Sorry, guys, I’m struggling with the blog lately. Life is tricky right now. Some things are good, some things not so good. I guess I just haven’t felt chatty recently. But Christmas is coming regardless so I’ve been making all the things, despite my insistence that I wasn’t making gifts this year. Here’s what I’ve been doing lately. 
Thomas hat. Improvised, Ravelry notes here. 
Turtle beanie/mitt set. From the TMNT Hat Tutorial. 
Christmas Ornament Hat, from the amazing Repeat Crafter Me. I mentioned to the girl (who’s 15) that I wanted to make a set for the four of us and take a family photo. She wasn’t crazy about that idea. Shocker.
This is another Christmas cowl. I had issues with the yarn, clearly. But I got it all straightened out and this should be a quick finish. I’ve got 3 other FOs but can’t share them yet. Gotta wait until after Christmas! And now I am done with all gift knitting and crocheting and I’m going to make some FUN stuff. What about you: still frantically knitting or breathing a sigh of relief that you’re done?
A WIP and a FO
I switched gears from knitting to crochet to start a gift for a cute little boy. He’s a huge Thomas the Tank Engine fan, so I’m attempting to make a Thomas hat. 
As you can see, I still have a ways to go. It’s not the right blue, which bothers me. And I’m not great at small details like faces. So no, I don’t think it’ll be perfect, but since he’s 3, he won’t be too picky.
Here’s my FO. I finished the Christmas cowl the other day and even though I haven’t had a chance to block it yet, I love it. I had enough yarn left over to make at least one more, so I think the next one will be slightly fewer stitches and a few more rows so it’ll be taller. But this one is still awesome and I ALMOST wish it wasn’t 50-60 degrees outside so I’d be able to wear it right now. 
And guess what else? Grace the destructo-pup struck again. I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday and I thought they’d only be alone for about half an hour, forgetting the boy had jazz band after school. By the time the girl got home, Grace (and maybe Jack too) had chewed up an empty egg carton and two plastic bags, knocked two balls of yarn on the floor, hidden a butter knife in a chair cushion, and decided my fancy Clover crochet hook with the rubberized grip was a great chew toy. 
At least it’s still usable; she just got the end of it. Needless to say, it was a good reminder to make sure everything is put away before we leave the house.
Today is five weeks since I broke my foot, and yesterday was my follow-up. It doesn’t look like the bone is healing too quickly, but I was given instructions to start walking on it, slowly working my way up to fully weight-bearing without crutches. I’m supposed to stay in the boot, so still no driving, but at least it’s progress, and it’s nice to be a bit more mobile. Fingers crossed that it will heal more by the time I go back in a month. And until then, I still have plenty of projects to keep me busy!
A Christmas Cowl
With a short break to wrap some presents with the boy, I worked on my Christmas cowl all day yesterday. I hope to finish it today!
Purple Mountain Majesty Cowl
Despite some “help” from a furry friend… 
I finished my new cowl, now named the Purple Mountain Majesty cowl, just in time to wear it yesterday! The girl had auditions for all-state band two hours away and I couldn’t miss that. 
Sorry about that terrible terrible iPhone selfie photo. Usually I get better pictures than that, but at six in the morning, I figured that was good enough. The cowl is fabulous, I LOVE it and it will be even better once I get the chance to block it properly. The yarn is Purple Rain from Lolo Did It and the pattern is River Deep, Mountain High by mollygirl yarn and I swear I will post some good photos once I have the chance to take them.
We were in Columbia for a very very long day, so the husband and I escaped for a short time so I could visit the LYS, the Hillcreek Yarn Shoppe. They’re always so friendly and they have such lovely yarn and I always find something I HAVE to have. Yesterday was no exception. 
Sighhhhh. I love yarn. This is why I knit, truly. It’s partly the act itself, but mostly it’s for the yarn. Now see those three on the right side, the two teals and a gray? They will come together for a nifty striped cowl. The shop had one on display and the pattern came free with the purchase of the yarn. The purple sparkly I got because…well, because I love purple and I love sparkly. Maybe it will go together with that Cascade Aran Splatter (on the left edge) as a border or accent stripes or something, or maybe not. I just know that when I see purple sparkly yarn, I will buy it, no questions asked.
I also love Christmas, so the red and green sparkle called my name too. I’ve been itching to do some holiday themed knitting, so I’ll put these two with some ivory baby alpaca from my stash and make a Christmas cowl for myself. It’ll be striped, with the red and green being purl ridges.
Can’t you just see it?? I can! I’ve got it all ready to go and that’s what I’ll be making today while I rest from the big day yesterday. The knee scooter is great, and I’m so glad I had it, but using it really tires the thigh muscles in the bad leg. Plus it was so crowded that I couldn’t elevate the foot much, which meant it got swollen, and today it’s cranky. So yeah, today I’m pretty much useless. Movies and yarn for me. Maybe I’m finally embracing my forced quiet time.
Sadly, the girl didn’t make it into the band. She did make to callbacks, the top 38 of the roughly 150 flutists from all around the state, which was a step closer than last year. It really is an accomplishment. But she’s been so successful with her band stuff that I think we all had really high hopes, and she was devastated when she didn’t make it. That’s one of the hardest parts of having older kids, when they get sad and there’s not a darn thing you can do to make it better. But she’s talented and strong, and I know she’ll keep doing amazing things with her music. And even if it didn’t end the way we wanted it to, I still got to spend the day with my girl doing something she loves, and we had a great time. 
Happy Sunday, friends! May your day be as peaceful as mine is shaping up to be.
The Day of the Dogs
Sometimes, not very often, I question my decision to have dogs.
Yesterday morning I was coming downstairs on my crutches. Through the window at the landing, I saw the neighbor’s dog running freely down the street. Knowing I couldn’t run after her, or call our neighbor (I don’t have their number), I made it down the rest of the stairs and to the front door, thinking maybe I could call her and get her to come inside. Then what, I had no idea. Fortunately, my husband was outside cleaning frost off the car, so he let the neighbor know and helped look for the dog. And within ten minutes, another friendly neighbor had managed to get her on a leash and returned home. Whew, good news, crisis averted. Right? Right.
Or not.
Ever since we got our fence finished, the puppies love to be outside. Grace especially will spend hours out there if we let her. Our morning routine is for me to let them out while I have breakfast, Jack will come in after half an hour or so, and Grace stays out for another hour or so. Well, it got to be longer than that and I figured I better get her in. I opened the door and hollered at her. Usually she’ll pop up right away, even if she doesn’t come in easily. But not yesterday. I found my crutches and hopped out to the back deck and hollered again, and after a minute I saw here…on the other side of the fence. Seriously. She’d broken a picket and gotten out and thought it would be fun to go frolic with the neighbor’s dog. Yep, same neighbor. They have an invisible fence so Grace could just pop over and say hey, and she thought that was fantastic.
Still with the crutches, I hopped down the steep stairs to the yard. Neighbor came outside, put his dog inside and tried to catch Grace. She’s a wily little thing, though, and thought it was all a fun game so she ran all around his yard and toward the street and back toward our yard and then around again. With just a sock on my good foot, I hopped to the gate and opened it, keeping Jack inside at the same time, calling for Grace so she could ignore me. Poor Neighbor kept chasing the darn dog until I asked her if she wanted a carrot (they love their carrot treats), and somehow she ended up going back through her hole into the yarn. Neighbor put two big rocks in front of the hole and I herded both dogs up the stairs and into the house. I locked the door and collapsed into my rolling chair. My sock was damp and muddy , my foot was freezing, and I was shaking with adrenalin.
So remind my: why do I have dogs?? Oh yeah. This is why. 
Darn those dogs anyway. As near as we can tell, Grace was digging under the fence and broke the picket forcing her way under. The picket has been replaced and her two big holes have cement blocks in them. I know she’ll dig more if she can. So yeah, now I guess we’re going to look into getting an invisible fence as a second layer of protection. Until then, her time outside will be limited and have frequent supervision.
As for me, I recovered by knitting along to a Harry Potter movie marathon, and today will be more of the same, with a fervent hope that it will be a much less eventful day!
p.s. I had a knitting photo from yesterday to share but it’s not loading and I don’t want to fight with it. Maybe tomorrow.
A Yarn Pick-Me-Up
It’s easy for me to get discouraged right now. I fight it off most days, or at least I pretend to. Fake it ’til you make it, right? But sometimes good things happen that boost my spirits right up. Yesterday’s mail brought me something very happy: a single skein of lovely yarn that I impulse-ordered recently.
I follow a lot of yarn-dyers on Instagram because I’m a knitter, right? That’s what we do. I look at pictures of yarn and puppies. It pleases me greatly. Most of the time that’s all. But then on Black Friday, @_lolodidit posted a photo of this yarn, Purple Rain, on worsted weight, and said it was the LAST ONE! Well. Of course. Strike one: purple. Strike two: worsted weight, when so many hand-dyed skeins are sock weight. Strike three: last one?? That was just fate calling my name so sweetly. I immediately went to her Etsy shop and ordered the little beauty and yesterday it arrived. 
I immediately wound it into the most perfect little ball of yarn.
I knew it would be something for me (and I mean it this time) but what? It would make a gorgeous hat, but I just don’t wear many hats. I like fingerless gloves, but I wanted something faster. That meant a cowl, and my favorite cowl has to be River Deep, Mountain High. I’ve made it twice and want to keep both of them, so I need one just for me. I cast on after dinner and today I’m ready to start the pattern portion. 
I just love this yarn so much. You should check out her Etsy shop, lolodidit, and her Instagram handle is @_lolodidit. She makes such pretty yarn, I can’t wait to order more! This came at just the perfect time, too, because I was starting to feel that tiny bit of discouragement. The good news is that I finished almost all my lingering commissions (except the ones that need yarn that hasn’t arrived yet) so I got to work on personal projects. Remember, I cast on for the Color Tipped Shawl, and I do love the style and the color combo I picked. (The third color is a dark teal.)
But I don’t love the yarn. It’s Berroco Maya, a blend of cotton and alpaca, and while it feels nice in a cake, when it’s knit up it feels kind of…crunchy? Crispy? Not as soft as I would want in a scarf. So now what? Do I frog and find a different pattern for this yarn? I think I have to. If I wouldn’t wear this, I don’t know that I should continue making it. So that project went into timeout.
I do have another personal project that I started yesterday. The boy is a huge Sherlock Holmes fan (of the Benedict Cumberbatch variety) and he got a dark gray peacoat this winter. What else would do but me making him an appropriate Sherlock scarf? I’m using Knit Picks Preciosa Tonal in the Captain colorway. I’m really enjoying this yarn. Lovely softness and gorgeous colors. 
I just can’t work on it when he’s home, so here’s hoping I can finish it before school lets out for the holidays!
And just so you all know: it looks like I’m knitting a lot, but I’m being careful with my arms, I promise! I’m wearing my brace on the left elbow and the supportive glove on the right hand, and I’m taking lots of breaks. I finished the Vanessa Diffenbaugh book (very good, if not as good as her first), re-read an old favorite (Theory of Relativity by Jacqueline Mitchard) and am now happily in the middle of The Glass Kitchen by Linda Francis Lee. The balance is nice, even if there’s a part of me that would still rather be knitting all the time.
So there you go. Yarn is still saving me when I need it to. I go back to the doctor on the 8th for another x-ray. I’d like to say I’m expecting good news, but I’m not really. It will only have been 5 weeks then, and my foot is still achy/tender enough that I can’t imagine him giving me clearance to walk on it yet. But I’ll keep resting it and hoping for the best. That’s all you can do, right?
Still Here, With Yarn
You’d think I’d be posting more often, with all the free time I have these days, but it’s working the other way for some reason. I’m less compelled to write, maybe because I’m not as excited, not as eager to share? So this post might be more photos, fewer words.
I hope all my US friends had a lovely holiday. I managed to get out and visit my family despite the pouring rain. We had a delicious meal with my husband’s family, then we stopped to visit my mom and sister on the way home. The scooter didn’t fit in the trunk with all the food, so I was crutching it the whole way, and it wore me out big time! That left leg was so tired from all the hopping. I was glad we went, of course. It was so nice to see everybody. But more than anything I was grateful for my husband that night. True love is standing patiently outside in the cold rain, telling your wife that yes, she *can* make it up the stairs, just keep going.
The yarn is easier than the stairs. I am indeed still playing with yarn, tennis elbow be darned. I started a BRIGHT pink scarf on Thanksgiving and finished it two days later. It’s kid size, so it went quickly.
I’m working on some turtle stuff too, some special orders.
Yep, even crocheted nunchucks!
And another order, a rainbow toddler hat!
I’ve got these to finish plus three scarves to make but this morning I woke up with a twinge in my right hand and an occasional muscle twitch in that elbow, and it’s obvious my body is saying, “Bonny, so help me, if you don’t find something to do besides knit or crochet, you’re going to lose the ability to do it at all.” And that sucks and it’s not fair, but that’s life, right? So today I’m abstaining from all yarn crafts and instead I will be reading. I’ve got “We Never Asked for Wings” by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. I loved her first book, “The Language of Flowers”, so much that I’m eagerly anticipating this one. Here’s hoping it keeps me happy and distracted all day!
Getting Out of the House
Bored. So bored of TV and movies and reading and even (gasp!) knitting. Bored of my couch and my living room and my rolling desk chair. Today marks three weeks since I broke my foot, and the novelty of having so much lazy time has definitely worn off. Thankfully, I have a marvelous husband who understands completely and was willing to help me have an outing yesterday. We didn’t go far; just down the street to the bead store and yarn store. But I was clean, I wore something other than pajamas, spoke out loud to people other than my family, and looked at pretty things that I could take home with me. And I did. 
Isn’t that little Santa hat so cute?? That was my favorite bead, but I got several others. These red are done, obviously, but I’ve got several silver hearts to play with, plus two strands of smaller beads, for when I need to switch hobbies.
Of course I’m not so tired of knitting that I couldn’t find yarn I wanted. I got six skeins of Berroco Maya, a lightweight blend of cotton and alpaca, plus three more skeins of Berroco Vintage. One is that bright Christmas red that really needs to become a holiday hat for me! I’ve already cast on the Maya. It’s going to be the Color Tipped Scarf by Purl Soho. Who doesn’t adore their patterns, right? 
Clearly, I wasn’t tired of knitting. I was tired of knitting the same old things. I needed something new. I’ve got one more finished Yoda hat, and this might be the last for a while, except special orders. As much as I love him, Yoda might have worn out his welcome here. 
Now it’s time for me and the puppies to chill out while everyone else cooks all the food for tomorrow’s big dinner. Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving! 
Knitting for the Holidays
This year, my holiday knitting is pretty much non-existent. I’ve made gifts the last two years, and I just decided not to take on that anxiety this year. It requires a lot more advance planning than I managed. Now, with that said, there might be one or two gifts coming off my needles this year, but that’s about all. I’m partly relieved and partly sad, which tells me this hiatus probably won’t be a long one. So, family, if you’re reading this, put your requests in early next year!
So what am I doing if I’m not making gifts for people? For quite a while, I was busy making stuff for my two craft shows. My second show was last week. It was a one-day, 4-hour fair, and it was a bust. I had two sales that *almost* covered the table fee, and then I bought a super-cute necklace from my booth neighbor. It’s my sneaking suspicion that the clientele there were the type of people who think that handmade gifts aren’t as good. I had a few compliments, but most were just quick glances. I even had two people ask me, “Are all of these handmade?” before walking away empty-handed.
Don’t worry, I didn’t take the lack of sales personally. Disappointing, sure, but I know the problem was market, not product. The silver lining is that the fair was to support the First Hand Foundation, a charity run by Cerner, so my table fee went to a good cause. But still, it wasn’t really worth the work, given that my Knitting SIL had to find a babysitter so she could haul all my stuff, and I had to move around on Helga, my knee scooter.
With shows done for now, my focus is back on my Etsy shop. I’ve been working on adding pieces, and today I finished! It’s completely up to date with all my current inventory, and you can check it out here. As a holiday special I’m offering free first class shipping with the code SHIPMYHATS. My sales are slowly increasing, and I’m getting a few custom orders from it too. Of course, most of them are Yoda hats! 
And I managed to finish the mermaid blanket, FINALLY. 
I completely forgot to take a photo of the finished piece, darn it all. It turned out pretty good, but I don’t know that I ever want to make another one. If I do, I know that I’ll charge a higher price next time!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to turn up the new Adele album and go back to knitting Yoda hats.
Another Minor Setback
This is not ideal. If you remember, I managed to acquire some tendonitis in my elbow over the summer, and I’ve been battling it ever since. Well, being on crutches has made it worse, as has all my extra knitting time while I’ve been resting my foot. I’m not supposed to take anti-inflammatories because they’re not the best meds for my foot, but the pain meds I do have don’t do anything to help the elbow. Sigh. So right now I have a really sore elbow and I know I need to quit knitting for a few days to let it rest. I’ll try working on the crochet mermaid blanket, since it’s a different set of movements and uses the right (good) arm more than the left. But these might be the last knitting photos for a while. 
The doggy scarf! It’s about 2 1/2″ wide and 13″ circumference. I really hope it fits well. 
Another Broken Rib slouch hat, this time in Oscar the Grouch Green.
This is the last piece for my craft show, which is tomorrow! I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, but that might just be because of how hard it is to shower/look presentable right now. I’m sure once we get there and get it all set up, we’ll have a grand time. And maybe I’ll sell a whole bunch of hats!
Today I’ll distract myself from yarn with a small editing job, a short children’s story. I haven’t done any editing in a while so it’ll be a nice change of pace. I’ll leave you with a couple of photos, one of my “helper” puppy and one of our current refrigerator Scrabble. It’s fun to get up in the morning and see what my family has added! Today I saw “strong” and “grit”. Must remember those. 
“You shall not pass!”
bonnyknits 