YOP Update - Mittens, Pokemon and Corn

This week has me getting no where fast on my Year Of Projects list, but my knitting inspiration is running at high speeds!  Yup, that's right, nothing has been started, knitted on or finished from my planned year list of knitting projects.  Instead, I am being inspired by Kate Davies Seven Skeins club yet again this week.  My friend's "Baffie" slipper socks are now completely done (blocked too!) and all ready for their trip to Washington DC. 

While they were drying on the blocking mat, I launched right into another of the club's patterns (they are available to everyone come January 1st on Ravelry) called Kokkeluri - a stranded pair of mittens with a flower design on the back and a twill pattern on the palm side.  The flower reminded me so much of sunflowers that I had to knit them in yellow.  Kate's 7 skeins of Buachaille yarn does not include a yellow so I used her natural grey called "Haar" for the background and purchased some Jamieson's Double Knitting in the Scotch Broom colorway for the flower line drawing.  My goal is for the mittens to match my Michele hat that I knit a while back whose matching double knitted mittens are languishing in my WIP basket.  The double knitting was just getting too tedious and boring to knit, but these Kokkeluri mittens - they just beckon you to keep going.  The only sad thing about these lovely mittens is they are a little short for my long fingers.  The pattern talks about blocking them "vigorously"by pulling them down over the tall end of a sock blocker, so I am putting my trust in those directions that in the end the mittens will emerge the right size for me.

Even though I'm getting better at stranded knitting through these projects, it still is a bit tiring for me.  Thus, for something completely different, I started on a project for my son.  He is back into loving Pokemon again and requested some Pokemon mittens.  Here is what I came up with using this hat pattern as a jumping off point.  They are pretty straightforward with changing colored yarn and a bit of duplicate stitching being the only oddities.  The mitten came out a bit long and slim looking, but it fit my son just fine (me too actually.  He's only 9 and our hands are almost the same size! Sigh.)  Now, I just need to make the second one, which I think will be pretty quick, so I can get back to finishing my own mittens.  Although, I do think I may surprise him with a matching hat as I have plenty of yarn left over.  We'll see...

This week I am leaving you with a photo from today of my husband and son who attended the Sever's Annual Corn Maze.  It is a humongous maze cut out of a corn field with a different design each year.  This year it was a firefighting truck.  It was their first time going and boy did they have fun!  Pig races, a large bouncy play area (think bouncy castle without the top and make it the size of a baseball field), zip lines, giant slide, petting zoo, you name it. They also have a corn pit you can dig, play or in my son's case bury yourself in.  Yup, my guess is this is on the Fall "to do" list for next year.

If you want to visit the other Year of Projects, or YOP for short, participants you can head on over to Ravelry and find them here.  Have a great week everyone!

Dark Days = More Knitting Time!

The days are getting darker here and with daylight savings time beginning this weekend it'll be dark by 5:30 pm each night.  In December it is dark by 4:00 pm.  And while this bums me out a bit, it is the best time for knitting and boy am I back into my knitting!  This week I finished the Kate Davies Cochal cowl to match my Baa-ble hat and mittens.  I modified the length to only 10 inches high (was supposed to be 15), to keep it from covering up my whole face.  It's circumference is only 21 inches so it is a snug cowl.  There is one blue contrast row of honeycomb cells where I used that scant 3 grams of Jamieson's Shetland Heather Aran yarn I had leftover from the Baa-ble mittens to help tie it in to the other pieces.  Now, I'm all set for the cold and hopefully some good sledding when we get snow.  

The next knitting project I'm tackling is another pattern by Kate Davies from her Seven Skeins Club called Buachaille Baffies.  Basically, they are what I'd call slipper socks.  They are stranded knit in two colors and while I plan to make another pair in the Buachaille yarn they are designed for, this pair I knit in an angora gray yarn and a black merino wool.  I wanted to make them extra warm (angora is 7 times warmer than wool as it's a hollow core fiber) as they are meant for a very good friend of mine who is going into the hospital for major back surgery.  I thought they'd keep her feet nice and toasty while she's in the hospital and home recovering.  I don't know what it is about hospitals but I always find them to be cold places.  

She lives in Washington DC and I will be flying out to help her during her recovery for about a week.  She's single and very independent, but I convinced her she will need help as they don't completely know what they are going to find that is causing her so much pain.  When I told my son I would be gone for a week and that his dad would be home with him (we homeschool so Dan has to take vacation time to cover for me) he got this huge smile on his face which he then quickly tried to hide and said "That's too bad Anna doesn't feel well.  I hope she feels better soon."  Uh, huh.  What was really going on in that little brain of his is PARTY with DAD!!!!  It will be Mac 'n Cheese, computer gaming and guy fun for a whole week.  I feel no guilt in leaving them.

I will be sad though to miss our story time each day as we are currently reading a great book series called The Blackwell Pages.  The first book was Loki's Wolves and the second, which is the one we are currently half way through, is Odin's Ravens and the last is Thor's Serpent.  They are written by Kelley Armstrong and as you can probably guess by the titles they are based on Norse Mythology.  My son really likes the Norse Myths and of course young kids being descendants from the Gods who have to save the world from Ragnarok - what could be better?  Or, as my son would say "It's so epic Mama!"  They are indeed. I like them too because of the myth history as well as that there are both strong girl and boy characters who need each other to succeed.  Which I feel is true in real life as well.

Joining in with Ginny for Yarn Along.