Mutant No More!

I have cured my X-sweater of its mutant-ness.
In the previous post, I showed the before picture, and here is after:

And here is The Boy with his sweater for an 18 month old child:

I don't think it will fit.  I decided that it would be creepy of me to save the sweater for my grandchildren, so I decided to give it to some friends who have a super-cute little girl who is about the right size, maybe a little small even, which is good as sweater weather is pretty much done here.  

As I was finishing, I did realize that I forgot to switch to smaller needles for the ribbing at the bottom, but I also realized that I don't like sweaters for little kids pinching in like that, so the looser edge actually pleases me.  Better mobility for small people.  The yarn is 75% acrylic/25% wool.

So now I'm on to my bug cross stitch.  I have resolved not to start knitting anything else until I make progress on other things I'm working on.  

2 hours since Friday,

32 hours total.

Margie

Catching up

Well, I'm probably behind in total hours for the quarter, but I have some project pictures to share.

I have the scarf for My Friend, and the mittens I made to go along with it.  The mittens were a late Valentine's present, and I finished them just in time for him to wear them up to Dallas last weekend when they were still being hit by cold weather so he was very happy to have them!  I modified a pattern for plain mittens, and I would add another cable if making them again, but I was surprised to find that they fit him perfectly.  Less surprised that he loves them, but still happy that he does.

I've also been working on another cowl that would have been for our mother if she didn't like the first one I made.  That one is getting closer to completion.  No picture of that one yet.  I am getting very close to completing the Mutant Sweater.  This is what it looked like before -

Between the first and second pictures I sewed up the seams and put the collar on.  The ladies at my local yarn shop (LYS) reassured me that the short torso wouldn't be a problem, the sweater owner could just roll up the sleeves.  After looking at it for long enough, and reading through too many Yarn Harlot blog postings, I decided I couldn't let the sweater remain a cropped top and unravelled it from the bottom.  I've picked up the stitches (you can see the needle in the picture on the right) and have knit at least three or four inches on the bottom.  The proportions look correct to me now, so I have started on the ribbing at the bottom and have five rows to go before completion.  This means that The Boy's sweater will finally be complete!  Only... 15 years late!

When the sweater is done, I too have a cross stitch project to do that is tiny but has eleventh-billion colors in it in single stitches, and I've already made a mistake within the first 20 stitches.  Sigh.  There  are plenty of other things waiting to be completed as well, and I confess to buying more yarn for specific projects in the last couple of months, so I guess I'll just have to knit more.

Middle is making a crochet sloth for a friend.  I'll see if I can get a picture of it.  It is very cute.

Tallying up the rest of January through today - 29 hours.
30 hours total.

Margie

Quiltastic!

I have finished the quilt! I had to repair one part of the backing fabric that was a little bit damaged, quilt 51 more little circles, and I put my initials on for good measure (see photo 4). I didn't do a perfect job of laying the quilt flat before quilting, apparently, because some sections are a little warped between front and back, and there are many other errors that I could point out to anyone interested, but overall it's super cute and I'm delighted to have finished it on the time scale I intended. And the quilt circles do give just the effect I was hoping - they don't distract from the front (can you find all six in photo 2?) but they do add to the back (see photo 5); photo 3 is a closeup. And it was lovely to have entertainment/company during my sewing - evil twin and his brother playing video games that are silly and not too loud or violent. Yay!

Hopefully I will keep this momentum going to finish the cross-stitch I started, and then think about what comes next!

1:20 hours Friday, 5:10 hours Sat, 4:30 hours today = 11 hours this weekend; 68:40 total.
Catherine