Every time I convince myself that Peaches is losing weight I see yet another photo of her where she looks enormously roly-poly. Here she is stationed at the wood stove waiting for some more firewood to inspect. I think I must be delusional that I'm succeeding in slimming her down. She is quite good at begging. She'll plant herself in front of you and just stare you down until you feed her.

I'm working on a pair of colorwork socks for DH - I hope to finish at least two pair by Valentine's Day since I can't think of any other gift for him.

Snowflake Headband

Brrrrrrr. It is mighty cold here today. I sent DH back to work finally and all I accomplished while he was home on vacation was this measly snowflake headband.



I had to make a fire in the woodstove first thing this morning and I'm going to have to keep it stoked all day. Peaches doesn't look very happy at the thought of inspecting firewood all day instead of her usual daily routine of napping in the sunshine.



I'm no meteorologist but it looks like snow is on the way. You can't even see the mountains. That is a pile of pinon DH is working on splitting on the left.

Checkered Socks

I finished a pair of socks finally. I started with the checkered socks from Socks, Socks, Socks and then took off and did my own thing. The colors are better in real life but today we actually have some sun here in NM which is fading the colors. I can never seem to get turquoise right in a photograph or a scan. Anyway, I used worsted weight yarn from my stash (Cascade 220 and Peruvian Highland wool), size 4 dpns, and 48 stitches.

Mystery Cast On

Does anyone out there know what this mystery cast on is called? Initially I thought it was the Guernsey cast on but the instructions seem different in Vogue Knitting. I traded away my Montse Stanley book which has the most cast ons but I may have to break down and buy it again.

In "Gloves from Handspun: Totally Tubular" in the Winter 1996 issue of Spin-Off Jude Daurelle says the reason some knitters get holes between the fingers of their gloves is because the backwards loop cast on is normally used to cast on stitches in the middle of the row. She suggests the cast on shown above instead.

Here are the directions: 1. Holding the yarn in back of the work, insert the left hand needle into the front of the last stitch on the right hand needle (directly down the loop). Yarn over right hand needle and draw up a new loop, but do not lift the old loop off the left hand needle. 2. Bring the point of the right hand needle down in front of the left hand needle and enter the loop (still on the left hand needle) from underneath, to the rear. Yarn over the right needle and pull a new stitch from rear to front while pulling down through the left loop. Pull the yarn slightly to tighten the tension. One new stitch is now cast on.

Any ideas???

My apologies for not having any knitting FOs this week. I am hard at work on the technique section of the glove booklet. I currently have 12 pages in small print and I know I haven't explained as much as I want to about glove knitting. Still, I need to get this finished by tomorrow and move forward to coming up with some glove patterns.

Besides the embroidered jacket I have also started a sock in worsted weight yarn. I am using the checkerboard sock pattern in Socks, Socks, Socks but of course I had to add more colors.



DH has next week off. We're expecting a snow storm but we hope to get a chance to travel to Gallup to buy some Indian jewelry. Maybe my jacket will be finished in time to wear for this fun event.

Embroidered Jacket

Kristin Nicholas the knitwear designer has a terrific blog and a few days ago she had some photos of denim jackets embellished with lots of chain stitched embroidery. I have this denim jacket I bought on sale that I never really loved so this was a perfect time to get some embroidery floss and go to town.



The jacket already had some machine embroidery on the hem and the sleeve cuffs and it was really easy to just add more. I spent about 5 dollars total on the embroidery floss.



It really is pretty minimal from far away but I had such fun doing it I'm going to embroider the button band, pockets, and collar next.

The Teaching Company is offering a free lecture HERE on Martin Luther King, Jr.

Another glove bites the dust. Despite the fact that DH chose this pattern and the yarn colors, he now says he doesn't like the gloves. I think it is the fit - only the sore thumb gusset feels good on his hand. The pattern was pretty busy as well so it is no great loss.



That is me modeling the glove in the photo. To help make the fingers fit on cuff-to-tip gloves I try them on and start the finger decreases when I am 1/2" from the tip of my finger (or about halfway up the fingernail. In this particular glove I had to make the ring finger longer because DH's ring finger is longer than his index finger.



In top-down gloves I also try on the fingers to get the right length. The bottoms are curling in the photo but I stop knitting when the bottom of the knitted finger reaches the webbing between my fingers. In my case where all my fingers start at a different row, I knit until the bottom of the knitted finger reaches the lowest point between the fingers.



We're having a cold spell. Fortunately we have an official firewood inspector who makes sure each piece of wood entering the house meets her exacting specifications.