stash, knit, repeat

While 2008 was nowhere near as difficult a year for our family as 2007, there was plenty of upheaval to go around. We moved from Monterey back to our house in New England, we had a baby, the husband switched jobs to a very intense start-up that failed to get what they thought was secured funding thanks to the credit crunch and laid him off after just five months, and Jacob switched schools.

With all of that, it’s a wonder any knitting happened at all.

1. February Baby Sweater and booties, 2. Syncopated Cap, 3. Flower Basket Shawl, 4. First Rivendell completed before baby born., 5. Cleopatra wrap, finished, 6. A. in sweater, 3, 7. Every shot of a toddler’s feet is blurry, 8. Final shot of beret and socks, 9. Christine’s baby blanket, I, 10. Bear in cable tank top, 11. Matinee Coat, I, 12. St. Anastasia, 13. Conwy, I, 14. Pomatomus, Complete, 15. DSC_0012.JPG

At the start of the year, I hopped onto this crazy idea to knit a pair of socks each month. Kelp did a great job (seriously, click through the link–you’ll be amazed), but I failed pretty miserably at this task. In fact, it’s pretty clear when my carpal tunnel hit and then disappeared–I didn’t finish a thing all summer.

Unable to knit, I finally picked up a new hobby that I’d been thinking about since my dad’s mom died.

I’m not sure this will ever come even remotely close to knitting in my affections (that last quilt has sat, quilted and bound, awaiting just the final hem, for 2 months now), but the quilting definitely kept me sane while I couldn’t knit.

What’s on the horizon for 2009? Hopefully our personal lives will be smooth sailing with no major disruptions. We could definitely, definitely use a quiet year to enjoy our many blessings.

Happy new year, everyone! Thanks so much for joining me here even when the knitting pickings are slim. I wish you all exactly the kind of 2009 you’re hoping for.

Thank you all so much! I’ve knit most of the back of the aran, now, and as many of you said the muted color of the yarn is really balancing out the cables. I think it looks fine, after all.

I can’t believe I’m really going to make a pictureless post, but I wanted to mention something here. My stash has really been stressing me out lately, and the Sundara Seasons fingering silky merino that arrived yesterday made it worse (I’m not that into two of the colors). So! It’s time to do something about that, and that means destashing.

I’ve never destashed before, so I’m not really sure how this goes, but I’ve listed things that I’m happy to part with here in Ravelry. (The Sundara FSM will be up there once I get good pictures of it.) Some of the yarn is stuff one can buy in stores, some has been discontinued, some is festival-only. All is available for roughly 10% off of retail. All has been stored in ziploc bags in a pet-free, smoke-free home.

People, I have tons to tell you about for the first time in forever. A few new projects, more on the Tomten, an FO… but something else is more important today.

Vote.

May you have all treats and no tricks.

Well, in case you’re wondering, a newborn isn’t the reason I’ve been away.

On the contrary, he seems plenty comfortable in there and I may well have to waddle like a manatee through a few more weeks.

There are worse things than a healthy-but-tardy baby, and we’ve been dealing with some of them, but I hope life will return to something vaguely resembling normalcy soon. Until then I hope you’re all well!

I wish! But she does seem to be holding a nice monopoly on my knitting attention, these days.

My yarn is almost gone. After compulsive checking of the scale, I figure I can get through the current repeat and end on the appropriate row with a mere 2 grams left over. Woot! Fast progress (and the realization that I’m about to lose my blocking wires and surface for a few weeks) are spurring me on. I’m trying to complete the stole before leaving for Maine, and pushing off socks until after it’s finished. I think I can even finish the knitting tonight, although I may try the grafting tomorrow during daylight.

We all know that socks make the best travel knitting, and in my blog hiatus/move-in frenzy I’m hoping for a few pairs. Despite extremely tempting temptation,

I decided to stick with my original plan and knit the Rivendell socks in Sundara sock yarn.

The color is “glacier”, and I think it will be a perfect match for Rivendell. Being a huge Tolkein nerd from way back, I associate Rivendell more with the river itself than the autumnal hues that Peter Jackson chose. (Although don’t get me wrong, I love his translation to screen!) After that, I’m hoping to move on to the other Seasons Club sock yarn, mossy in particular. Tiennie’s beautiful Hedgerows really reminded me how much I love this color. The jury is still out on a pattern, though. Wouldn’t want to get too decisive.

I hope you all had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. I probably could have finished the stole, if I hadn’t spent so much of my time focused on food. It’s an occupational hazard of the whole 7-months-pregnant thing, I suppose.

I love making fresh pasta. (This stuff was destined for my favorite tomato-cream sauce.)

I guess I don’t talk about it much here, but I actually love pretty much every kind of dough out there. Especially pie crust. I love pie crust so much that I can’t bear to throw scraps away, and bake them in the toaster oven sprinkled with cinnamon sugar instead.

The next few weeks will be pretty crazy for me, so in case I don’t make it back here until mid-June, here’s wishing you lots of yummy strawberry-rhubarb tarts!

This seems like a pretty strange thing to do, to me. So please forgive me if it’s tacky or otherwise inappropriate. But it occurs to me that there might be folks in Boston who read this, and could make a connection. So!

Until we move back to the area, we are renting out our condominium in Somerville near Tufts University. It’s a 4br/2ba with off-street parking. Our current tenants are leaving at the end of December, and we’re happy to do either a short or a longer-term lease. Pictures of the common spaces can be found here.

If you know of anyone who might be interested, please point them at me? Thanks in advance.

Looking forward to seeing you in 3 weeks with some beautiful FOs.

Knit on!