Pressure Cooker

First, let me offer a belated Happy Thanksgiving! to everyone. I have seriously been neglectful of the blog this month. Which means I have to catch you up rather quickly:

1. Had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my parents, brother, and sister-in-law at sunny Universal Studios in Florida.

I rode the hugely popular Forbidden World of Harry Potter twice

rode all the roller coasters and saw several shows. It was nice to see some of the Christmas decorations going up. Which reminds me...I need to get out my Christmas decorations here at the apartment.

We had a great time despite the fact that I may have sprained my ankle. Apparently walking on hard concrete for three days in a row and standing in lines for hours at a time isn't so great for you. My left ankle is swollen pretty bad so tomorrow I'm headed to the doctor's early in the morning to see what's up.

2. The Eastern European and Russian Orphanages Project "headquarters" (a.k.a. my office) has been overrun with blanket donations. Just as I had sent 40 off there were at least that many to replace them. It's really a wonderful problem to have. Thankfully my mom came and helped me organize said office/headquarters and now things are looking much better in here. Once I get the latest batch of donations sorted, tagged, photographed, and stored I will try and take some pictures of the new office space.

I did finish seaming together some patchwork squares but alas, no picture of the finished blanket yet. Also, if you're the knitting or crocheting type stop by our Ravelry group. We're getting ready to do a huge year long knit along/crochet along with tons of options for participating.

On another crafty charity note...the crafting group at my church was featured in the local paper the other day. Pretty cool!

3. Christmas knitting. Oh dear. The title of this post says it all. I'm in a real pressure situation here, folks. I didn't realize how much I still have to do!

There are washcloths, and lots of them, that need doing.

There is a wine cozy to finish. Er...start.

A tie, a pair of socks, and a knitted toy that also haven't been started yet.

And then there is a vest that is two shoulder seams away from being finished but for some reason I lost steam right at the very end.

Gah! Enough typing, must go finish some knitting. Only 26 days of holiday knitting left!

Fool Me Once, Shame On Me. Fool Me Twice...

Never has such a simple and small project given me such a headache. A project I have made probably 50 times before. A pattern I have memorized in my sleep. The most basic of the basic...

A washcloth.

 But not just any washcloth you see. This is part of a set of washcloths I'm making for my mom for Christmas. And my mom has only qualm with the washcloths I make: she doesn't like how the look for all the odds and ends knit up together.

The natural, red, and blue washcloth on the end is what she's talking about.

So, being the loving daughter I am, I took great care to divide the skein of cotton in half and then find the middle of each of the individual balls. The thinking was that I could increase using half the ball of yarn and then decrease using the other half. Sounds simple. Sounds logical. It wasn't. I started knitting and increasing until I got half way through and then started decreasing. After about 10 rows I realized that there wasn't going to be enough yarn left to finish the dishcloth despite my calculations. So I ripped back about 15 rows and started decreasing again. I made it further but it's become obvious that I'm not going to make it again.

The little bit that's left for the last 15 rows.

This means I have to rip back again and try and get everything to work out. I just don't have it in me right now so I'm going to go crochet some blanket squares together.