Mer Knits!

Reading directions, it turns out, is pretty important when knitting.  Which is why this:

became this today:

     I've had some bulky merino from handpaintedyarn.com in my stash for a while now and finally decided to cast on for the Ballet Wrap Cardigan from Interweave Knits Winter 2005.  Actually, it's a bit of a hybrid of the IK pattern and a wrap cardigan from Rebecca 32 (this one on the far left).  The ties and general idea of knitting the sweater in one piece are from the Rebecca pattern, while the rest it is from IK.

     My advice to everyone when you realize that your stitch count is off and something has gone horribly wrong is not to continue, like I did, but stop and re-read the pattern.  Turns out that I messed up the first group of decreases (did way too many of them) and had to frog back to pretty much the whole thing.

     I thought for a while that I might just leave it as is and wear a sweater that didn't really have useful fronts, but I decided to rip despite the fact that I may now miss Houston's winter entirely and not get to wear this for a while.  What finally convinced me was that I can now change the decreases, since I don't like the way they're written, and figure out a way to change the back neck.  I read through the pattern several times to try to find the finishing for the back neck area, but nope, there is none.  It's just a raw stockinette bind-off edge.  There has to be a better way to do that.  At least with bulky yarn re-knitting shouldn't take too long!

There was a lot of crafting this Christmas, though not so much by me.  I received some fabulous socks from my sister-in-law Stacey:

Then we received these beautiful embroidered pillowcases from my sister: