balls of Knitpicks’ Simply Cotton in a coordinating color and just keep working till it’s long enough. It’s actually a lot further along than this photo shows. I’m working the body in a sort of seed stitch rib, which is k9, then a panel of k1p1 seed stitch for three stitches, then k9 again.

Also making a pair of Aargh! gyle Socks for a certain boy’s 15th birthday. These are also further along than the photo shows. Hmm, time to take some more photos.

The yarn is leftover scraps of light and dark blue Knitpicks’ Risata, and a bit of Regia Bamboo. I split all three balls of yarn exactly in half (yay for Dan’s gram scale) so I could make sure the socks matched exactly. I really didn’t think I had enough yarn, and thought I’d have to finish the feet in yet another color, but I had enough and a little to spare of all three yarns.

They’re worked on 60 stitches on size 0 needles, knit firmly. They are quite snug on Dan’s feet; he says they are fine, but next time I would work them on 64 stitches for just a little more room. I worked in the tails at the color changes as I went, thanks to the Techknitter’s marvelous “overcast” method: http://techknitting.blogspot.com/2007/07/overcast-method-part-3-of-tails-and.html, so I didn’t have to do any tedious finishing. The stripes are six rows of light blue, three of dark blue, three of bamboo, three of dark blue, repeat.

I wasn’t sure they’d fit Dan, and I must confess I wouldn’t have minded taking such a lovely pair of socks for myself :) But I’m glad they fit because he really needs more thin socks for summer.