Still Going

I am so happy to say that today is my last day at work until the New Year. We have no big plans aside from the afore mentioned trip to NY to celebrate my grandfather's 90th but I'm so happy just to have a little bit of quiet time. Hopefully I'll use most of that time to work on party details and start some projects for me because two (hopefully three) big projects will be completed.

Grandma's sweater is the real focus right now. It's been giving me fits because I just can't seem to measure properly. I bound off the body the other day and started the first sleeve. These sleeves are big and it took me 2 trys to get it just right. In the end I wound up decreasing twice in the garter border. In the first round of knit in the garter border I k5, k2tog all around and then in the 3rd round of knit I k4, k2tog all the way around. It left the sleeves nice and full but they pull in at the wrists now. I like it and I hope my grandmother will too.

Finishing the first sleeve provided a bit of perspective on the body of the sweater and suddenly it looked really short. Grandma wants it short but not like this. I took out my tape measure and sure enough it was about 1.5-2 inches too short. Thankfully it wasn't too hard to undo the bind off and I have plenty of yarn so it's back on the needles now and nearing bind off for the second time. That just leaves the second sleeve and 3 buttons. I'm pretty sure I can get this done.

The other thing that's nearing the finish line is Kippah Quest 2008. Number 74 is complete and I'll start number 75 later today. It hasn't been totally smooth sailing on this project though. The past week has been really bumpy. As I started number 72 I noticed that there wasn't much of the blue yarn left. I expected that I'd have to dye more at some point and I was prepared so I pulled out the dye pot and got to work. In the picture above you can see the initial unskeined result. I'm not sure that you can tell from the picture but the color was way off. It's much too even and more aqua than it ought to be. Thankfully I had more undyed yarn in reserve and I tried again. The second effort is seen in the ball of yarn with the partial kippah resting on it. It's a little lighter than it ought to be but it's more in keeping with the rest of the kippot.

The other bump was kippah number 72 itself. Since 72 is a multiple of 18 I decided that this ought to be the one for me. I had some modifications in mind but it took tons of research and lots of frogging to get it to work. I'm happy with the results but I have no pictures yet. Soon.

Tonight we'll mark Christmas according to Jewish tradition - Chinese food and movies. To those of you who are celebrating for real I wish you a very Merry Christmas.